An argument for more immigration into Canada

7 posts

Bohdan Khmelnytsky
A Canadian is one who simply as status as a Canadian. Canadianess or Canadian identity is much harder to hammer out thanks to the former natural governing party. PET and others sold out "Canadianess" for pure political power. Men like Difenbaker struggled to keep Canadian identity alive, but his liberal sucessors were largely successful in crushing it.

Now the new Tories are fighting to restore that identity. What's dawning on many tories on the hill is that we need a culture change if our power is to be solidified. We are standing on thin ice right now thanks to the collapse of the liberal party and overwhelming confusion that is currently burdening the left. We only have power because of that crisis. Thankfully the tories were able to capitlizze on this confusion and gain power, largely thanks to vote splitting among some other important developments.

I would argue that the Liberal party tried its damndest to destroy Canadian identity and replace it with the false identity that many contemporary Canadians have. It is so watered down, confused and rootless that it is without meaning.

I grew up with that Liberal understanding of Canadian, that confusing amorphous liberal construction and for that reason I resented being Canadian. Canadian meant nothing, and many of my peers saw that it was meaningless.

However, I believe that real Canadian identity is rooted deep in our history. It is defined by those British traditions which gave birth to our democracy, and the ideas and concepts that were born in the struggle for confederation.

I am still rather new to Canadian history but what I have discovered so far it is following; A Canadian is a subject of our Queen and is loyal to the important political and cultural traditions which allowed this Dominion to come into existence and which still sustain it to this day. Although the Liberals have done much to weaken those supporting traditions all for the sake of power, and they were so sucessful that many Canadians today do not know what Canadian identity entails.

As descendent of immigrant I think I owe an allegiance to that identity, in fact I feel I must support and assume that identity. I have this view because I firmly believe that without those traditions, without that identity my grandparents would have had no where to find refuge.

As far as I see it all immigrants have two choices. Either they can resist that identity and treat Canada as a sort of luxurious hotel for refugees and show complete ingratitude to those concepts which made this hotel so luxurious. Otherwise we can embrace that identity and support it out of a genuine feeling of gratitude for the freedoms and privilages that Canada provides us.

For the longest time I felt like part of that first camp, but as I dig deeper into conservative Canadian history and I cannot help but feel like I have to make the transition to the second category.
Niccolo and Donkey

Other than loyalty to the crown, which traditions are you talking about?

I'm a blood and soil nationalist. I believe both are required to create an actual nation. We are living in a hyper-consumerized and hyper-individualized society which negates organic communities and wipes out the soil element as we are transitory not only in employment, but in places of residence.

I fail to see how a common identity can be forged amongst those of Brit, French, Med, African, Near/Far Eastern, Subcon, etc.

The other solution is assimilation which means Anglification in Anglo Canada. The question then becomes: why would someone lower themselves to that?

We aren't even touching upon the Quebecois in this matter, and that in itself is a huge presence.

Niccolo and Donkey
Concentrate nuclear launch detected Nordic Norm

This is interesting.

Newcomers less likely to support immigration than mainstream Canadians

Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Magna Carta, Westminster Parliament, Rights of Englishmen, Confederation, etc. I've only really became enticed by this position recently so I'll admit a lot of ignorance, but what I have discovered, especially in my dealings with other Tories is that there is much more to Canadian identity than what I had previously thought.
I've always identified with nationalism, but the more I look into the history of my own nations the more I realize that there isn't much to stand on when it comes to the blood argument. I firmly believe that there is no nation that can claim to have a true blood identity.

I am less acquainted with the soil aspect of this ideology. I would only point out that even in Slavic countries there is a lot of internal movement. People have been moving from the village to the city for the whole of the last century and movement has become even more rapid in recent decades. Residences do indeed change quite a bit.

I would propose one can do it in the same way that Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski became Joseph Conrad.
That is the solution, but I don't see it as a lowering at all. One has to carefully navigate this transition in such a way that they don't entirely lose their cultural heritage but instead retains the most important aspects of that culture.
Well that's the whole bitch of confederation. I haven't even begun to untangle that mess.

I still have very strong nationalist tendencies. In fact, after visiting old country I've had a very strong desire to give everything up and make the move back. I have been gearing my studies to make that transition. I still have a lot of trouble with the experience of feeling at home, in a country I had just visited. I instantly fell in love and I knew that this was my nation.

But then I spent a summer with some hardcore Tories. They introduced me to real Canadian history and identity and I've been taken the concept very seriously ever since. I was especially convinced because these same Tories were either Trad Cats or High Church Anglicans and some of them weren't even British. That we shared these religious convictions somehow made their arguments all the more appealing.

I am young and I still have a lot of time to figure these things out. However, I know this much; either I stay in Canada and commit myself to this nation or make the move back to my ancestral land. As it stands I find the rootlessness of my current identity so unsatisfying that I fear only something as crude as mindless entrepreneurism will be able to satisfy it.
Niccolo and Donkey
IT Wizard SteamshipTime Ix nuclear launch detected

Immigrant drop imperils Ontario economy

Team Zissou

That's it. Ontario will now be a desolate, unpopulated wreck with a few survivors poking among the ruins and scratching out a living from dirt. Sorry Nic.

Broseph
No, it's economics. We can only bring over so many cabbies, especially with high unemployment.