By Michael Regenstreif
One of lowest points during the 2015 federal election campaign was the proposal made by Conservative candidates Kellie Leitch (then minister of labour and minister for the status of women) and Chris Alexander (then minister of citizenship and immigration) for an RCMP tip line to which citizens could anonymously report “barbaric cultural practices.”
The proposal was widely seen as an example of “dog whistle politics,” which is the use of code words to signal something to the greater population while scapegoating a specific group. In this particular case, it was seen as an attack on the Muslim population.
In any case, a tip line was totally unnecessary because so-called “barbaric cultural practices” – honour killings or female genital mutilation, for example – are crimes in Canada that must be reported to the police by anyone with knowledge they are or will be occurring.
The proposal didn’t fly with the electorate and was seen as a factor in the Conservative Party’s loss. After the election, the party, under interim leader Rona Ambrose, turned a corner and distanced itself from such proposals.
Months later, by then a candidate for the Conservative leadership, Leitch appeared on the April 21 edition of CBC News Network’s “Power & Politics” and emotionally said she wished she’d never made that announcement.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about this since the campaign took place and, if I could go back in time, which I can’t, I would change things,” Leitch told host Rosemary Barton.
Five months ago, Leitch appeared to be through with dog whistle politics.
This month, though, Leitch, still a candidate for the Conservative leadership, floated the idea of screening potential immigrants to see if they believe in “Canadian values.”
But Leitch hasn’t really defined just what Canadian values she would be screening for.
And the thing about values is that they change over time.
For many decades, successive Canadian governments used the cruel residential school system to strip First Nations peoples of their languages and cultures. That was a Canadian value for many years.
Speaking of First Nations and Canadian values, Leitch was minister for the status of women in a government that refused, time and again, to establish a commission of inquiry into the obscene numbers of missing and murdered Aboriginal women.
During the Holocaust, it was a Canadian value that “none is too many” was the right number of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi genocide to admit into Canada.
There are many, many other examples from Canadian history of changing Canadian values that could be mentioned.
And it’s not just a matter of history. We continue to see the constant evolution of Canadian values.
For example, same-sex marriage is now legal and a well-accepted value in Canada. But it has only been legal in parts of Canada since 2003 and everywhere in this country since 2005. The whole nature of family values – and what constitutes a family – has changed dramatically in Canada in recent years.
And what are the “Canadian values” Leitch would screen immigrants for?
I would presume, for example, that freedom of religion and religious equality would (or should) be Canadian values. But, here in Ontario, the government privileges one religion over all the rest by publicly funding its faith-based school system and refusing to fund the schools of all other religions. Is such inequality a Canadian value?
Since the 1970s, we’ve considered multiculturalism to be a Canadian value. But the province of Quebec rejects the very concept.
I would presume that national unity is or should be a Canadian value. But there are several members of Parliament whose party is dedicated to breaking up the country.
The point is that, in a liberal democracy, one’s values are not necessarily the same as everyone else’s and they change and evolve over time. So, too, do our collective values.
Immigrants to Canada should be screened on many levels – and they are – almost always successfully.
Leitch is again playing dog whistle politics with her proposal for “Canadian values” screening. Tellingly, the interim Conservative leader, and Leitch’s fellow leadership contenders have called her on it. And that is a great Canadian value.
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