In 2012, National Post published an interesting piece on immigration to Canada: As immigration booms, ethnic enclaves swell and segregate. The article revealed the extent to which mass immigration is creating ethnic enclaves in suburbs and towns across Canada.
In 1981, Canada had 6 neighborhoods with ethnic enclaves, defined as locations where more than 30% of the population is a visible minority. In 2012, there were 260. The number of ethnic enclaves is no doubt considerably higher now. Unlike American racial ghettos, which are the partial result of historic zoning rules and economic deprivation, Canada’s enclaves are the result of the preference of most non-European immigrants to live among their own ethnic group.
Inhabitants of ethnic enclaves are rarely exposed to Canadian customs, culture and norms, and are seldom required to speak English (or French) in shops, malls or residential neighborhoods. The hyper-connective technologies of the modern world enable immigrants to maintain close connections to their homelands by reading foreign news outlets, listening to podcasts in Mandarin, Urdu or Punjabi, and messaging other immigrants on WhatsApp groups.
Within enclaves, immigrants are able to recreate the way of life of their homeland. In Burnaby’s Central Park, for instance, Chinese parents hold matchmaking meetings to find suitable marriage partners for their single offspring. Or take Brampton, Canada’s ninth most populous city, where over half of the population are first-generation immigrants, and 81% of residents are non-white. Brampton resident Noreen Ahmed-Ullah, in a piece for the Globe and Mail, describes staff at Canadian Tire automatically speaking to her in Punjabi, competing displays of fireworks on Diwali, and a plethora of Indian grocery stores. Ahmed-Ullah confesses: “Sometimes, I wonder if I live in India or Canada”.
The predictable result of this refusal of assimilation is the formation of various community groups and associations, based around culture and religion. Increasingly, these groups have been exerting considerable political pressure. Due to the concentration of immigrant communities in key ridings in the Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver Areas, politicians of all stripes have been ramping up efforts to cater to their demands.
In the latest instance, Conservative leader Poilievre, in a letter to Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra, demanded that the Open Skies Agreement between Canada and India be renegotiated to correct a “major oversight”: the lack of direct flights between Canada and the State of Punjab. He promised that a Poilievre government would “secure a carve out to the agreement to include direct flights between at least one airport in Canada and an airport in the state of Punjab in India, so as to ensure greater convenience for our citizens and residents while strengthening trade, tourism, and cultural ties between Punjab and Canadian cities”.
In this interview with a Sikh YouTuber, the matter is discussed further:
Canada must deal with the reality that, for immigrants in the modern era, there is no Old Country which the older generations remember fondly while the younger generations meld into the Canadian identity. Today’s immigrants to Canada settle in ethnic enclaves which are effectively colonies, while continuing to identify with, and retain the culture of, their homelands.
Despite quibbling on debates such as the carbon tax or firearm regulation, there is no indication that Poilievre disagrees with the most fundamental of issues: Trudeau’s transformation of the country into a “post-national state with no core identity”.
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