Multiculturalism as Canadian Policy

Canada is often regarded (both inside and outside of the country) as a culturally diverse nation. Statistics abound about the number of countries from which people immigrant to Canada from.

Canada’s federal multiculturalism policy was adopted in 1971 by (then) Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, just after the opening of the National Arts Centre (Jedwab 2011). Canada was the first country to adopt a multiculturalism policy. It is the beginning of Canada being regarded as “diverse”. It occurred as a by-product of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963-1969) as a response to francophone nationalism in Quebec and the increase of cultural diversity across Canada (Jedwab 2011). In 1971 Trudeau introduced it as “a policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework” (Jedwab 2011, 2). The idea was brought to attention by John Murray Gibbon’s book Canadian Mosaic: The Making of a Northern Nation, and became a conversation about Canadian identity starting in the 1960s. The multiculturalism policy acknowledged that Canadians come from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, and that all cultures have intrinsic values.

This policy (later formalized an Act [1988]) effictively branded the nation as a mlticultural icon, but many question whether or not the country has lived up to its reputation.