An unstated proposition of recent Canadian politics is that ethnic voters help the Liberals hold onto power as the country’s natural governing party.
In other words, as Canadian politics became increasingly regional, or fragmented, without any one political party being able to reach across the country and provide a common vision shared by most Canadians, ethnic voters in Ontario came to represent the difference between the Liberal party being in office or in opposition.
Most political observers recognize this unspoken reality, but will not address it directly for fear of being branded bigots. The situation is rapidly reaching a point where the country’s interests might be subverted because of the suffocating hold of political correctness.
Canada is a country of immigrants and, just as in Australia or the United States, a political party failing to reach out to new immigrants is bound to eventually become unrepresentative of the country’s changing political face.
Indeed, the continued vitality of any political party has been its capacity and willingness to reach out to new immigrants and, by drawing upon their optimism and energy, reinvigorate its own platform for the benefit of the country.
At the start of the Trudeau era, a shift began in the pattern of immigration into Canada. Earlier immigrants were predominantly, if not entirely, of European stock. Since the late ‘60s, immigrants from Asia, Africa, Central and South America gradually exceeded those coming from Europe.
The effect of this shift is visible in Canada’s urban centres. In this context, ethnic voters are primarily of non-European ancestry.
It was coincident with this shift that the Liberal party introduced multiculturalism policies as a means, among other policy requirements of the time, to foster a new sense of Canadian belonging in a country visualized as a mosaic of cultures.
However noble the idea of multiculturalism was, and remains, its politics was invariably bent to suit the electoral requirements of the Liberal party, which was losing ground in Western Canada and Quebec.
Moreover, the inherent paradox of multiculturalism is its loosening effect on national identity, of assisting the forces of fragmentation rather than binding a country already weakened by the politics of regionalism and separatism.
The politics of immigration and the psychology of immigrants are immensely complex and delicate.
What drives people to leave their native lands, the pull and push factors behind emigration, are often beyond the control of immigrants.
Most immigrants instinctively seek to embrace the values of their adopted homes. But when they learn there is minimal time and demand placed upon them to acquire knowledge of Canada’s history and traditions, the unintended effect of multiculturalism becomes an invitation for immigrants to make Canada a home of convenience.
For European immigrants, traditional Canadian values as an inherent part of western civilization are not entirely alien.
But this does not hold for many non-European immigrants, and when political parties readily encourage them to advance or secure their interests—as in appeasing Arab and Muslim immigrants on matters related to the Middle East, or ignoring security concerns such as Tamil activism on behalf of Sri Lankan Tamils fighting for statehood—then multiculturalism becomes a cover for politically pandering to demands placed by immigrant communities at the expense of the country’s larger interests and traditional relations.
Ethnic voters are now cultivated assiduously by giving undue weight to their concerns pertaining to politics in their native lands, or their ethnically-based demands here in Canada.
The recent federal announcement—timed to a looming election campaign—about relaxing immigration requirements for family unification, irrespective of merit, is an example of blatantly courting ethnic voters.
The anticipated election, when it comes, will test as never before this unstated rule of ethnic voters supporting predominantly that party most opportunistically exploitative of ethnic voters.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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