When I was a boy growing up in Toronto, my parents and teachers taught me that Canada was a democracy* where the government was chosen by the people to represent the people's interests. If our elected officials didn't do a good job we could always throw the bums out and vote in a new bunch. I was also taught that Canadians had a God-given right to free speech. We could say pretty much anything we wanted and the government wouldn't stop us.
As an adult who still lives in Toronto, I don't see my country the same way I did as a child. To my adult eyes Canadian democracy often seems like a wornout facade that barely disguises the corrupt interests who really run things. As for freedom of speech, it's hard to believe we have any when Catholic bishops are hauled before human rights tribunals for criticizing the gay rights movement and when Protestant preachers are fined for suggesting Islam may have a dark side.
More than anything else it is the lack of meaningful debate about immigration that makes me wonder whether Canada really is a democracy. My country is being radically, and permanently, changed by non-white immigration; yet, this is happening without any significant public discussion. How can that be? If Canada is the free society our leaders say it is, how can such a profound change take place virtually without debate?
Our four main political parties – the Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDP and the overtly anti-Canadian Bloc Quebecois – all agree that mass immigration from non-European countries is a wonderful thing. The millions of Canadians like myself who disagree are essentially disenfranchised. Not one of the major political parties represents our interests. More than that, Canada's hate speech laws and Star Chamber-like human rights tribunals probably make it a crime to suggest that Canada should remain a white-majority society. (I say "probably" because one of the ugly features of human rights tribunals is their unpredictability. Who knows what's legal to say any more?)
On those few occasions when an intrepid Canadian ventures to suggest immigration policy should be changed, he almost always begins nervously with a demeaning ritual statement to the effect that, of course, his opinions have nothing to do with race. Having sacrificed his dignity to the insatiably ravenous gods of diversity and pseudo-tolerance, he then proceeds to ever so gingerly suggest tightening up the system in one way or another. After which, he is still called a racist.
As it happens, it's quite possible to make a strong case for restricting immigration without mentioning race, but why shouldn't Canadians talk about the racial dimension of immigration when their country's demographic transformation is likely to have the biggest impact on the future?
Why shouldn't the white parents of white children wonder how their descendants will fare in a society where whites are a minority? Why shouldn't white parents question how an ever-growing racial spoils system and an increasingly nasty identity politics will affect their children and grandchildren's chances for happiness? Why shouldn't a white middle-class parent worry that his child might die in the crossfire between two black gangbangers whose single-mothers and absentee fathers are immigrants from the Caribbean? (Yes, yes, some Caribbean immigrants are hardworking people who contribute to Canada, but that doesn't change the fact that Toronto has a black crime problem and a high rate of illegitimacy has something to do with it.)
People disagree about whether race is a biological reality or a social construct. Steve Sailor's writing has convinced me that racial differences are real, but let's assume for the sake of argument he's wrong. Even if race were only a social construct, it would still be a social reality. We don't live in a color-blind world. In real life, race matters and you have to be a privileged member of society to think otherwise. It's easy to discount the importance of race when you're rich and live in a lilly-white suburb. It's harder when thanks to immigration you suddenly find yourself a minority in your middle- or working-class neighborhood.
There's more to immigration than race, but any discussion of immigration that ignores the racial dimension is incomplete. A white-majority country can't become a white-minority country without serious consequences. If Canadians can't discuss those consequences without fear of official retribution, they don't live in a free society. In more ways than one, the future of Canada's immigration debate is the future of Canadian democracy itself.
*Technically Canada is a constitutional monarchy but Her Majesty lives far away and only visits occasionally.
