Canada, Citizenship Education and Multiculturalism in

The Deep Diversity of Canada

In many respects the range and depth of cultural diversity in Canada is not strikingly different from that of other Western democracies, and particularly other immigrant societies like the United States and Australia. However, Will Kymlicka, one of Canada's leading thinkers in the field, argues that Canada is unique in at least two respects: the fact that it includes three of the significant categories of diversity that have challenged policymakers around the world—national minorities, immigrant minorities, and indigenous minorities; and the degree to which Canada has developed constitutional and legal frameworks to ensure accommodation of diversity.

Canada has a long history in both of these areas. In terms of the former, French and British colonizers arrived in what is now Canada to find a rich array of Aboriginal Peoples with a wide range of cultures, languages, and systems of social organization and government. From the beginning, the Europeans tended to negotiate treaties with these groups rather than seeking to conquer them. This remains central to Canadian Aboriginals' sense of themselves as nations for, as they argue, treaties by their very nature are made between independent nations.

The Battle of Québec (also called the Battle of the Plains of Abraham) in 1759 helped bring an end to the global conflict between France and Britain known as the Seven Years' War and established Britain as the controlling colonial power in Canadian territory. Contrary to Lord Durham's intention outlined above, however, French Canadians were not subsequently assimilated into the growing English majority. In fact, the power-sharing arrangements between the federal and provincial governments established in the British North America Act (BNA Act) of 1867, which established Canada as a self-governing country, gave provinces control over key policy areas such as language and culture largely to ensure the flourishing of French language, culture, and legal structures in Québec and other provinces with significant Francophone minorities.

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