Maxime Bernier questions multi-culturalism

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Aug 2018

Progressivism and post-modernism have the habit of punching themselves in the face.  The attacks on Maxime Bernier is a case in point.

M. Bernier is what is known as a pure laine Quebecker.  That means he is a person from Quebec who is of French culture, whose first language is French, and who can trace his ancestry to 18^th century Quebec.  He belongs to precisely that kind of minority that is supposed to be protected by post-modernist progressivism from what it finds as the evil English culture.  And yet English-accultured progressives accuse him of being an ungrateful racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/Islamophobic deplorable for asking what the limits of multi-culturalism are.

Imagine making the same accusations against Jacques Parizeau.  Absurd!

Canada was once an officially bicultural country – French and English.  In the midst of the national unity crises from the 1960s to the 1990s, Pierre Trudeau introduced the notion of “multi-culturalism” as a means of diluting the strength of English culture in Canada and to reassure those of French culture that theirs remained safe inside the Canadian political context.

M. Bernier is an ornament of national unity.  When he asks about the limits of multi-culturalism, he is asking serious questions that go to the heart of what it means to be Canadian, and in particular French-Canadian.  Is one of the two founding cultures of Canada to be reduced to the status of being just another raisin in the raisin pudding?  Is French-Canadian culture itself going to be subject to an assault on its integrity and meaning?  Finally, what is Canadian about unassimilable cultures that exist in Canada?

Unlimited multi-culturalism raises serious questions of state, and M. Bernier is not the first to ask questions of this type.  (e.g. Is France still French if she is multi-cultural?)

He deserves respectful and thoughtful answers, not catcalls.

But catcalls are all progressivism has when it is questioned.

Canada’s national unity problem is only sleeping.  When a fellow like Maxime Bernier asks questions about the limits of multi-culturalism, English-accultured progressives better have good answers lest the slumbering problem awaken.

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