Politics, pandering and the ethnic vote
Wed, September 10 2008
Poppycock.
As our politicians gear up for the 40th Canadian General Election scheduled to be held October 14, the crusade for Canada’s so-called ‘ethnic vote’ will see federal candidates in every riding from Papineau to Peace River in a pitched battle for the hearts and minds of our country’s immigrant communities.
But from where we sit, the pale-faced establishment in Ottawa has yet to truly comprehend the nuances of Canada’s multicultural mosaic.
Make no mistake, Asian Canadians could well swing this snap election, particularly in key riding showdowns in urban centres like Metro Vancouver, where a stroll down any city street will underscore Statistic Canada’s need to re-examine its antiquated term, ‘visible minority.’
Humour us if you will, and apologies Elizabeth May and Jack Layton, but let us presume this upcoming federal election is essentially a two-horse race for a majority government featuring Stephen Harper and his Conservatives, alongside Stephane Dion and his Liberals.
Both Harper and Dion are pushing their political brands on new Canadians. Both would do well to re-think their strategies.
Where the Liberals can be readily accused of regarding Canada’s ethnic communities with a sense of historic entitlement (the Grits, after all, cemented the word “multiculturalism” in the national psyche), the Tories have created an “ethnic outreach team” to help win votes from select ethnic and religious groups in a concerted effort to “replace the Liberals as the primary voice of new Canadians and ethnic minorities.”
To that end, Prime Minister Harper stood in a Chinese-Canadian family’s backyard in Richmond earlier this week, where he fielded questions from bemused reporters about the election call, gun control, and the ethnic vote.
Asked what message he was trying to send by hosting a press conference on the Wang family’s lawn, Harper assured Canadians that his new Chinese Canadian friends “face most of the same challenges and opportunities that every middle class Canadian family faces” and that “we want to make sure that our policies address their concerns as much as any other family in this country.”
Which was a different tact than Harper deployed much earlier in his courtship with the ethnic vote when he plucked shamelessly at old-school immigrant insecurities surrounding same-sex marriage, telling one Sikh gathering that the Liberals’ gay marriage bill is “a threat to any Canadian who supports multiculturalism.”
Both the Conservatives and the Liberals have teams of policy advisors instructing them in the arts of wooing the ethnic vote.
And yet both are equally held to task for courting ethnic voters as if they are all compliant members of monolithic voting blocks exercising their franchise in blinkered unison.
As the federal election approaches, look beyond the ethnic pandering and the political platitudes and ask yourself: “What will Canada’s next Prime Minister do for me, as a Canadian?”
Tell us what you think
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