Jason Kenney’s new citizenship guide – are some Canadians today more equal than others?

Nov 14th, 2009 | By | Category: In Brief
Pontiac, War Chief of the Ottawa, who led the great Pontiac’s Rebellion (or, as some still say, the Conspiracy of Pontiac) in defence of Canada in 1763. After you read Jason Kenney’s new Canadian citizenship guide, you may feel it’s time for Pontiac to rise again!

Pontiac, War Chief of the Ottawa, who led the great Pontiac’s Rebellion (or, as some still say, the Conspiracy of Pontiac) in defence of Canada in 1763. After you read Jason Kenney’s new Canadian citizenship guide, you may feel it’s time for Pontiac to rise again!

Canada’s Conservative minority government has just introduced a new guide for prospective new Canadian citizens. The person responsible for this quite ideologically charged political document is Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. And our always controversial Citizen X thinks its essential subtext is that some Canadians really are more equal than others.

How else, Citizen X wonders, can you explain the new guide’s obsession with the alleged continuing importance of the historic British monarchy in Canada, in which a growing majority of the practically sovereign Canadian people no longer believes? Or the new guide’s rather odd definition of Canada’s “five distinct regions …  The Atlantic Provinces … Ontario and Quebec … The Prairie Provinces … The West Coast … The Northern Territories.”

(Ontario and Quebec are a single “distinct region”?  Together they account for almost two-thirds of the country’s population – even if the new guide just says “More than half.” And as anyone who has ever been to the two places knows, they are certainly more different from each other than any other two or three or four or more provinces. It would make more sense to put Ontario and Manitoba together. They at least have similar provincial flags!)

You may or may not entirely agree with everything Citizen X has to say. But some of it does make a lot of common sense. CLICK HERE for his full article, “The strange new Canadian citizenship guide: forcing the 19th century relic of the ‘constitutional monarchy’ down our throats.” Or see the Key Current Issues category to the right of this page.

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