» Canadian Culture Wars
Via Savage: our Canadian Immigration Minister, Conservative Jason Kenney, has had all references to gay rights removed from the study guide for new citizens.
In the end, however, Mr. Kenney’s view trumped that of the bureaucrats. The 63-page guide, released with fanfare last November, contains no mention of gay and lesbian rights.
They claim the guide was edited for length, not political content. If that’s the case, that removing two bullet points was necessary to avoid turning the guide into an encyclopedia of rights*, then surely editing out sections which are so politically contemporary betrays a shocking level of either bias or incompetence on the part of the editor, the Minister himself.
Liberal MP Marlene Jennings called Kenney’s actions “abhorrent.”
QFT — this edited guide is unacceptable and un-Canadian. Next time you vote, pick ABC — Anything But Conservative.
The deleted sections included one reference that said Canadian churches ran Indian residential schools, where aboriginal children were abused.
Shameful.
* An “Encyclopedia of Rights” sounds like a fantastic thing to give to new citizens, no? It’s almost as though the Conservatives don’t want immigrants to know the extent of their freedoms.
I’ve read most of the old guide and this new one, and this new one is a significant improvement. It’s more than just an overview of the main minerals mined in each province and how to vote, which is what the old one basically was.
I’m not disagreeing that it would be really bad if Kenney did single out sections about gay rights/equality to be removed for political reasons, and it’s quite plausible that he did that which I wouldn’t excuse.
I remember reading the section that mentions residential schools in the new guide, before this became a hullabaloo, and I thought it was a fairly brief and notably blunt section. I just looked it up again:
So the issue certainly isn’t whitewashed in the guide. It’s possible that the reference to churches was removed for some political reason or, given the short length given to everything else in the guide (residential schools get 5 lines in the book, the Battle of the Plains of Abraham gets 3), it seems plausible to me that it was really cut for length.
Were you saying that it was “shameful” that the reference to the role of churches in residential schools was cut, or because you assumed that there was no reference at all to residential schools in the guide because that’s what the Globe article strongly and misleadingly implied?
Don
4 Mar 10 at 5:13 pm
I meant the latter, but removing the reference to churches is bad too
You caught me out again Don: I didn’t read the actual document.
Jack
4 Mar 10 at 5:47 pm
We won’t stand for that sort of behaviour here in Ontario!
Don
5 Mar 10 at 8:16 am
[...] Jack and The Tyee have both criticized the latest edition of How to Be a Canadian by the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration. It made me think about the book A People’s History of the United States (which I haven’t read and don’t plan to because I don’t care about the US). It’s a history of oppression in the US that looks at major national events and oppressive episodes from the point of view of the least powerful. [...]
Where is My People’s History? « MentalPolyphonics
5 Mar 10 at 5:08 pm