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“Yes, [barbaric] is a strong term. It is a judgmental term, but we do sometimes need to make judgments.” He continued, “I will be absolutely blunt. When I first came to government and started as minister of multiculturalism eight years ago, for political reasons I would have probably recoiled at the name of this bill. However, my enormous exposure to and close work with the huge diversity of our cultural and faith communities taught me something over the course of time. It taught me that the vast majority of new Canadians believe passionately that there are certain hallmarks of integration into this country that we must all respect, that there is a duty to integrate, and that there are certain practices that are rooted in custom or tradition that have no place in Canada….

“They said, ‘Please do not tolerate female genital mutilation, forced marriages or polygamy. Please stop this.’ … It was women who were victims of forced marriages, including here in Canada, who most strongly motivated the bill.”

In a telephone interview last month, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexander told me that the law “will affect significant numbers of sponsorships,” referring to the practice of Canadian women being forced into marriages for the purpose of enabling immigration by otherwise ineligible men from their countries of provenance. It will also, if prosecutors have the spine for it, put paid to the practice of Latter-Day Saints polygamy in B.C.