In her column last week, Susan Delacourt observed a few events raising the question of whether multiculturalism has “hit a bump in the road” – whether our understanding of Canada’s diversity is changing in some fundamental way. One of the events she notes is an impending cabinet shuffle that’s rumoured to be reassigning Jason Kenney, who’s been Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism since 2008. Kenney is universally acknowledged to have had an immense, perhaps unparalleled, influence as a minister in this portfolio. If he’s on his way out of this role, it’s worth considering which “bumps in the road” have been deliberately introduced into the national discussion of multiculturalism on his watch.

One of the obvious changes Kenney has brought to his portfolio is a weakening of the government’s use of “multiculturalism” as a favoured term. Observers have thought that the move was in part a distancing by the Harper government from the Liberal legacy of a Trudeau-era term. But in a 2009 interview, Delacourt recounts, Kenney explained the shift on these grounds: “Multiculturalism says to a lot of people ‘kiosks at folk fests.’ We need a term that has a deeper meaning; that talks about the deeply different world views or belief systems that people have, and I thought pluralism perhaps speaks more to that.”

It’s possible to generalize Kenney’s words, as Delacourt does, as getting at a notion of diversity that’s less about visibly different newcomers and more about deep societal inclusiveness – more about “us” than “them.” Yet what his words actually say, however, is more specific: namely, the belief that his portfolio is about diversity that includes not just outward “folk” culture but “deeply different world views or belief systems” as well.

If you think about it, that’s not how we’re used to hearing Canadian diversity described by political leaders; it sounds more like the terrain of religion as opposed to national origin or ethnicity. And that’s no accident – because Kenney has brought religion to governmental attention in a way that no other Canadian minister has. He has arguably been the government’s most visible face on the Office of Religious Freedom. His Twitter feed constantly notes his meetings with ethnic religious groups from the mainstream to the minor and sectarian. His office issues almost daily statements commemorating the religious holidays of various groups.

At one level, Kenney’s engagement with religion makes conceptual sense. To many Canadians, religion is so intrinsically bound up with their cultural or ethnic identity that for government officially to acknowledge the latter without the former is incoherent. Bringing religion to governmental notice makes eminent sense at the political level too, since many of the ethnic communities whose votes Kenney famously courts are precisely those from developing parts of the world where religion – Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Christianity – is a vital force.

Although federal governments and multiculturalism ministers have always taken polite notice of religious holidays and posed for photos with religious leaders at election time, Kenney’s engagement with religion as part of his portfolio is of a wholly different nature. It used to be that the government’s official engagement with religion was chiefly as one of the grounds on which discrimination was forbidden. If a hate crime occurred, or a reasonable religious accommodation was denied, the multiculturalism minister took public notice. Quietly, Kenney has shifted the government toward taking notice of religion as a core component of Canadians’ identity.

That sociologists should commit sociology according to that principle is a pretty sound bet. That it’s a good direction for the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism to pursue is another matter altogether, and open to debate.

Suffice it to say that the road Kenney has taken his portfolio down with respect to the official acknowledgement of religion is one that raises expectations. An example of such expectations can be seen in a new working paper that examines the role of religious organizations in British Columbia as sponsors of refugees. Its author, University of Victoria religious studies professor Paul Bramadat, notes that neither officials at Citizenship and Immigration Canada nor the volunteers within refugee-sponsoring religious groups report that their interactions contain any discussion of these groups’ religious motivations for their work. Neither side appears to find that silence inappropriate – but Bramadat finds it both surprising and inappropriate. He urges that the government ought to be explicitly engaging with the religious framework of groups to whom it’s outsourcing the public commitment of refugee settlement.

Given the controversy and unclear gains such a move would produce, Kenney likely would not direct his officials to do any such thing. But the very fact that it might now be conceivable is an indication of the space that he has opened up toward thinking of Canada as a “post-secular” society in which religion is a core part of citizens’ identity. If reflection on Jason Kenney’s legacy at CIC is soon to be taking place, this is an important part of that legacy to bear in mind.

Natalie Brender is a freelance journalist. Her column appears on thestar.com every Monday.

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