In the past couple of weeks, we’ve had Canada Day and Multiculturalism Day.

If Canada is truly a multicultural country in the 21st century, why do we need both?

The question is perhaps a bit provocative, but it’s another way to get at the ongoing debate over whether multiculturalism in Canada is about “us” or “them.”

Do all citizens see themselves as multicultural, or is that just a term we use to describe people who don’t fit into the old idea of Canada as the (mostly white) English-French establishment or First Nations?

There were signs in the past week that multiculturalism has hit a bump in the road, 40-plus years since it became official government policy and three decades since it was enshrined in the Constitution.

The Canadian Press went through the numbers and found that the government has been spending consistently less than it has budgeted for multiculturalism — about $5 million less each year since 2007, in fact.

And although Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government originally forecast spending about $21 million for this year, the revised spending figure will be closer to $14 million.

That decline, coincidentally, roughly tracks back to when responsibility for the multiculturalism program moved from the Heritage department to the Immigration ministry.

That move was part of a big promotion for Jason Kenney after the 2008 election, when he vaulted from minister of state for multiculturalism to a full-fledged minister of Immigration — a reward for the ways in which he had recruited so-called ethnic communities to the Conservative cause.

Little notice, then, was paid in late 2008 to what seemed to be a bureaucratic shuffle of the multiculturalism program, from one department to another.

But was there some symbolism at work there, too? Heritage, after all, is the department that’s supposed to be all about “us” — paying attention to our history and arts and culture. Immigration, on the other hand, is largely about “them” — who gets into the country, who gets to stay and who has to go.

A few years ago, Kenney acknowledged that he was casting about for a way to make multiculturalism less about “them” and more about “us.” Documents obtained by the Star showed that his department was flirting with the word “pluralism” as a better word to describe Canada’s diversity.

“Multiculturalism says to a lot of people ‘kiosks at folk fests,’” Kenney said to me in an interview in late 2009. “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.”

But a poll conducted recently by the Association of Canadian Studies shows that Canadians may, in fact, have a larger, “us” type of view of multiculturalism.

The association’s executive director, Jack Jedwab, who has a book coming out this fall on the state of the multiculturalism debate in Canada, says his organization commissioned the poll to see what citizenship pact resonated most with the population.

Leger Marketing asked 1,500 people in June to choose which vision represented their “preferred image” of Canada.

Most — but not a majority — agreed that Canada “is a multicultural country with two official languages.” In all, 43 per cent of respondents took that view. Another 30 per cent, a not-inconsiderable figure, liked the idea of Canada as “a country of 34 million equal citizens.”

Only 17 per cent agreed that Canada “is a country of three nations: the Quebec nation, the English-Canadian nation and the First Nations.” And a paltry 10 per cent said Canada is a country of 10 equal provinces — sorry Senate reformers.

Jedwab, in an interview this week, sounded mainly optimistic about the state of multiculturalism in Canada, saying it is maturing as an idea within the country.

There has been a trend toward the importance of integration, he said, with governments spending more money on settlement programs for newcomers than on festivals or “kiosks,” as Kenney might say. The focus, in other words, is on finding ways in which multiple cultures can be the same, rather than in celebrating differences.

Jedwab also acknowledged, though, as many others have, that the heavy emphasis on security and terrorism has taken a toll on multiculturalism, with Muslims in particular feeling the limits of Canadian openness to diversity.

A cabinet shuffle is expected next week and Kenney’s name keeps surfacing as a minister in line for a job change.

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If that happens, multiculturalism could end up — for the first time in this government’s tenure — in someone else’s hands.

Regardless, the debate will continue over whether multiculturalism is the word we use to describe them (newcomers, largely) or us, as all citizens.

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