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But increasingly some immigrants appear not to share such conviction; instead, Canada serves simply as a country of convenience, offering better health care or higher-paying jobs or simply a place where the cops can’t kick down your front door at 2 a.m. because they don’t care for your particular brand of religion.

Of course, Canada is all of those things, but it is something much more.

True, it is a country that respects so many cultures and celebrates the countless heritages of its citizens. Heck, we even get a day off each August to mark such differences.

Celebrating the love of a certain food, dance, dress or music from the land where you or your parents were born is fine. Indeed, we all benefit from this smorgasbord of cultural influences.

But ancient hatreds from far away lands cannot and should not be welcomed or encouraged here. They should be left at those various global departure lounges.

Yet the current Liberal government revels in such pandering, with an endless cacophony about the joys of multiculturalism. Now, this is far different from appreciating Ukrainian dancing or daring to sample a vindaloo curry (or having the good taste to enjoy cricket.)

Because multiculturalism implies there’s really no Canadian culture at all, so feel free to fill your boots, so to speak, and import the very one you supposedly left behind. And with that come the old scars, hatreds and enmities.

This past weekend we had two demonstrations arising from such far away troubles. On Saturday cops were needed to separate opposing groups arguing about the current happenings in Hong Kong. Then, the next day, a hundred or so folk were out protesting the Indian government’s decision to strip Kashmir of autonomous rule.