A week before winter is meant to begin, the streets of Toronto are covered with snow. For the locals, good weather is when the temperature hovers in low single digits instead of plunging into negatives; wind chill factors of -10 and below are so common that weathermen announce them without apology. Storms routinely leave behind half a foot of snow and cover the roads with hazardous ice. Yet thousands of West Indians, many of them Guyanese, have chosen to make their homes there, willing to brave the weather in return for Canada’s much-vaunted healthcare and schools, enticed by hopes of a better life in a country that is generally law-abiding and decent.
In many ways Canada has become the thinking person’s America, offering a comparable standard of living sans the belligerent foreign policy and acute social problems like gun violence and racism. Of course, as with every general impression there are important exceptions. Although it is a model of military restraint besides its southern neighbour, Canada does have a significant troop presence in Afghanistan. When stationed in Kabul, the soldiers were relatively safe, but now that they have moved into frontline areas, the increase in battlefield deaths has unsettled a country used to avoiding conflict. Within Canada, whatever the statistics say, gun crime appears to be rising – on Boxing Day last year a 15-year old girl was killed in the crossfire of a gang shooting in downtown Toronto. (Even so, there are only about 1,000 fatal shootings each year, compared with almost 30, 000 in the US) Also like everywhere else, Canada faces a growing drug trade (police seized more than 2000 kilograms of cocaine in 2004). These are problems that every developed country faces, and Canada’s responses have been fairly effective. Much less straightforward are the possible long term consequences of the country’s ongoing experiment with a points-based immigration policy.
Every five years more than a million people emigrate to Canada, a large number of them highly-skilled workers who are leaving the developing world. This makes for a remarkably cosmopolitan environment (one in five Toronto residents is foreign-born), but it has also begun to raise difficult social issues. Last week, a Pakistani-born cab driver living in Mississauga allegedly killed his teenage daughter because she refused to wear traditional clothing. Comments in the national media have been extremely restrained by British and American standards, but they will not remain so indefinitely. Of course, immigration has never been simply a matter of importing foreigners; it cannot help but raise vexed political questions. (Earlier this year, for example, Ottawa’s Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty won re-election largely through out-manoeuvering his Conservative rival on the issue of government funding for faith-based schools – McGuinty argued that Canadians ought to be exposed to all faiths as part of their education.) A wider political reckoning seems bound to happen in the not too distant future.
On the other side of the assimilation debate, there are stories like those of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen detained in 2002 by US officials who suspected that he was linked to al-Qaeda. After interrogating Arar, US agents arranged his ‘extraordinary rendition’, in shackles, back to Syria, where he was brutally mistreated and tortured into making a false confession. A subsequent commission of inquiry in Canada cleared Arar of all charges but it also went much further. After scathing observations about the way Canadian police had insinuated Arar’s guilt, with no real evidence, the commission insisted on full public disclosure of its findings. This turned what was by any measure a fairly sordid affair into a minor victory for Canadian values. Arar was so moved by the public outcry that ensued that he has since spoken of “[rediscovering] Canada through its people, people who made me feel proud of being Canadian.” It is hard to imagine a similar response in the US.
There is much more to Canada than Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto, but this is where three out of every four new immigrants end up. Because many are skilled ‘economic migrants’ they often face very stiff competition in the local job market. Ironically, however, Canada’s recent economic success has created a serious shortfall in unskilled labour.. The Harper government has relaxed procedures for companies who wish to bring in temporary workers, but there is still much uncertainty about where the new approach is headed. Several countries which have used similar short-term fixes for their labour markets have had very mixed results. There is no reason to think that Canada will somehow dodge the complications that these programmes usually produce. Again, although temporary gains may be offset by future problems, Canada has taken a risk that its immigration gamble will pay off.
Overall then, Canada is far more complex than it might first appear. A recent spate of political memoirs has even shown that it is not above some good old-fashioned political bickering. Shortly after making the news for confessing that he became a heavy drinker after losing a battle for leadership of the Conservative party in 1976, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has also been accused of improperly accepting money from a German businessman shortly after he left office. A public inquiry has been ordered.
Why, then, do so many West Indians want to be part of all this? Out of many possible explanations, a single one may suffice. Less than a year ago, the son of two Portuguese immigrants decided to audition for the Canadian Idol television show. At the time, 25 year-old Brian Melo was a construction worker in Hamilton. He had tried out for the show in a previous season and failed, but his brother had pressed him to keep trying. On September 11, he won the competition. Since then he has become a rock star.
His debut album has gone to the top of the charts and his current hit seems to play round the clock on local radio stations. In three short months, Melo has become a perfect emblem of the Canadian dream. A casual glance at local television stations shows that he is not alone, the airwaves are filled with exotic names and faces. Collectively they paint the picture of a country with a bright, inclusive future, one that is fully engaged with the wider world. A place that – whatever its problems – is well worth a few months of snow and ice each year.