ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three significant ways that may help people to come to understand some of the contradictions within Canadian civil society that affect issues of citizenship, access to public services and resources as well as the ability to have a participatory, influential voice on matters concerning the civil Canadian public. The concept of Canadian civil society is established with the deserving European settler who is hard-working and likely to succeed and the Other/immigrant, who is historically underachieving, a later arrival and undeserving of the products of European progress. The second way notions of Canadian civil society are constituted are through the establishment of notions of the undesirable or the subaltern: those outside of the lines of social mobility. The third significant way Canadian civil society is produced is through the practice of projecting and promoting a public image of a fair, peaceful, respectful and accepting society based on how Canadian society and its government operates.
