ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Canada’s national identity has been shaped by three intertwined forms of ethno-cultural diversity: Anglophone/Francophone relations, Indigenous peoples, and polyethnic immigrant communities. From the 1960s, Québécois nationalism and broader anxieties about national unity prompted the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, which unintentionally opened space for recognizing multiculturalism. Pierre Trudeau’s 1971 multiculturalism policy reframed Canada as a multicultural nation within a bilingual framework, emphasizing individual choice and integration rather than collective rights. The chapter then traces the evolution of multiculturalism through the 1980s–2000s, showing how successive federal governments – Liberal and Conservative – used diversity to promote social justice, anti-racism, economic competitiveness and global market integration. Multiculturalism became central to Canada’s international branding as a tolerant, pluralistic society. Indigenous policy followed a different but related trajectory. Trudeau’s 1969 White Paper, applying the principles of voluntary cultural membership that underpinned multiculturalism, attempted to eliminate special Indigenous status, provoking strong resistance and generating new Indigenous demands for sovereignty and self-determination. Later constitutional and judicial developments recognized certain cultural rights but often constrained them through colonial legal frameworks. The ‘Canadian model’ reframes complex and unequal histories of diversity into a unifying national myth and a soft power tool of tolerance and successful pluralism.
