Sir, we can always do a better job under any circumstances. That's not the issue I'm concerned about.
Until this policy of multiculturalism was introduced, we were a liberal democracy. We are still trying to be a liberal democracy. We have created a situation...and again the Europeans are not confronting it, but we have created a situation here. The implicit premise of multiculturalism is the fundamental philosophical issue we are dealing with. The fundamental premise of multiculturalism is collective identity, because it says all cultures are equal, which is a flatly untrue statement. All cultures are not equal. You cannot equate liberal democracy.
Liberal democracy is not a colour issue, by the way. I think that's where people get confused. Liberal democracy is a fundamental issue premised on individual rights. Historically, a liberal democratic system has best dealt with the vaguest contradictions in bringing about a good society.
We can deal with all the problems that arise by eliminating the argument that we have imported into our own makeup as a society that all cultures are equal. That leads to all sorts of consequences.
That's why I said history is a paradox. We can consider any situation and it is the unintended consequences that flow. I would remind you, and I have written about this extensively, that our late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, during his last visit to these hallowed halls, expressed regrets when he was asked a direct question about his thoughts on multiculturalism as the father of official multiculturalism.
These are footnotes that you can go through.
The paradoxical result has been that we have been stripping away the fundamental rights that exist in a liberal democracy. No right is more fundamental than the right of free speech. We have contorted things and created all sorts of problems. We're going to make even more problems as the numbers grow, because our political institution tries to adapt to those numbers. We try to accommodate those numbers and we are then held to those numbers. That's the nature of politics. It is nothing new that we are inventing, especially in democratic politics.
It's all about numbers. The numbers are going to lead to things evolving in a certain way. We are already seeing the signs of that evolution taking place.
The problem with the Islamic world has been the global challenge that came at the beginning of the 21st century with 9/11. It's not going to phase out so quickly. It's a historical challenge, just as the challenge of communism was throughout the 20th century.
When you raise the question about expenditures, maintenance, health care, and so on, we will need those resources. We will need those moneys. We will need to keep our economy going.
I come back to the fundamental nature of our society. There is that paradoxical relationship between where we are in terms of a multicultural society and a free and open country with the levels of immigration, the numbers. Within a generation the two things will lead to circumstances that I'm inviting you, because we send you here to represent us, to look at. This is not a hypothetical matter. This is a matter of being able to clearly forecast where we are headed. We are headed toward dangerous problems. Europe is already showing us where we are headed.