Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-53 today. This bill establishes the Department of Canadian Heritage and amends and repeals certain other acts. This bill also makes multiculturalism and the official languages the responsibility of the new department. That is the topic of my address today.
Let me start by repeating what we have already heard from this side of the House. The Reform Party supports the rights of citizens and private groups to preserve their cultural heritage but the Reform Party wants them to do so using their own funds. The Reform Party is opposed to using taxpayers' money to fund multiculturalism.
I am opposed to Bill C-53 because it entrenches multiculturalism, bilingualism and the financing of special interest groups. I have no problem with different ethnic or linguistic groups keeping their culture; I am all for it. As the trade critic for the Reform Party I believe this kind of diversity is one of Canada's strengths in this great country.
New immigrants and second and third generation Canadians help Canada display an outward looking approach to business and trade practices. They do so by maintaining linguistic, cultural and family ties with other countries. Besides speaking English and French, Canadians speak many aboriginal languages, German, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Arabic, and Norwegian, the language of my wife's ancestors.
That is great. I have no problems with this and I have no problem with different groups maintaining organizations to preserve their language and culture. I do not think that government should get involved in the process.
In my riding of Peace River there is a strong Sons of Norway organization which has been in place for 75 years and I have some colleagues who know quite a bit about that. How did it survive before multiculturalism? It did not need federal government grants to survive. It did it on its own initiative.
My riding has a strong French population in the Falher area which has been there since about 1912. These people kept their language alive on their own before there were any federal moneys available to them and they did so by their own hard work.
My riding has a German society and a Ukrainian group. All of these organizations were doing fine before the federal government started emptying its piggy bank.
My riding also has a Filipino association, an East Indian cultural society and a Scottish society. I suspect that all of these groups will survive very well on their own initiative and according to their own needs when we abandon this very divisive policy we have in place.
This whole multiculturalism process, and some would say not a process but rather a mess, started just over 20 years ago with the royal commission on bilingualism and biculturalism. Many witnesses appearing before the commission appeared because they wanted to protest the notion of two founding peoples and two nations. They were right.
We in the Reform Party also reject this notion. Canada is a very different country today than it was in 1867. Our new Canada would be a country of 10 equal provinces all with the same opportunities and rights, not one built on two founding peoples.
After all, a country built on two founding peoples in 1867 did not even recognize that the very first people here, the aboriginal people, certainly should have fit into that category. It was misguided from the very beginning. Before the English and French came to this country Indians and Eskimos were the first people here. We have seen several waves of immigration since.
We were all immigrants to this country at one time or another, but we do not need the federal government to promote our culture and languages. We can do it very well on our own.
At the time of the royal commission on bilingualism and biculturalism, roughly 44 per cent of the population could claim to be of British descent; 29 per cent could claim to be of French descent; another 27 came from other ethnic backgrounds, German, Italian, Ukrainian, Dutch, Polish, native Indian, Chinese, Jewish or East Indian.
People who sprang from stock other than English and French objected to the notion that these two were the most important groups in Canada. They made the point that Canada is a mosaic of people from many different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.
Prime Minister Trudeau announced the official multiculturalism policy in 1971. Many people felt it was meant to diffuse the concerns about official bilingualism in areas where there was absolutely no need for a second language.
Multiculturalism started with a budget of $3.5 million. The budget has since grown to $39 million. Of this almost $15 million is spent on community support; $5.5 million goes to heritage cultures; and $6.5 million goes to race relations. Many proponents of multiculturalism today point to race relations, the last item, as being a worthy area of funding. I would agree.
Racism is a problem in Canada today and there is a role for the federal government to play here. Racism is not a multicultural issue. Race relations is the domain of the human rights commissioner. It is so stated in the mandate of the Human Rights Commission.
The Canadian government should not pay people to be different. This leads to balkanization and divisiveness. Instead of dissolving racism, multicultural funding emphasizes and hardens it. Instead of diminishing separatist strategies, multicultural funding further creates and encourages people to be different.
I know it is not politically correct to state that I am against public funding for multiculturalism but a lot of people in Canada feel this way and they expect their representatives to express their views publicly. These people are not racists or bigots. They think that government has no role to play in funding special interest groups and I totally agree with them. Culture cannot be dictated or controlled by the state. Therefore, I am opposing Bill C-53 proposed here today.