#236: Dr. Salim Mansur: Multiculturalism or Identity Crisis?

I sit down with Dr. Salim Mansur, professor emeritus and political scientist, to explore the untold story behind Canada’s multiculturalism policy. Dr. Mansur pulls back the curtain on the political, philosophical, and constitutional roots of multiculturalism in Canada—revealing how a once well-intentioned idea may now be weakening liberal democracy and national cohesion. From the War Measures Act to the Emergencies Act, and from Pierre Trudeau’s grand vision to Justin Trudeau’s declaration that Canada has “no core identity,” this conversation unpacks the real consequences of prioritizing group identity over individual liberty.

Transcript

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (00:01.23)
Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the Open Minds podcast. Folks, I am truly honored to have with me Dr. Salim Mansour, Canadian political scientist, columnist, professor emeritus at University of Western Ontario. He's the author of Islam's predicament, perspectives of a dissident Muslim, and a book that I am truly enjoying, Delectable Lie, a liberal repudiation of multiculturalism.

I first came across Professor Mansour in a long form interview, which I'll link below, talking specifically about multiculturalism. But I was struck by Professor Mansour's clarity and conviction about multiculturalism as a policy. And we're going to get into it because I don't think enough Canadians have heard this perspective enough. And to be honest, as a student of this,

It surprises me that our discourse isn't more multifaceted and layered. Instead, there's a narrative and we all have to accept it. But Professor, I'm glad to have you on. Welcome. Thank you for your work on multiculturalism. I want to begin first with what are some preconceived notions of multiculturalism as a policy here in Canada that you find are not particularly truthful?

Salim Mansur (00:59.703)
different.

Thanks.

Salim Mansur (01:26.188)
Well, first of all, thank you, Christopher, for inviting me. It's such a pleasure to be with you too. The topic of multiculturalism is large once you start unraveling it and looking at it, but it is also very recent if you think about it in terms of historical time, you know. The story begins

in Canada, in that sense, Canada is the laboratory of this concept, multiculturalism, where it germinated in Canada, it was propagated in Canada, and it was turned into a policy instrument in Canada, and subsequently by statute, Statute on Multiculturalism in 1988 by Brian Mulroney's government.

Progressive Conservative government. And then prior to Brian Mulroney's statute of 1988, in the Charter of Rights and Freedom, which is now the package of the Canadian Constitution in 1867 and 1982, Section 27 makes multiculturalism a constitutional argument or article. So it is now

officially embedded in our Constitution. Now in other countries, say United States or Germany or France, I don't think it is constitutional. It might be statutory, but in America it is not even statutory. It is simply the idea. It is an ideology, so to speak, in the public domain.

that gathers its advocates and its opposition. But the opposition has become very weak or had become very weak. And the question is whether this opposition has any leg to stand on given the way the Western liberal democracies, Canada is a liberal democracy or was supposed to be a liberal democracy, you know, has transformed itself. So it's a new concept.

Salim Mansur (03:47.314)
Its origin is in the late 1960s or in the context and we have to go back historically to the context in the context of the 1960s and in the mid 1960s with the Prime Minister Lester Pearson coming forth with his BNB commission that is the commission bilingualism by culturalism that was established and that led to Canada becoming officially

once it was adopted in 1969 by the Parliament, Canada officially became a bilingual and bicultural country. So that is our definition of a country in terms of its principles. And it is in that context, in the decade of the 1960s and early 70s, that the idea

of bilingual and bicultural identity of Canada gave birth to the idea of multiculturalism because when the commissioners appointed by the parliament under Prime Minister Pearson, I think it was a 10-man commission or 10 men and women, 10 individual commission that went across the country.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (04:52.238)
Right.

Salim Mansur (05:10.431)
to hear from the people and to discuss this matter. It was a royal commission and then to report back to the parliament which led to then the establishment of the idea of bilingualism and biculturalism. By the way, it was also Canada's centenary year, you know, so we're going back to a very significant date. I mean, all of this was in preparation of 1967, the centenary year. So when the commission went to the West,

Western provinces, there was grievances and opposition. The reason being Canada was being established or in terms of constitutional arrangement that Canada is funded by two nations, that is English and French.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (05:46.542)
Mm-hmm.

Salim Mansur (06:06.389)
This concept of English and French nation goes all the way back to the Durham report, Lord Durham's report of 1838. And in that report is the famous line that Canada is a country where he found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state. This is the colonies, you know, at that time, 1830s Canada was British North America.

which is we are still British, not America, but at that time, you know, there was no dominion. So that's the concept to founding nation. Well, in Western Canada, they ran into the so to speak pushback, if you might say Christopher, that people said, you know, we are neither French nor English, but we are Canadians, we're immigrants. Most of them that

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (06:58.286)
All

Salim Mansur (07:02.517)
presented their argument to the Royal Commission was that, you know, we are Europeans, are Germans, we are Italians, and a whole lot of people that had come into Canada between the two World Wars were Eastern European, you know, and Jews and Mennonites and so on and so forth. So they were Europeans, you know.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (07:19.043)
Right.

Salim Mansur (07:30.954)
Nobody was talking about the First Nation at that time, nobody in the sense in the parameters and the framework of the BNB. And that pushback or those issues that were raised did create some tensions and opened up an avenue of discussion in the parliament.

of how to reflect the diversity of Canada within the concept of the BNB framework. Well, one other thing is about Canada, Christopher, is that we are overshadowed by the presence of the United States. United States is 10, 15 times larger than Canada in terms of population. is a superpower, was a superpower. If you go back to the...

period immediately after the Second World War, 1945. And the size and the economy and everything else simply overshadowed us. The Canadian state or the Canadian dominion that came into being in 1867. And that's another story, very important story, you know, in terms of our constitution.

Salim Mansur (08:54.571)
The sentiment in the discussion, the agreement, consensus that emerged that we have to be distant from the United States and so we will not be the melting pot of the United States, like the United States, you know. We are a diverse country in terms of people coming from different parts of the world. At that time in the period immediately after the Second World War and the 60s leading up to the centenary

Canada was very much a European society, predominantly English and then French. And so to accommodate the observation that was made, Canada will be, instead of a melting pot, will be a mosaic. And if you go back and read the literature of that time, mosaic became a very popular concept. Canada is a Canadian mosaic. Books were written like potter, vertical mosaic, and so on and so forth.

So Canada is a mosaic and a nice, what do call, a salad bowl, you know, with each aspects of the salad that has not been melted and cooked into one thing. But the irony here is I cannot help but put it right on the table, is the great seal of America.

And its statement in the Great Seal of America is, puribus unum. In other words, know, for many one. You know, so the Great Seal of America and the American Constitution, if you get the time to discuss that, is about diverse population united under the American concept of both the Declaration of 1776

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (10:24.846)
right.

Salim Mansur (10:45.035)
and subsequently the Constitution of the United States. However, we are now talking about Canada in the second half of the 20th century and these debates are coming together. And the agreement was that Canada will be a BNB, bilingual and biculturalism, but it will stake the position of multiculturalism that we are a very diverse country, know, ethnically.

And that was a proposition that came into being following the adoption of the BNB commission in 1969 under Pierre Trudeau. Prime Minister Pierson had stepped down, Pierre Trudeau had stepped in. And then in 1971, Pierre Trudeau introduced the policy of multiculturalism in the parliament.

And that was again, almost unanimously, there was no opposition, no political party at that time, progressive conservative, new Democrats, and the Social Credit Party dissented from that position. So it was accepted. And so that is, in a nutshell, the historical context within which it came about in terms of the internal discussion that was shaped.

to the lead up to the centenary year and that Canada needed an overall of its identity that is a national identity. so that's what we came BNB we are in that sense bilingual and bicultural in the main proposition and then subsequently the question of adjust adjusting. But here there was another thing that was happening and that is again the backstory and the pressures coming

coming through in this discussion and in the politics of Canada. And that is the story of the rapid changes that had been taking place in Canada after World War II. Canada was becoming urbanized, Canada was becoming industrialized, they were moving from an agricultural-based economy to a more industrial economy. Canada had a presence in the world after the Second World War because it was a

Salim Mansur (13:09.927)
a major player in the sense that we contributed above our capacity in terms of proportionality to the other allied powers, primarily United States and of course the mother country Britain. What is now subsequently called, but at that time also it was being called the Quiet Revolution and the heart of the Quiet Revolution was in Quebec and Quebec was going through a rapid

change with all of those factors but at the core of that rapid change in Quebec was the term of their own French identity, cultural and linguistic that ultimately erupted in the October crisis of 1970. So what Lord Durham had identified in his report

more than a century ago, a century and a half ago in the 1830s of two nations warring in the bosom of Canada that erupted in 1970, it led to the War Measures Act and so on and so forth. And that is the continuing drama in its various different episodes that have subsequently broke out. So we have to keep in mind these various things that are happening and within which the concept of multiculturalism

was advanced. And as we go further into the discussion Christopher, my point is that these matters were had not been clearly thought through. And thinking through a matter is not simply the euphoria around a concept that sounds good, that sounds beautiful, it's become like motherhood and apple pie and anyone who then questions it

is marginalized, if not smeared and destroyed. It didn't happen. What happened was people were making demands of being included, given that the framework had been settled in terms of bilingualism and biculturalism, because the third leg of the chain that was taking place following what was happening in the United States and in Europe was the open immigration.

Salim Mansur (15:33.398)
that was coming to Canada's immigration policy, just as in America's immigration policy in the first half of the 20th century, that is before World War II, was a closed immigration policy, people only coming in from European background, it was not open. In United States, that open immigration policy, the Hart-Seller Agreement came together.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (15:33.71)
Yeah.

Salim Mansur (16:00.648)
after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1965, which opened America and it was also the height of the Cold War. It opened America, the Congress under Lyndon Johnson and the great, great society to immigration from the non-European country. We basically need the global South, you know, people of your background, my background, et cetera, you know, I am from South Asia, you know.

I suppose you are also from South Asia in that larger context, but I don't know. But South Asia, know, the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and all of this. And this was at the height of the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis had just ended. the matter of immigration was that countries like United States, the leader of the Western Alliance with Canada, Britain, all...

did not want to be stigmatized in this debate between the left and the right, and free world, that here is the evidence that you are a bigoted society, you cannot accept people from the rest of the world. That would be the talking point and the challenge from the left that is from the communist country.

So all of that is taking place, you It is not one singular item that is happening. So Canada is rapidly changing demographically. Well, we are now talking almost 60 years afterward. So now when we look at and think about it, I wrote my book, I was thinking about this thing when I was in graduate school. I had come to Canada in the 1970s, soon after the October crisis, you know.

and I ran into, I mean as a new Canadian, a new immigrant, ran into the debate around the election of 1972 which happened after the War Measures Act was imposed by Pierre Trudeau in 1970. I myself was an immigrant, young person just out of my teenage years.

Salim Mansur (18:14.699)
affected by the war in South Asia, India, Pakistan war and the genocide which people have forgotten about it in former East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. So I was in eastern part of India, know, and I lived through that, basically survived. Many of my members of my family lost life, were refugees, lots of friends and so on and so forth. So in the grad, I was thinking about this concept

and this whole thing as a new Canadian and it took me time to pull it all together and my critical fundamental criticism that I then is put forward in the book Delectable Lie and the very word I chose delectable is like a candy it is very sweet and nice it is delectable delicious and we indulge in it you know but it is a lie in the sense a candy

too much sugar has negative effects on a person. so that's it. Multiculturalism sounds wonderful, inclusive and so on. But from the point of view of political philosophy and political theory and the implication, multiculturalism in a liberal democracy was shifting gear away from a society and its fundamental laws that is in both United States, Canada, etc.

and we're talking about Canada, that its fundamental premise is freedom, is liberty. Our major party is called a liberal party. Liberty based upon individual rights, that's the critical concept, that's the natural law concept. Moving away from the premise of freedom based upon individual right to

The alternative, the flip side of it is that it is emphasis on group identity, collective identity. So that the heart of the problem and everything flows from that is the subordination of the individual. And by individual in political philosophy, political theory, it is about the generic man.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (20:21.934)
Mm.

Salim Mansur (20:38.431)
the generic individual. It is not about a white man, a brown man, black man, yellow man. It is natural that, you know, man created by the creator and endowed as the American declaration endowed by certain unalienable rights among which are the rights of life, liberty and happiness. So this is the individual and the ultimate minority in any society is the individual.

And a good society by definition, therefore, is a society that protects the minority. And who is the minority? Ultimately, it is the individual.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (21:19.564)
Professor, this is incredible. I absolutely love your history lesson and where we've come as a nation policy wise, the biculturalism to the multi. I wanted to pick up on something you've mentioned repeatedly that might take a lot of people by surprise. I love that you mentioned the seal of the United States from many one. And when you hear that, you think, OK, you come from

countries, but you ultimately assimilate to the American way of life. With multiculturalism, one might assume that there's this strong sense of protecting your rights as an individual, but you instead argue this is actually a toxic solvent for weakening liberal democracy, which many may not fully understand. So I'd love to know from you.

How is multiculturalism weakening liberal democracy? Because on the surface, seems like it would be the biggest proponent of a liberal democracy.

Salim Mansur (22:26.763)
Okay, very good question Christopher. And this is the entire debate. so as I, in my opening remarks, know, we've become pretty long, so I apologize, know. These were never taught through and those are not discussed today because to discuss today would become, it would start unraveling a very poorly conceived and conceptualized issue, you know.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (22:38.902)
No, this is great. I love it.

Salim Mansur (22:57.163)
Ultimately politics and in the heart of politics is the question of who are we? know, in a society, who are we? And so what is our identity? And so on, you know. So the thing is not about simply the individual, but what is it that the individual brings together?

We're not simply atoms floating around. We're also a culture. And there is that fundamentally it cannot be separated. As most philosophers would put it, the we precedes the I. Until we are entering the situation now from adults Huxley's brave new world, we've had people walking around born off a petri dish.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (23:28.931)
Yes.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (23:43.277)
Hmm.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (23:54.286)
.

Salim Mansur (23:54.386)
then the question is who is the we of the guy born from a petri dish? Well, you'll see we means the laboratory from where I'm coming instead of the parents from where I'm coming, right? Or whoever has been the donor of the egg and whoever has been the donor of the sperm. So the we precedes the I. But if the we binds the I in which the I is denied, then what happens?

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (23:57.592)
But.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (24:05.198)
.

Salim Mansur (24:24.383)
There is no growth of the I, it is a totalitarian society. The totalitarian we in which the I is simply, you know, a cog in that wheel of the we. There's no independence. There is no freedom. So these are paradoxical relationships. This is fundamental. It's like in a DNA, the double helix, there's certain things fundamental. You cannot separate them. When we separate them, we kill them. You know?

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (24:35.64)
Mmm.

Salim Mansur (24:52.523)
In a society there is the individual and there is the collective. And the question then becomes, what is the balance between the individual and the collective? And how do you preserve and protect the interests of both, the individual and the collective? And what does the individual want and what does the collective want?

The individual want to be a free person. mean, there's the oldest debate that goes on between free person and an unfree person, you know. And it is only in the context of modern history. The glimmers of individual have been there all the time. You know, the great religions of the world is the story about the individual's relationship

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (25:24.98)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Salim Mansur (25:44.618)
with the cosmology, with the creator. You know, Buddha, Lord Buddha or Siddhartha, whose name was, he was born a prince. He would become the king of the kingdom following his father. But Buddha had, at a certain point in his life as a young man, certain questions that made him walk away from everything.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (25:54.958)
Mm-hmm.

Salim Mansur (26:12.383)
That is, as an individual who walked away in search of who am I, what is the biggest issue of life and death and afterlife before life. And he arrived at a state of wisdom that is called Buddha, Bodhi, wisdom. And he was known as Buddha. His real name was Siddhartha, his given name. So Buddha presentation.

or Muhammad's presentation, or Moses' presentation, or Jesus' presentation in terms of man's relationship with the cosmos, with the Creator, with the life before and after, is about the individual. The salvation is not about the collective. The man has to account the reckoning that takes place in all these things.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (26:58.925)
Yeah.

Salim Mansur (27:07.103)
Buddha saying, know, if we want to end our continuum of our life cycle of births and rebirths, you know, we have to do something with our ego so that we don't catch the karmas, you know, and we get liberated, the nirvana as the individual. He's not talking about the group getting liberated because that was the break from the caste system.

The caste system is the we, the collectivity, the class system, the caste system is the we, the chosen people system is the we, there is no individual. The relationship is between the individual and the creator. That is, in modern history and in modern time comes out of, in the European context, comes out of the Enlightenment philosophy.

The founding fathers of the American Revolution were all students of the great philosophers beginning with Newton. Newton was not simply a physicist, he was a philosopher. Beginning with Newton and Galileo and others, know, the great enlightenment that takes place. It is about the liberation of the individual. That there cannot be a society unless the individual is free, you know. Before that, is

Every society has a foundational principle on which power is based. So what was there before 1776? Because that is a significant date in the history of the Western civilization and hence forward in the history of world. Not only the West, because there is a universal aspect to it. We're talking about the generic man. We're not talking about a white man or a native man and so on and so forth.

Salim Mansur (28:55.846)
1776 demolishes the argument about the rule of hereditary monarchs. Monarchs. In monarchy, there is no individual rights. know, that was the great, I mean, if you read the Declaration of Independence authored by Jefferson and signed by all the founding fathers, you know, he identifies the desperate. Who is the desperate? George III.

So he gives a face to the despot, the tyrant. And no tyrant has any legitimacy to rule over people. That's the great revolution. You read Thomas Paine, you read people like that. Thomas Paine is possibly the greatest articulator of the American Revolution in terms of fundamental principles. He was an Englishman. So there is the individual. But then there is a collective.

Thomas Jefferson was not born of a virgin somebody. He was not an immaculate conception. So there is the we. That is the collective. And the collective is struggling for, within itself, equality. Equal access to the resources, equal access to the dispensation of what is produced, to consume, and so on and so forth.

I'm talking in the abstract, right? We can get into the granular of whatever it is that you want to get into. So the concept of freedom is individual. can be no freedom if it is not individual freedom. In the first articulation of freedom, might say, know, the decolonization, it becomes a free society. You know, India became free in independence in 1947.

But what does that freedom mean if India remains a caste society? That struggle is still carrying on. It is not over. You see? So that fundamental notion of freedom is attached to the concept of a free individual. But then there are all the other issues, you know? And that is attached to the concept of equality.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (30:51.79)
That's right.

Salim Mansur (31:10.507)
So what is the framework of the rights of man as expressed in the French Revolution that happened a decade after, a little over a decade after the American Revolution, 1789? It's the same pulsating philosophy, that is the Enlightenment philosophy that is running through the writings of people like Rousseau and Voltaire and all of these people. Even Thomas Paine was in France.

So there you see it. Freedom or liberty, equality, fraternity. Freedom, equality and brotherhood. So there are these three concepts and it is at play. Multiculturalism comes in and emphasizes collective identity, group identity because culture means group. Individual is born into a culture.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (32:05.036)
Mm-hmm.

Salim Mansur (32:08.907)
not outside a culture. You take a fish out of water, the fish dies. You take a man out of his culture, he will die in the metaphorical sense unless he transforms himself. So we shift. A liberal democracy at its foundation is about liberty, that is freedom. And freedom in the abstract and in reality, in concrete sense, is nothing if it doesn't mean

a free individual and that free individual has the right that has not been given to him by anybody. It is endowed by him by the Creator to think, to believe, to go about. But there are limitations and those limitations are understood among free individuals. As John Stuart Mill said in his classic book on liberty, my freedom stops at the point of your nose.

You know? So, each of us are free, but it is not... We free doesn't mean to exercise our freedom to take away your freedom. And so that's where the social contract comes in. That's what the Constitution is all about.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (33:23.693)
So.

Professor, this is incredible. I haven't even made it through my first page of questions with you, but I love the religious, spiritual connection you've made. And I think about in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita, know, Krishna is speaking to Arjuna. He's not speaking to the collective. He's speaking to Arjuna. And the goal in the Bhagavad Gita is for us to see ourselves in Arjuna.

Salim Mansur (33:42.208)
this.

That's right.

Salim Mansur (33:49.227)
Okay.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (33:53.906)
and the struggle, the anxiety, the stress, even the depression, he goes through chapter by verse by verse and listening to Krishna. So very interesting that the roots of liberal democracy, the individual's rights are found in these sacred texts and even in the Upanishads as well with Yama and Nachiketa talking in the Katha Upanishad. But Professor, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you. Some would say that

Salim Mansur (34:00.139)
Yes.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (34:19.832)
Christopher, you know, I can come to Toronto, I can practice my culture here in Toronto without government interference and still have individual rights and freedoms assessed to me. Perhaps some are less clear of the collective rights that multiculturalism affords them that say a melting pot in the United States does not afford Americans. Professor, what would you say to critics of that?

Salim Mansur (34:48.447)
Well, what I would say to them that, you have the rights. is denying that right. But the question comes to is what sort of society we are, that is, what sort of country we are. In the case of the American Constitution, the American Constitution disestablishes state religion. There is no state religion. But all religion.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (34:59.566)
right

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (35:13.667)
Right.

Salim Mansur (35:17.707)
All faiths are treated as the basis of an individual's belief. It's not a collective belief, you know, it's an individual belief. So if I am a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu, what is it, the Parsi, Zoroastrian, etc. etc. And the whole dimension of the sex

in Christianity. mean, remember the Pilgrim Fathers, the first generation, the Mayflower people and same thing in Canada, the early generation, the whites from Europe coming after Columbus or had arrived before Columbus. I mean, this is a different debate, but the people, you know what I mean, 14th, 15th century, they were running away from the religious wars of Europe.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (35:48.151)
Hmm.

Salim Mansur (36:07.999)
The reformation and counter-reformation wars spread over almost three centuries. So they were running away from the warfare, from the bigotry, from all of the problems, so that they can live and be free to follow their fate the way they want to follow it. So there it is. So the Constitution, the American Constitution, didn't say that you're bound to follow

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (36:13.134)
Mm-hmm.

Salim Mansur (36:38.067)
a state religion that we're going to define it for you. What it says is in the American Bill of Rights, that is the first ten amendment, know, nobody can abridge your right to your freedom of belief, your freedom of association, your freedom to think, freedom to write, freedom to do what you want in terms of what you believe in. That is life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

So there is no problem. The question is, what is Canada as a multicultural society? What is Canada's identity as a multicultural society? So until this thing was passed, multicultural in 1971, in the context of the little bit of history that I went through with you, Canada emerges and now it is constitutional at least. So Canada is a multicultural country. So if you then get back to this history,

We're no longer in 1970, we are in 2025. So we're looking at this 60 year period. Canada is a multicultural country, is diversity, ethnic diversity. And when asked what is multiculturalism, how do you say it is multiculturalism? He says all cultures are equal and have to be respected equally.

So as I point out, know, what is the standard of equality? On what standard is all cultures equal? A culture, people coming from a culture or born in a culture that has the best expression and practice. It's not simply, know, Soviet Union was the freest society in the world, but it has its gulags. There was no dissidents. Right?

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (38:06.616)
Yeah.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (38:29.582)
All right.

Salim Mansur (38:30.859)
So constitutionally it was the freest society. India is constitutionally independent and so on and so forth. But 75 years after India's independence, caste violence and communal violence continues. It's not over. Canada is one of the basic base of the problems of India, that is the Khalistani Sikhs. We don't want to talk about it. Same thing happened in Sri Lanka with the Tamils and the Singhalese.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (38:56.771)
Yeah.

Salim Mansur (39:01.245)
It's not simply the Middle East, is everywhere that you turn and look around it. So there are problems. Cultures are historical phenomena. It is born, it grows, it develops, it reforms itself.

It gets fragmented. Germany was one of the most enlightened of enlightened European countries. The country of Hegel and Mozart and Beethoven ended up being a country of Hitler and the Nazis and the Waffen SS. Right? So there's evolution, devolution and so on and so forth, you know. So come back to Canada. What was Canada's proud identity? A liberal democracy. That's what it was. That's what they claim.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (39:33.774)
Mm-hmm.

Salim Mansur (39:48.78)
You know, I came to Canada, came to a liberal democratic country. And Pierre-Eliott Trudeau is the first prime minister who articulated this policy, you know, almost 60 years ago now. And then what does his son say who becomes a prime minister? Our identity is a liberal democracy.

and his son says our identity, Canada has no core identity. We are a hollow shell. So between these two, who are we? What are we? You see? So we've gone through, we've gone through all sorts of issues, positive and negative. And it seems to me, as these things have happened, the latest iteration of the problems with the COVID,

and within which there was a freedom convoy and so on and so forth and the reflection of it all was that you know individuals cannot stand up and protest. There are no, you know what the the parliament says that is the government says that is all there is to it. There's you know we have a charter of right, lot of young Canadians you know that is people who are 50 and younger they all grew under good

came of age under Charter of Rights, so I called them Charter of Canadian. They really believed that they had a Charter of Right in terms of freedom, equality, and so on and so forth. Suddenly they wake up and see there is no Charter of Rights.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (41:23.217)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Salim Mansur (41:25.291)
So we have bound ourselves in a way that if you don't agree with what has been laid down by the parliament then you are going to be ostracized, you're going to be marginalized.

You know, and it all goes back to again, it is not talked about. It all goes back to the beginning. Everything happens with a good intent. So I'm not questioning the intent. is the question of unintended consequences. Goes back to B and B, bilingual and biculturalism. In 1969, it was adopted officially. This is our country, you know.

that is now written into the Constitution. 1970, one year later, Canada was in an October crisis and the Canadian federal government was imposing martial law, War Measures Act, by Pierre-Eliot Trudeau. His son, 40 plus years later, imposed the same thing but the name had been changed into Emergency Act. But it is the same principle.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (42:38.638)
Yeah.

Salim Mansur (42:40.875)
We are tied down, we cannot discuss this and again because of a lack of time, know we are, the time situation is here and what we are talking, this is a vast subject, know. Where we have come to that by buying multiculturalism as the identity of Canada or no identity because you know this is what has happened, you know, because

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (42:53.411)
Yes.

Salim Mansur (43:08.861)
as you say, as somebody in Toronto, Toronto is Canada's largest and most important city in some sense it was and continues to be. But more than half the population of Toronto is now foreign-born, right? So each segment has a claim.

And when it has a claim that it seems is rightful, then that segment is in conflict with another segment that says, you know, this is not what we are and we're not going to accept it. We have brought into a situation of continual wangles and conflict. We're going to be generating conflict endlessly. And that's what we have been doing.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (43:41.049)
Professor.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (43:53.902)
Professor, you raise such important points because part of the reason I wanted to reach out to you too is here in Toronto, with the influx of Indian international students doing Uber food deliveries, things like that, it is causing real social cohesion tensions. I can't tell you how many people message me, comment on my stuff saying you need to talk about this. A lot of Canadians want all of them sent back. They're not adopting Canadian

cultural values and norms, and it is causing real issues. as much as I reach out to researchers, many just do not want to talk about it because it's very un-Canadian to say this actually we went too far a little bit and now we need to kind of, it goes to everything you've said, Professor, we don't know who we are as a country, but we know this is not it either. Professor, I absolutely love your sub stack. I encourage everyone to read it.

I wanted to ask you about institutions in Canada. Institutions and how powerful institutions are, our government institutions, the Emergencies Act. It's unlike the United States. It seems like overnight government can, with majority in the House, rule things that reduce all of our civil liberties. So my question to you, Professor, is how do we in a constitutional monarchy

Salim Mansur (44:56.491)
What Institute?

Salim Mansur (45:02.776)
Yes.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (45:22.584)
hold our government to account when there's nebulous lack of transparent decision making that prevents yourself or myself questioning the government when it's not in a handset document, it's not in a government publication, it's behind the doors, closed to the public.

Salim Mansur (45:45.591)
Well, I believe you're opening a Pandora's box, you know, but very quickly, if I may, and then you might want to come back and go into elaborate discussion upon this, but very quickly I'll say I'm holding the Canadian Constitution in my hand. So I'm reading to you, this is the Constitution Act 1867. It used to be called the British North America Act 1867, but in 1982,

terminology was changed but the articles are all the same. So in the opening preamble, the very opening, the very opening sentence of the Constitution Act 1867 reads, you know, an act for the Union of Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the government thereof and for the purposes connected therewith, whereas the provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have expressed the desire

to be federally united into one dominion under the crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom. whereas such a union would be conducive to the welfare of the provinces,

and promote the interests of the British Empire. Nothing has changed. This is not discussed. It is not the problem of the immigrants, whether they came before 1867 or they came after 1867 or after 1945. The politicians are scapegoating immigrants.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (47:24.258)
Hmm.

Salim Mansur (47:39.552)
They, that is the Parliament of Canada and the politicians and the Prime Minister, they cannot take responsibility on their own shoulder because to take responsibility on their own shoulder would be an admission that Canada is a vassal state. It is not an independent sovereign state. That's number one. So now, historically, if you want to understand this, I've already read it to you. This is Canada's constitution.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (47:57.518)
Hmm.

Salim Mansur (48:07.909)
Its parliamentary supremacy is based upon the mother country that is Britain. Britain called itself a democracy, but it had an empire. There was no democracy in 400 million Indians. There was no democracy in Sri Lanka. There was no democracy in Nigeria. There was no democracy anywhere in the British Empire. It was a police state. It was an empire that exploited the colonies.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (48:21.133)
Yeah.

Salim Mansur (48:38.367)
you know, with war and destruction. It did some good because I'm speaking in English and I dream in English. But when it comes to the reality of history, from South Africa through India to wherever you look, the Caribbean, Jamaica was the hub of slave trade in North America.

So, can you say that Britain was a democracy? Britain was a democracy for its own people, that is the Britishers. When the Japanese ship Komagata Haru was hired or taken leased by, you know, Indians, the Sikhs, in 1914 before World War I, because of the troubles in India, and they tried to come as

you know, part of the British Empire to another segment of the British Empire, that is Canada in Vancouver. The ship was quarantined and the ships in back.

Salim Mansur (49:43.86)
So we are living in a charade, in a facade, and we cannot speak about this. The power to be will not speak about this. And anybody who speakers about this will be deplatformed. We are all walking on eggshells. We are not walking in a multicultural society where everyone is equal. That is only a facade.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (49:58.168)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Salim Mansur (50:12.553)
So individual right, mean, whatever is the problem and America has gone off the rails, you know. I'm going back to the founding principle. In the founding principle, I that founding principle is adhered to in law and enforced by the Supreme Court because America is, again, institution, checks and balance, each of the institutions in America.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (50:12.589)
Wow.

Salim Mansur (50:39.583)
Congress with its two houses, the president of the chief executive and the judiciary at the Supreme Court each have a role to maintain and protect the Constitution. You cannot do that. The president might want to deport people as he's trying to do, but he has to go through the Supreme Court. But in Canada, there is none of that.

The Supreme Court is appointed by the parliament, ultimately is appointed by one man because we still haven't got a woman as a prime minister as we did in Sri Lanka with Bandhanika, in India with Indira Gandhi. We had spoken one woman, Kim Campbell, just to hold on to the ship as it was going down like a Titanic.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (51:30.092)
Yeah.

Salim Mansur (51:34.367)
The history of Canada, like the history of any society or any individual, anything, that in this case Canada is not understood by the Canadians themselves. Seven, eight, nine generations. They don't know their own history. Just like the Americans don't know their own history.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (51:52.686)
Yeah. Professor, we are coming up on time and I feel like we're just scratching the surface. And I would be remiss if I didn't invite you back for our part two. But I wanted to end our conversation, Professor. In your work, you also talk about the political undertones to the multiculturalism policy. Again, it's not a constitutional amendment at all. It's a policy. It's a federal policy. And I mean,

You're not the first many argue it was a political play to secure votes. And there are many writings to this day that go liberal and many first generation immigrants from the seventies and eighties citing the liberals as the only party to welcome immigrants into Canada. So I'd like to end our conversation talking about that political play by Trudeau that many may just not know about.

Salim Mansur (52:49.371)
Well, now looking back if I had the time or interest or energy, which honestly I don't have, you know, there are other issues that are occupying my mind, we can connect the dots. And what began with Trudeau as an experiment, as a first laboratory,

can now 60 years looking back or coming into 60 years looking back and connecting the dots became a policy of dissolving Canada's identity, which is what Justin Trudeau said. We have no core identity. And what was that identity? Canada is a Christian country. know, Christianity has been in Canada all around, you know. So it was a deliberate policy, I would say.

you know, my subsequent leaderships, you know, that it was a hollowing out of Canada as a Christian society. When I came to Canada, Sunday was a large day. Everything was closed on Sunday, you know, shopping, school, everything. And that's quite right. Other cultures have other, you know, days of break, you know, but the large day went, you know, so.

There it is. It was a beginning. We are a country where, and we are the only G7 country where an infant in the safest place on earth, that is the mother's womb, can be taken out and discarded. We have no abortion, free abortion. There is no law.

You know, the only G7 country, you So a country that engages in the sort of abortion that we are engaged in, at least in theory, that is infanticide, what sort of value do we have? So we have gone from, you know, abortion laws that has been thrown out by the Supreme Court, you know, way back with the Morgan-Thaller case, and nobody in the parliament has brought

Salim Mansur (55:05.235)
any discussion, they will not bring any discussion. That's not only politically incorrect, you you seem to be an oxymoron, know, completely a crazy person if you talk about this. We have gone from there to euthanasia and we're going from euthanasia to eliminating people, population replacement, depopulation, nobody wants to talk about this. We are the only country doing that. Now we're not the only country, there are other collective western countries doing that, you know.

The idea that marriage is a marriage between a man and woman has been taken away. There is nothing left You know same-sex marriage we've gone from at least in the United States Donald Trump comes and says, you know, there's only only two Thing male and female you've done away with that So multiculturalism was the seed of dissolving whatever it was a traditional Canada

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (55:53.176)
generated.

Salim Mansur (56:02.077)
And so everybody is confused.

Christopherbalkaran@gmail.com (56:05.107)
Professor, I just wrapped up a series on medical assistance in dying and the numbers are stark and I encourage everyone to check out what Canada is doing because it's unlike any other nation in the world when it comes to euthanasia and you're bang on. So I feel like there's multiple parts we need to unpack more, Professor. But this conversation just gave me goosebumps. mean, you've outlined

clearly the challenges Canada has and the challenges we as a nation face as nation builders moving forward into the next few decades. Professor, again, can't thank you enough. I'm going to link your sub stack below and where people can find you. I feel like your research is so timely and I can't thank you enough for doing the hard work for us aspiring to keep having these tough conversations.

because it's your work that I look to to keep me energized and to keep me going. So again, thank you for being such a great inspiration for me.

Salim Mansur (57:11.413)
Thank you very much, Christopher. Thank you.