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The Precarious Resilience of Multiculturalism in Canada

ABSTRACT Compared to other Western democracies, there has been relatively stable support for multiculturalism in Canada since its adoption in 1971, both amongst the general public and amongst the three main political parties. Conservative opposition to multiculturalism has, therefore, typically taken the form of “stealth” reforms to undercut its progressive potential, not direct frontal attacks. During the 2015 election, however, the Conservative Party campaigned on an explicitly anti-multiculturalist platform. This provided a clear opportunity to test “Canadian exceptionalism” in relation to public support for multiculturalism. In this article, I explore the Conservatives’ strategy, and its impact on the election. The evidence suggests that a significant part of the Canadian electorate was responsive to an anti-multicultural—and more specifically anti-Muslim—discourse. However, when this discourse was pushed too far, voters recoiled from what was perceived as an excessive, and indeed “unCanadian,” politics of distrust and division. The article explores different ways of understanding this tipping point, and what it tells us about the precarious resilience of multiculturalism in Canada.