1Canada’s multicultural policy has become part of the official discourse on national identity, and a central component of the country’s efforts to brand itself as an inclusive, tolerant nation. From within a liberal framework, multiculturalism can be seen as a policy that aims to ensure the harmonious social interaction of individuals of diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds living within the borders of the same state, by allowing them to express a feeling of belonging with regard to a second culture, and to construct their own unique hybrid identity. In this analysis, it is a policy for managing diversity - seen as enriching to society - and aiming to ensure social harmony. When analysed as social policy, it is hard to deny the policy’s claim to success, as has been shown convincingly by Keith Banting (2021). However, an analysis of the historical origins of the policy reaching back to the early 20^th century, and of how it is used today as part of a nation-branding strategy, both reveal that the economic motivations for the policy cannot be ignored. Notably, the policy has always been an integral component of an immigration policy whose primary objective is to find the human resources needed to facilitate capitalist economic development.

2The article will begin with a look at the history of immigration policy in Canada, and point out that immigration was encouraged due to its importance in the colonial political economy. It is in this context of economic development and colonisation that the concept of a cultural mosaic appeared; the concept was used by both the government and the private sector as a marketing tool to attract new immigrants, targeting those who seemed most able to contribute to colonial expansion. This historic analysis will reveal that the mosaic model of integration was designed as a means to facilitate the fundamental objective of economic development and capitalist accumulation. In 1971, the official policy of multiculturalism was implemented by Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal Party government. The policy certainly came out of the conclusions presented in the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, but the positive reception of the policy – all of the political parties represented in parliament supported the initiative (RASKA 2020) – was due to the fact that it was in continuity with the longstanding mosaic model tradition. While multiculturalism was seen in Québécois nationalist circles as a deliberate attempt to undermine their own sovereigntist project (BEAULIEU 2016; BOCK-COTE 2015, LEVESQUE 1979), in English Canada it was generally seen as recognition of the role of immigrant groups in building Canada, and promoted as a means to ensure national cohesion; it quickly took on a new role as a structuring element of the pan-Canadian nation-building project. However, regardless of the motivations for initiating the policy in 1971, multiculturalism is being used today as an argument to buttress Canadian immigration policy, and to respond to the needs of the Canadian economy at a time when Canadian companies are facing labour shortages, thus resembling the situation a century ago. A close reading of the Ministry of Immigration’s website, and of press releases from the Justin Trudeau governments, will show that multiculturalism today is being employed as part of a nation-branding strategy to boost exports, to promote tourism, and to attract immigrants, seen as human resources contributing to an expansive capitalist economy. Immigration in Canada has always been part of a government strategy whose raison d’être is to serve the needs of economic development. As such, the concept of the cultural mosaic, later renamed and given official status as multiculturalism, should be seen, not only as a policy designed to ensure social harmony in a country composed of people of diverse ethnic, religious and cultural origins, but also as a marketing strategy designed to attract the human resources required for capitalist economic development. The constant thus, throughout Canadian history, has been to adopt an inclusive model of social integration as an element in a national strategy structured around economic growth: by helping to first attract immigrants, and then to ensure their loyalty, multiculturalism ultimately responds to the needs of the labour market.

Immigration history: labour markets, economic development and competition for immigrants

4In each Province the Legislature may make laws in relation to agriculture in the Province, and to immigration into the Province; and it is hereby declared that the Parliament of Canada may from time to time make laws in relation to agriculture in all or any of the Provinces, and to immigration into all or any of the Provinces; and any law of the Legislature of a Province relative to agriculture or to immigration shall have effect in and for the Province as long and as far only as it is not repugnant to any Act of the Parliament of Canada (BRITISH NORTH AMERICA ACT 1867, 23)

6This imperative of attracting more immigrants – seen as manpower needed in a capitalist venture – trumped every other concern. This is illustrated in a letter sent by Sifton to Charles Fitzpatrick, Minister of Justice, on December 14^th, 1902:

I expressed the opinion to Sir Wilfred that almost the only two problems of government which we had to deal with of a serious character, after the revision of the tariff, was the immigration question, the question of securing a large addition to the agricultural population of the West, and the transportation question, the question of getting their products to market. I said then, and I have not since altered my opinion, that to place a large producing population upon the Western prairies and to inaugurate a system whereby the products of their labor should be brought to the seaboard through exclusively Canadian channels and shipped from Canadian ports, would of itself be enough glory for one government and would bring such prosperity to the dominion of Canada as to wholly transform the financial difficulties of the country. (DAFOE 1931, 148)

7In this letter, Sifton’s correlation between the labour of immigrants and national prosperity is limpid; what’s more we can clearly see the espousal of a whole strategy for economic growth that finds its origin in finding immigrants to develop what government marketing was presenting to potential homesteaders as “the last best West.” One poster produced at the time shows a row of carriages all heading to the Canadian West under the title “Thousands of U.S settlers moved to western Canada in 1902-03”, followed by the remark: “Where there is money to be made, you’ll find a Yankee.” (CANADIAN MUSEUM OF HISTORY 1903).

8The economic necessity to attract immigrants allowed politicians to progressively abandon the traditional policy of favouring British immigrants, and then to question whether or not it was really necessary to actively assimilate people of other origins into the dominant English culture; since they would inevitably be assimilated in the long run, in the short term a policy that allowed, or even encouraged, cultural retention could be useful in the international competition for immigrants. There were certainly voices raised expressing worries about the hordes of eastern Europeans who could never be assimilated to the British way of life. Historian Chris Kitzan notes for example that an Anglican clergyman, George Exton Lloyd, had contributed to efforts to establish an all-British settlement in what is now Saskatchewan in 1903, and that he “endlessly warned Canadians that the West’s British character was being undermined by a flood of immigrants from central and eastern Europe who could never be assimilated” (KITZAN 2007, 291). Clifford Sifton, the man who embodied the new immigration policy, was sensitive to the question of British hegemony and his Ministry was keen on maintaining immigration from the British Isles. Sifton even famously resigned his ministry in 1905 due to a dispute over minority education rights in the newly formed provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta; Sifton defended a single school system imposing English language instruction and was incensed that the decision had been made to allow confessional schools and French language teaching. How then can we manage to reconcile this apparent Jingoism with Sifton’s oft-repeated declaration that in looking for the immigrants to settle the West, “I think a stalwart peasant in a sheep skin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half dozen children is of good quality” (DAFOE 1931, 317)? The answer lies in Sifton’s overriding goal for economic expansion. Immigrants were needed as labour, and there was strong competition for attracting the most productive people. Indirectly the competition for immigrants and the priority placed on economic development was the motor for what was going to become an official multicultural policy in the following decades. That the land had been inhabited for millennia by indigenous peoples was not a concern for Sifton; these peoples had been conquered and their demise was seen as inevitable.

9What is particularly striking in Canadian immigration history is the role played by real estate speculators and especially the privately owned railway companies. In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries Canada was already using a developmental strategy that in contemporary language would be called a private-public joint venture. Specifically, the government was outsourcing its immigration policy to actors in the private sector. This meant allowing real estate companies to do the footwork in finding candidates for their land speculation. But the most important actors were the national railway companies. These private companies, managed as business ventures based on the profit motive, were cherished by government officials. In his history of the Canadian Pacific Railway, John Gibbon quotes a letter sent by Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald to CPR President George Stephen in 1882 in which Macdonald announces, “With five clear years ahead and a favorable Government at the head, the C.P.R. can go on its own way for its own interests, and in the long run its interests and those of the Dominion are identical” (GIBBON 1935, 230).

10The CPR was granted huge tracts of land in return for their investment in building the railway. Selling the land they had obtained was the obvious way to get a return on their investment. But surprisingly, the company’s strategy went much further than simply selling land to raise cash. The CPR instead devised a more complex business model in which immigrants were the motor in a circular economy that ensured multiple benefits to the private company. The company first raised capital from selling the land to farmers, and it then integrated them into the market economy, allowing the company to make a further profit by transporting the goods produced by these independent farmers. This business model was acknowledged publicly by CPR President, Sir Edward Beatty, who boasted that “by 1923 the railway had settled more than 100,000 prairie farms...Not only was the CPR able to generate Railway traffic, but also realized a profit of close to $84 million on prairie land sales between 1896 and 1914” (NEILSON 2011, 131).

11In this type of venture, in which the immigrants were the starting point for a whole economic cycle, what mattered most to the capitalist venture was to ensure the arrival of immigrants willing to first buy the land, and then to be integrated into a market economy. To attract the human resources on which economic development depended, the general atmosphere of competition – the motor of capitalist economic development – was recognized by Sifton at the outset, and he was ready to act:

Sifton recognized early on that simply putting up posters at shipping offices in Hamburg and Liverpool would not draw the numbers he required. So, in 1899 he established a network of recruiting agents in Europe under the auspices of a shadow corporation called the North Atlantic Trading Company. Shipping agents in European ports were paid to direct farm emigrants toward Canadian ports. This was a clandestine operation in part because the European countries targeted were all trying to stop the bleeding off of their population to new settlement societies like Canada, the United States, Argentina, and Australia (BELSHAW 2016, 225).

12The historian John Belshaw notes here how the competition for immigrants in the early 20^th century influenced Canadian policy. In fact, the capitalist motivation for profit trumped any misgivings about the ethnic origin of settlers that Sifton may have had. Settlers from eastern Europe were even seen as ideal due to their perceived adaptability to the climate and their knowledge of suitable farming techniques. The presence of multiple ethnic groups, thus, rather than being proof of a burgeoning and unique Canadian culture of tolerance, was in fact a feature of the capitalist mode of economic development. Soon this would morph into a new discourse dubbed the Canadian mosaic, in which the variety of ethnic origins began to be presented as a positive good. But the starting point for the policy was purely utilitarian. Belshaw notes how Sifton encouraged what was called “block settlement,” that is allocating land not just to individuals with entrepreneurial ambition, but to closely knit groups that could immediately form a community:

Sifton was likewise convinced that religious sects that had strong internal cohesion and familiarity with the kind of farming that would be conducted in the West were highly desirable. These included Mormons from the United States, Mennonites from Central and Eastern Europe, and pacifist Hutterites from Russia. Ethnicity, experience, and the likelihood of community success thus became key principles of the recruitment process. (BELSHAW 2016, 224)

13The quote reveals the government’s true motivation. Block settlement, though seen today perhaps by the supporters of multiculturalism as a visionary policy ensuring cultural retention, was in fact inspired by the objective of productivity. The desire for economic growth also explains the controversial acceptance of the Doukhobor immigrants to Saskatchewan upon their expulsion from Russia in 1898. Sifton is quoted by his biographer as arguing that “they were the best farmers in Russia” and that “they had brought prosperity to the barren localities in which they were originally settled” (DAFOE 1931, 143). The argument was clear: these people should be welcomed due to their capacity to profitably farm the land; all other considerations were secondary.

14It would be hard to deny that the policies of block settlement foreshadow the future mosaic model of integration. This is all the more the case when we observe that the metaphor of the “mosaic” was first used to describe a demographic reality, rather than to manage it. What’s more, it is fascinating to see that John Gibbon, the man who popularized the expression Canadian mosaic, in his book entitled Canadian Mosaic: The Making of a Northern Nation, published in 1938, was neither a politician, nor a government official, but in fact the head of the publicity and marketing department at CP Railway. In other words, the Canadian policy of the mosaic as a means to integrate immigrants was invented by a publicist, working for a private company that was hoping to accrue a profit from the new immigrants’ labour. In short, the needs of colonial expansion created the mosaic model of integration, not the opposite.

Multiculturalism for the Justin Trudeau governments: economic development and nation branding

15Much has changed in the world since the early 20^th century, but immigration policy in Canada has stayed true to course: still today immigration is structured to meet the needs of Canadian economic development. And in the same way as the mosaic model of integration can clearly be put in direct correlation with the government initiatives of the day to attract new immigrants, today’s policy of multiculturalism, too, can be seen as an integral part of a set of strategies adopted, first, to attract new immigrants, and then to ensure that these human resources remain productive elements in the capitalist economy. Another constant in Canadian immigration policy is the remarkable transparency of government officials: just as Clifford Sifton had regularly advanced in speeches and publications the idea that immigrants were a central component in his business model for Canadian colonisation and economic development, his contemporary counterpart, the present Minister of Immigration, Sean Fraser, sees no reason to dissimulate when correlating immigration and economic growth, declaring: “The 2023-2025 Immigration Levels Plan, tabled on November 1, 2022, sets out a path for increases to immigration targets to support Canada’s economic growth and address labour market shortages” (MINISTRY OF IMMIGRATION 2023).

16The Canadian Ministry of Immigration’s official website provides a crystal-clear illustration of how the Canadian government places immigration policy within the wider context of meeting the needs of capitalist expansion. The home page provides a series of links for those interested in immigrating to Canada: refugees, students, and new immigrants are all efficiently directed towards the information they seek, but one resource stands out, namely the “express entry” link on which people can choose to click in order to access “a faster way for skilled workers to settle in Canada” (MINISTRY OF IMMIGRATION 2023). More surprising, perhaps, is to find front and centre on the home page a special link for athletes. In today’s globalized world, international sporting events have become an important vehicle for the marketing of nation-states: the maple leaf on the red and white sweater of a sportsperson standing to attention while the national anthem plays, or a beaming athlete circling the Olympic stadium with a Canadian flag in tow after winning the gold medal, are valuable images to exploit to help sell the country, to enhance exports, and to attract new productive immigrants. As such, the Ministry has reserved a spot on its home page with a direct link to information of interest to world-class athletes who may want to immigrate and then subsequently represent Canada in international events (MINISTRY OF IMMIGRATION 2023).

17In the marketing of Canada as a desirable destination for immigrants, the policy of multiculturalism plays a key role. You need make only one click from the Ministry’s home page to open a set of articles lauding the positive contribution made by immigrant communities. One link proposes an article entitled “A Serbian immigrant and his enthusiastic group of volunteers gather unsold food for people in need in Coquitlam;” or you may also choose to read more about “A skating club in Charlottetown on the verge of closing is revived by the enthusiastic participation of the Chinese community” (MINISTRY OF IMMIGRATION 2023). The point here is certainly not to criticize these initiatives, and the short articles would not be out of place as feel-good stories published in a local newspaper. What merits our attention is that just one click away from the Immigration Ministry’s home page, we can already observe the government using multiculturalism as a marketing tool to attract new immigrants.

18The modern concept of nation branding is clearly at work in the government’s rhetoric as observed on both the Immigration Ministry’s website, and the websites of Crown Corporations whose mandate involves promoting Canada abroad. Nation branding is a term that has become commonplace to describe how countries try to market themselves and to fabricate an image, in the same way as private companies create brands for the sale of their products. As noted by Patricio Murphy, “the notion is associated with the existence of a ‘great global market’ where countries, cities and regions, compete with each other to attract the largest number of tourists, investors, consumers, students, events and so on” (MURPHY 2022). Canada plays the multicultural card as part of its branding strategy, with multiple benefits: not only can the portrayal of the country as inclusive, tolerant and welcoming increase the country’s exports, but it can also help to attract new immigrants. Export Development Canada, a Crown corporation whose official mandate is defined as “helping Canadian companies of all sizes succeed on the world stage” encourages Canadian business ventures to exploit a list of positive international perceptions of Canada, among which can be found multiculturalism (EXPORT DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION 2017). In a similar fashion, the Ministry of Agriculture has launched efforts to use what they call “the Canada brand” to stimulate exports (CANADIAN GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS 2011). Not surprisingly, the Crown Corporation Destination Canada, mandated to coordinate a national tourism strategy by “building alignment with public and private sectors, and marketing Canada nationally and abroad” (DESTINATION CANADA 2023) has also integrated multiculturalism into its development strategy. They write: “from our wide-open spaces, to welcoming visitors with open hearts, to open minds that embrace new ideas and perspectives, our openness permeates everything we do.” According to the Crown corporation, this “openness” – presented as the central feature of the Canadian brand – “fuels innovation” and “creates opportunities”. The site goes on to state:

We’re home to so many different cultures with so many different stories: from the Indigenous Peoples who have stewarded this land for millennia to the newcomers we welcome every day, Canada is home to countless backgrounds, cultures, identities, traditions and languages. Our collective spirit of openness and generosity inspires meaningful connections.

19The exploitation of multiculturalism as an element in a nation-branding strategy designed to stimulate exports and promote tourism is not surprising, as the policy creates a positive image and resonates with the national identity.

20A recent example illustrates the Canadian government’s strategy of linking immigration and economic growth, and of using multiculturalism as a rhetorical tool to increase the attractiveness of Canada as a destination for skilled workers. Canada recently launched a program in which they targeted immigrants having recently been accepted into the USA within the framework of a specific American program for high tech specialists. These newly arrived immigrants in the United States had been granted an American H1-B visa, a visa reserved for highly qualified applicants. Canadian officials wrote specifically to this group of desirable potential immigrants who had already left their homeland, and urged them to leave the United States and settle instead in Canada (BOUDJIKANIAN 2023). In this environment of international competition for skilled workers, multiculturalism is one of the key arguments used for luring high tech individuals away for the USA and towards Canada. This episode is interesting also as a means of illustrating some constants in Canadian immigration policy, for it is reminiscent of an episode from the early 20^th century in which, in a similar fashion, Canada targeted newly arrived immigrants to the USA and tried to lure them to Canada. While today’s example reveals the international competition for skilled workers in the high-tech sector, at the time Canada was looking for farmers willing to homestead in the Canadian West. Officials in Canada were well aware that the land to the north of Texas and west of Arkansas – an area that had been administered until then by the American federal government under the title “Indian Territory” – was going to be integrated into the United States as the new state of Oklahoma. The Canadian officials were also aware that a wave of settlers was rushing into Oklahoma in order to obtain cheap land, but that the land available would be insufficient to meet the demand. Under the orders of Clifford Sifton, the Canadian government dispatched a contingent of civil servants to Oklahoma with the mandate to find the disappointed settlers – that is those who had come to Oklahoma specifically in the search for farmland and had found none available – and convince them to head north to Canada where land was still readily available (DAFOE 1939, 140). Raiding the United States in the search for immigrants is thus an old tradition, and clearly reveals the economic motivation of Canadian immigration policy. And while in the early 20^th century the mosaic model was used to present Canada in a positive light, today, multiculturalism plays a key role in making the country appear more attractive.

Conclusion

21The term “mosaic” was coined in the first half of the 20^th century and soon became a great source of pride among Canadians eager to show that their model of integration of immigrants had turned its back on the American melting pot model to propose something new and uniquely Canadian. This concept evolved into the official government policy of multiculturalism in 1971; it has since become an important element in the contemporary project of nation-branding, playing a key role in presenting the image of a tolerant, peaceful and harmonious society in which new immigrants will easily be accepted. However, a careful examination of the historical roots of the official policy announced in 1971, and of contemporary government rhetoric, has revealed that multiculturalism should also be seen as part of a wider strategy of economic development and capitalist accumulation. On one level this may seem like stating the obvious: Canada has never claimed to be anything other than a member of the liberal capitalist bloc of nation-states; it has never denied having its origins in European settler colonialism; why then would its cherished multicultural policy not fit together logically with its history and its assumed ideology? However, sometimes it is important to state the obvious in order that it be made explicit, not in an effort to disparage multiculturalism as such, but to more accurately interpret the wide scope history of Canada. A candid study of Canadian history does not reveal a benevolent process of nation-building leading to what is presented today as a modern, inclusive, tolerant liberal democracy; instead, Canadian history reveals a country that has, since its origins, been a capitalist colonial venture for profit through the exploitation of people and nature. Liberals in the John Stuart Mill tradition would have us live under the illusion that capitalism is just an efficient system for creating wealth that remains subservient to the liberal regime, when in fact the opposite is true: capitalism shapes the contours of the liberal state. The policy of multiculturalism in Canada is a case in point. It was a policy that came about in the early 20^th century under the name of the Canadian mosaic model because it served the interests of capitalist expansion. It was adopted as an official policy in 1971 in line with the conclusions of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, and while it was heralded as a policy for managing diversity, and for recognizing the contribution immigrant communities had made, it also continued to serve a hidden role of attracting the immigrants needed as labour in an expansive economy. If Canada continued to encourage immigration in the Pierre Trudeau era, this was certainly not only because this corresponded to an enlightened policy of tolerance and international brotherhood, but also as a means to ensure continued economic growth. The present government of the second Trudeau has continued in this vein. Renewing with attitudes that were dominant a century ago, it has been openly using multiculturalism as a means to attract new immigrants, and on which to ground a nation-branding strategy seen as beneficial for Canadian competitiveness in the globalized world economy.

22Charles Sellers in his book Market Revolution, published in 2007, shows how American political history can be better understood when the development of the West is seen as being structured around the transformation of self-sufficient farmers into a set of small businessmen producing goods to be transported back to markets in the more densely populated eastern coast. Sellers, in a slightly different vein, in fact, echoes what had been written much earlier by the famous Canadian geographer, Harold Innis, when he theorized the staples model of economic development. In both cases, the authors were looking for a wide scope explanation for historic phenomena and found it in the mode of economic development. In this article, it has been shown that immigration in Canada, and the means of managing it through an innovative concept called multiculturalism, can only be fully understood in the context of the overriding objective of ensuring economic growth. This analysis puts into perspective the nationalist discourse in which Canada is presented as a model for the world, and vaunted as an exemplary nation built around an enlightened multicultural policy of brotherhood and tolerance. Canada instead is shown in another light, as a state grounded on colonial conquest and capitalist accumulation.