The EU and the Canadian mirror: citizenship, evolution and minorities (Deliverable 4.4)

This deliverable aims to analyse how Canada deals with diversity, internal minorities and immigration at legal and political levels. This exercise is intended to be a source of inspiration for EU policies in the field of diversity. The text is divided in six sections on history of the case study, minorities and diversity at legal and political levels, challenges and general policy recommendations. We draw our conclusions based on a systematic analysis of the recent bibliography and data on this topic.

Features such as diversity in immigration policies, internal minorities and majorities, multiple historical interpretations and constitutional debates on how to accommodate this diversity are common both in Canada and the EU. Moreover, the Canadian case, as we show, is probably among the most relevant examples of federalism and multiculturalism among the world. The main questions guiding the chapter are related to diversity managing. What are the origins of diversity in Canada? Why is history relevant for understanding diversity? How the federal structure shapes immigration policies? Which are the main demands among ethnic and cultural minorities?

In the last section, we point out aspects that coincide or could inspire the European Union institutions. Canada and the EU somehow reflect the Tocqueville’s paradox, while become more mixed and cosmopolitan, national and territorial identities become stronger and more relevant in politics. Both the origins of the EU and Canada and also their institutional structure differ. However, several aspects can be a mirror for European institutions. For example, the capacity of the Canadian federal model to accommodate multiple citizenship regimes, the development of a decentralized immigration policy and, most importantly, its multicultural approach while maintaining its internal diversity concerning the francophone minorities, the First Nations and immigration. These policies and constitutional arrangements are not absent of political tensions but we claim that could be a source of inspiration for the EU, a Canadian mirror.