creating a Streisand effect
I chuckled. God forbid people actually get angry at real problems, no, no, let's all waste our mental energy on debating the ethics of allowing a musician nobody knows about to sing music nobody knows about. Deeply unserious country.
The utter disrespect is so incredibly blatant
I doubt that they even know what that bird is called or why it's important here. Obviously, we all know immigrants don't know a lot about Canada, but sometimes it can shock you in weird ways. I. used to work at a public-facing role and I'd speak to around 50-100 people through my shifts. About 50% of them would be immigrants that came to Canada within the last few years. When you're working with clients, you have to make small-talk and be social, so I'd always strike up conversations to make my shift go by quicker. These conversations could get strange, like:
- When a 24 year old international student, who had been in Canada for 3 years, was short 10 cents on his payment. I said "you're short a dime," and he did the head-bob and looked away. So I said again, "you're short a dime." He looks towards me and goes "what is dime?" He had been in the country for 3+ years and he never learned what the coins are called? I said "it's 10 cents," and then he pulled out some change from his pocket and asked me "which is?" So not only did he not know the names of coins, he didn't know what the coins looked like or their value either.
- A 30-something PR holder that had been in Canada for 5+ years and I were talking about the state of the education system in Ontario. He was complaining about how his kids were struggling in their French classes. I said something along the lines of "the French-language curriculum needs improvement," to which he got visibly annoyed and said something like "but why kids need learn French? Why Canada is teaching immigrant languages instead of English?" I asked him to clarify what he meant, and it turns out that he believed that the reason French is taught is because French immigrants were favoured by the Canadian government. He thought French immigration to Canada had started very recently and said it was unfair that there was French language classes but not Pujabi language classes.
Those two examples really stuck out to me because of how ignorant those men were. They had been living in Canada for years, and they still barely knew anything about Canada. I guess life in the ethnic-ghettos is insulated. They don't know jack shit about Canada before they come, besides maybe maple syrup and hockey, then they get to Canada and socialize with nobody except other immigrants from the same ethnic group, they refuse to learn anything about Canadian culture or society while in Canada, then after a few years of bumbling around they can apply for PR or citizenship. If someone doesn't even take the time to learn what the currency looks like, what are the chances that they'll ever integrate into society at large?
I recall a little controversy that happened in like 2009 or 2010 regarding the test they use to determine whether or not someone will become a citizen. The federal government has this book called "
Discover Canada" that immigrants are supposed to read through, and then they're given a test on the book's contents. If they pass, they get citizenship, if they fail, they have to try again. The controversy arose because a lot of people were failing the test because they didn't want to read the 60-page
Discover Canada book and didn't know shit about Canada either. Instead of just denying them their citizenship, or telling them to study harder, the government decided to simplify the test so that people can pass it with ease. The federal government simply removed the option to fail.