Social cohesion in Canada

Canada is a diverse society of almost 34 million people. Its population is about half the size of Great Britain and France, the two nations whose colonization projects strongly shaped Canada’s development. For most of the country’s history, the original or Aboriginal peoples have been marginalized despite the many ways in which they contributed to the nation’s economic, social and political development. After the British took Quebec from France, formalized in 1763, the French Canadians relied upon natural increase in order to sustain their population, while Great Britain encouraged mass immigration from the British Isles to increase population, practices which ensured national duality. During the 20th century, Canada recruited more than 13 million immigrants, mostly people of European background, but immigrant recruitment over the past forty years has been increasingly diverse. Canada has become a multicultural society characterized by very diverse ethnic and cultural origins. The Canadian federation is a complex society whose components are provinces with a great autonomy, regions with different resources, a diverse population that include many ethnic groups, two official languages, and fifty-seven aboriginal nations with their own national identities.

The remarkable and continuous transformations of the Canadian population over the centuries has deeply marked its social cohesion and posed strong and varied challenges from one epoch to another. Canadian society is structured so its components – whether these are conceived as individuals, provinces, regions, aboriginal nations or ethnic groups – are weakly subject to a binding normative order; consequently, coordinating the components into an integrated whole is continuously challenging.¹ The challenges to Canada’s social cohesion are both unique and general. The unique challenges include issues such as national duality, the underdevelopment of aboriginal nations, and the uneven development of the different regions. More generally, Canada shares many of the same cohesion challenges found in other nations, including the effects of globalization on national economy, growing population diversity, expanding social differentiation, generational effects, and new socio-economic cleavages.

This essay will examine aspects of social cohesion that are both specific to Canada and those that are shared with other comparable societies.² The essay begins by considering some unique issues of Canadian society, specifically its multinational character (linguistic duality, Aboriginal peoples, high immigration) as well as its regional tensions. This is followed by the examination of inclusion/exclusion indicators, the social bonds, and democratic issues commonly referred to in the majority of the studies on social cohesion. Macrosociological issues – some specific to Canada, other common to other developed societies – will complete the analysis. The conclusion gives consideration to the idea that the relatively high level of social cohesion in Canada is related to the extensive level of cross-cutting ties.

1. Population Diversity and Social Cohesion

Population diversity has underwritten three specific factors affecting social cohesion in Canada. These factors are the marginalization of Aboriginal peoples, the difficult and lengthy process of recognizing French Canadians, and the integration of an increasingly-diverse immigrant population.

Aboriginal Peoples

The Canadian Constitution of 1982 and federal and provincial governmental instruments recognize four different categories of Aboriginal peoples: registered status Indians (registered in 605 “Indian bands”), non-status Indians (neither registered nor granted lands), Inuits (aboriginal peoples of the Arctic region), and Métis (of mixed European and aboriginal ancestry). Aboriginal peoples represent about 4% of the Canadian population. The majority continue to live on separate lands or “Indian reserves” that are governed under the provisions of the federal Indian Act. The majority of reserves constitute a “third world” inside the borders of the Canadian state. Among Aboriginal peoples, life expectancy is lower than that in the general population, and communities typically experience major economic, social and public health problems as well as highly-constrained versions of local self-government.

Despite these problems, there are positive developments. The legal and political recognition of Aboriginal peoples was entrenched in the 1982 Constitution Act. And, since that time, the social, economic and political grievances of Aboriginal peoples have been recognized as central to the national public agenda. This recognition is shown by such institutional forms as the...