Increasing number of Canadians are drawn to the once-maligned American concept of the “melting pot” some polls show while most Canadians stood up for multiculturalism in a recent major survey
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While some Western leaders are withdrawing support for multiculturalism — and some polls show less enthusiasm in Canada than in the past for celebrating the country’s mosaic — Prime Minister Mark Carney remains steadfast in his support for the model.
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“Canada is a mosaic, not a melting pot — a distinction that matters. A mosaic doesn’t dissolve its pieces. Each is stitched to each, all holding all. The beauty is in the arrangement, not the blending,” the prime minister told an audience in Ireland from where his ancestors came.
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“There are now four and a half million Canadians of Irish descent,” he said during his official visit to Ireland in June. “And it is a community — like Canada’s other diasporas — that draws inspiration from its homeland.”
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Through such passionate tributes to Canada’s mosaic, Carney is going much further than most national leaders in defending multiculturalism, and particularly the mosaic concept, which rose to prominence in Canada in the 1980s.
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In the four decades since, veteran Canadian pollster Reginald Bibby has found fewer Canadians believe the country should be a “mosaic” in which people are loyal to Canada but keep the customs of their previous countries.
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Fifty-six per cent of Canadians supported the mosaic model in 1985, compared to 44 per cent last year.
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An increasing proportion of Canadians are now drawn to what Bibby refers to in his new book, The Canadian Transformation, as the “frequently maligned” American model of the “melting pot.”
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When Bibby asked Canadians in 1985 if they favour the U.S. melting-pot model, in which newcomers “give up their cultural difference,” only 28 per cent agreed. By 2025, support for the American concept had grown to 42 per cent.
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Last year, B.C. pollster Mario Canseco discovered 44 per cent of Canadians support the melting-pot concept, “where immigrants assimilate and blend into Canadian society.” That compared to 40 per cent who back the mosaic model, “where cultural differences within Canadian society are valuable and preserved.”
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It’s illustrative to compare Carney’s approach to what other Western politicians have been saying this summer.
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In August, Europe’s only two female national leaders — Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, both of whom reject multiculturalism — issued a joint statement in which they “vowed to protect European values.”
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While most European leaders, and Republicans in the U.S., have long expressed skepticism about multiculturalism, in June, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, of the Labor Party, was one of the relatively few who declared “multiculturalism is who we are.”
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Albanese’s stand has become a key issue in Australia, separating him from Sen. Pauline Hanson. Her party, One Nation, which is now roughly equal with Labor in the polls, has called multiculturalism an “utterly failed policy.”
