Chapter 3: Roads to Success
Page 16 of 26
Having traced some obstacles and opportunities in an immigrant's journey, we now need to take stock of where communities and governments as well as individuals can make a difference to ensure integration success. A comprehensive turnkey strategy that will help all communities is difficult to envision since the realities of Canada's official language minority communities are so diverse.
Bilingual Moncton, for example, contributes its proud Acadian traditions to Canada's francophonie but now needs to reconcile these with the presence of new Francophones. Immigrant-rich Toronto has accumulated a long experience in mediating between old and new Francophones but faces the challenge of holding both of them together under a common roof. Outward-looking Winnipeg is the only city where Francophone immigrants live who have been actively recruited by the province's Francophone institutions while Vancouver's Francophone community is determined to create cohesion in a diverse community. These are but a few examples. Every official language minority community finds itself in special circumstances and will need to adapt solutions to its specific context. In Quebec, minority status is a matter of perspective as the Francophone majority is a minority within Canada itself and it is the Anglophone minority that has achieved a much higher level of immigrant richness than the Francophone majority population. Immigration can only make a positive contribution if it respects the specific linguistic context within each province.
