<shakes head>

Amazing, innit. They let them in because they vote Liberal except when they let them in because they vote Conservative.

Was there a speech or a policy statement during the nineties setting out this shift in policy, some moment we can point to as that when Canada went to the wogs?

Good question. I suppose it was John A. MacDonald's fault really. All those Chinese labourers he imported to do the railway thing. But of course that was before the British North America Act, so it doesn't count, maybe.

I forget which party he was in (SNP?) but the wogs couldn't vote anyway so he f***ed up.

90s? You'd have to go back a bit further.

Ontario used to have policies like the Placement Plan. Have relatives here who benefited from similar schemes - they were given loans and grants to come to Ontario due to labour shortages. You'd be hard pushed to find anything like that these days I'd imagine. By the 70s it was swinging the other direction...not surprising given the ideas of the man steering the ship.

When the Immigration Act 1976 established the family and relatives classes it certainly made it significantly more attractive to folks from what might be described as "poorer" countries.

In the early 70s Ontario was essentially a "european" province easily in the 90% range of european origin. Today it's a bit closer to 70%.

Given the population at the time and the population now, the raw numbers of "europeans" and "non-europeans" in Ontario actually match fairly evenly in recent decades but given the almost exclusively european origin province of the past this has had the affect on overall percentages noted above.

Ontario (or more accurately Toronto) of course is somewhat skewed as it's where most immigrants have come to for basically the entire history of Canada.

No, I said the Cons THINK they will vote for them.
Ever wonder why in the middle of the biggest recession since 1929, immigration continues to skyrocket ?

No one in Canada willing to fess up, but in the UK... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...r-adviser.html

make of it what you will.

Labour's second greatest abuse of power (after hoodwinking a gullible public to go to war with Iraq). However, it also begs the question about where were the opposition parties (Con LD) when this was happening, it was practically unquestioned and unremarked upon.

So the following is bollocks then?

"In the 90's, the Liberal government changed the focus of immigration, from white Europeans to minorities, based on the idea minorities vote Liberal."

You can't, in fact, substantiate the idea that the Liberal government thought people who weren't white would vote for them to any greater degree than anyone else. Neither can you demonstrate that the government specifically wanted "minorities".

It wasn't my claim but then I think modern Canada was created by the Trudeau government and that it would have been hell to live in the white Canada that existed before then. All that is good in Canada derives from immigration.

Good point about modern Canada. I don't see why it would have been hell though, no more so than living in pre-60's England.

In pre-60's England, my neighbours (apart from the costamongers) were Jews from various European countries, mainly Germany, France and Poland, Irish people and people from the West Indies, mainly nurses and bus drivers. Some of these people subsequently did well and were replaced by successive waves of immigrants, the current wave being, oddly, Chinese.

When we arrived in Toronto it was still Hogtown, a white town with religion reflected in the bizarre alcohol laws. We hated it. It's better now because it's more like my experience of England; a multicultural place even when I was a child.

So diversity good, homogeneity bad, it looks like. I am often amused at the inherent paradox that without homogeneity (in some places) diversity could not exist.

In the unlikely event that Canada were to be likened to a wonderfully perverse bondage session, where all the various ethnic minorities were represented, each with their own peculiar but enticing erotic peccadillo, Canadian homogeneity would be the plastic bag of auto-erotic asphyxiation that pooped the party before it even started.

Have you considered a career as Guardian leader writer ?

Boggles at the prospect of a "peculiar but enticing erotic peccadillo" originating in Scotland.

Och laddie, if ye've never had a braw Highland lassie whackit on yer arse-cheeks wi' a spurtle, ye've never lived...