How Canada Killed Multiculturalism

Elke Winter's latest work on pluralism and national identity has an iconoclastic quality that helps put Canadian multiculturalism in a new and more interesting light. But it also raises troubling questions about how this national tradition operates. This critique focuses on six aspects of her work: 1) the othering process that persists within the pluralist dynamic; 2) the moral questions surrounding negotiation; 3) whether normative pluralism has any moral qualities; 4) the absence of intention in the process she describes; 5) the implications of her work for our understanding of nation-building; and 6) the conformist qualities of Canadian multiculturalism.