One should never dismiss out of hand the accusations one hears from time to time, that unkind Albertans make racist remarks to, or in the hearing of, immigrants of colour. In a population of five million, even one tenth of one percent would be five thousand people and were it only half that, it’s still enough to make quite a few people uncomfortable.And that is indeed what the Calgary office of the Alberta Newcomers Centre told Fakiha Baig, a reporter for the Canadian Press recently. Quoting Centre staff, Baig writes, “Clients are coming with severe anxiety and sometimes panic attacks after hearing racial slurs outside our door. We have instances where they’re being harassed while walking in (the) downtown.”I believe her. There will always be ignorant people..However, before the rest of us old stock Canadians respond meekly once more to the invitation to beat ourselves up, we should approach these sweeping and imprecise assertions with some caution. For neither Alberta, nor Calgary in particular, is racist.First, speaking specifically of Calgary, how racist is a city that has consecutively elected two mayors who were not ‘old stock?’ Naheed Nenshi (2010-21) is an Ismaili Muslim, whose parents immigrated to Canada from Tanzania. He was followed by incumbent Jyoti Gondek has Sikh Punjabi roots. Born in London, she is herself an immigrant.And out of the eleven Members of Parliament who represent the city, four are visibly of South Asian extraction. Nor is the redneck, roughneck energy industry the bastion of whiteness it once was, since well-qualified engineers from Third World countries began finding employment there.So let’s say it out loud; there may be people in Calgary who make racist comments, but the Calgary way is that the majority of Calgarians give everybody an even break..Second, if the federal Liberal government attempts to paper over its miserable economic performance by using immigration to generate a faux jump in economic growth — which it does — it is not the fault of the immigrants. However, it is the people already here who must deal with the economic consequences, face the housing shortages and deal with the rising rents and so forth. Perhaps some of them find this irritating? How much do you blame them? It wasn't like they voted for the Liberal party that's behind all this.Many otherwise warm and welcoming taxpayers might also ask — reasonably, in my view — about Liberal stunts such as bringing in thousands of elderly people..Liberals open door for thousands of new elderly immigrants amid healthcare crisis.Something like 90% of all the money the health system will ever spend on a person will be spent in the last 18 months of their lives, so it’s understandable if Canadians (of all ethnic persuasions) wonder why we’re embracing that expense — especially at a time when the country's healthcare system is already unable to service the demand of the people paying for it.The only logical answer is that it gets ethnic votes in Liberal ridings. .If the Newcomer Centre’s point were that people should blame the Liberals, not the immigrants, I could go along with them.But, point three, the Liberals and the Newcomers Centre need each other.In this suspicious symbiosis, the Liberal government is a patron of the Newcomers Centre of Alberta. It provides nearly half its $25 million budget..And the way things work in Canada these days, they both need a narrative of fighting racism. The Liberals use allegations of racism to milk support from otherwise unsupportive immigrant communities. They must, because immigrant values are often more conservative than progressive — Muslim immigrants aren’t big supporters of Liberal trans policies, for example. .Canadian Muslim group demands Trudeau apologize for 1 Million March 4 Children remarks.So to keep ethnic immigrants on side, the Liberals need to generate a sense of threat among them.Among the ways they do this, is offering money to anybody willing to take it in exchange for supplying evidence of 'hate' in their communities. That, by the way, extends beyond race to sexual minorities and shines the light upon sinister young CIS couples that want to run for school board.Organizations that feed that narrative are rewarded..HANNAFORD: Trudeau pays left-wing groups to redefine what hateful opinions are.Now, the primary focus of the Newcomers Centre is not running a snitch line. But they must know where their money is coming from. And, when they complain immigrants in Alberta face racism, they must also know that they're saying what the Liberals want to hear, and want the rest of the country to hear — especially as it prepares for a constitutional struggle with Alberta. Anything that makes Alberta look bad in the rest of the country is grist to the Liberal mill..The pity of it is that the Centre actually does good work, providing genuinely useful services to new arrivals trying to figure out Canada. In fact, it does such good work that the Government of Alberta also funds it to the tune of $7 million.And yet, what does the Calgary Centre's program director Kelly Ernst say about the Smith government? Why, it's making racism worse.The Canadian Press quotes Ernst on the supposed racially-charged Alberta resistance to immigration, "The ongoing Alberta Next panel led by Premier Danielle Smith that’s touring the province to hear public grievances with the federal government is stoking that anger... “Since (the) Alberta Next panel raised its ugly head, it’s also created additional hostility with some of the comments associated to that.”Ugly head, eh? Ernst is entitled to his opinion, of course. But, how ugly can a panel be that's actually listening to Albertans as their premier confronts a hostile federal government that's trying to shut down their principal industries? Not that 'ugly,' in my view. Perhaps Ernst should instead be thanking Smith for that $7 million contribution? It was only $5 million before she came along.It doesn't sound like the Government of Alberta is indifferent to the difficulties immigrants face. Since Danielle Smith came to office, the government she leads has expanded services to accommodate half a million more new Albertans. (Alberta now has a population of more than 5 million — a growth of more than 10%, in less than three years.) What it does sound like, is that the Newcomers Centre is indifferent to the difficulties Premier Smith faces. The evidence is that Alberta is a wide-open, welcoming place in which people of all ethnic persuasions have done well and even hold significant political power. It is not a racist place and Calgary is not a racist city.For its own reasons, it seems the federal Liberal government would prefer not to believe that. Shame on the federal Liberal-funded Newcomers Centre for making it any easier for them.
