The Government’s updated their new immigrant guide! The new guide, called Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship (you mean there are RESPONSIBILITIES? Eff this, let’s just go to the States!) is meant to be the handy-dandy, one-stop-shopping guide to everything a new immigrant needs to know about Canada, in a mere 50-odd page pamphlet. 50 pages? That’s not even enough to start describing why Tim Hortons is popular, or why the Leafs will just break their hearts!

Anyways, like anything produced by the Government, it’s come under criticism by groups who… well, groups whose main job is to criticize stuff the Government makes, so that sounds about par for the course. Feminists are saying there aren’t enough ladies, environmentalists are saying there aren’t enough pages about trees, Quebeckers are saying “Tabernac to this” in general.

The last guide was a lot more touchy-feely and liberal, but it hadn’t been updated since 1995 at the height of Chretienmania. (Sidenote: hah, I just Googled the made-up word “Chretienmania“: 6 results! And the first 3 are from a series of unimportant blogs that are probably defunct by now, with the names “National Post”, “Globe and Mail” and “Maclean’s” respectively.) Critics are saying, well, here’s the choice quote, from historian Margaret Conrad:

“It’s kind of like a throwback to the 1950s. It’s a tough, manly country with military and sports heroes that are all men. It’s a tougher Canada than the one the Liberals depicted.”

Oh snap! You can either read that quote as a slam, or as an endorsement. Harper would probably be so proud of his manly, tough, cowboy-style pamphlet that he’ll use Margaret’s blurb as the quote for the dust cover. “Canada: Now Manlier!”

[Note: 2,250 hits for "Harpermania" on Google. Vast Conservative conspiracy?]

Hubbub over manliness aside, let’s look inside this 50-page Canuck Manifesto to see what horrible lies we’re teaching the tired, huddled masses of bright-eyed immigrants whose contributions fuel almost the entirety of our population and economic growth. Let’s take a look inside, shall we?

Page 9:

What the hell? This is one of the first things in the whole pamphlet, right after “Really basic shit about what Canada is” and right before “How to get citizenship”. Never expected the word “genital” in my official immigration guide so swiftly, I guess. It seems like an oddly specific dig, aimed at a specific tiny sub-group of a specific minority, to be putting on page 9, is all.

Anyways, below the welcoming words of “Stay the eff outta mah country, ya hardline Muslim fundies, love, the Conservatives” we get a picture of a heroin junkie getting shot up at her local Vancouver safe injection clinic, and some old people standing in front of some greenish emptiness that could be literally anywhere in our greenish, empty country. NEXT!

Also on Page 9 (It’s a good page!)

So these were those “responsibilities” they warned me about in the pamphlet’s title. Bullshit! As a lifelong Canadian, I say to all new immigrants: really, these are just rough guidelines. Obeying laws? Ehhh, when you have to. Here, right now I’ll break a law, to show the immigrants in the crowd that it’s not hard. Stephen Harper has terrible bladder control, he pees when he sneezes. See that? I just committed libel and possibly treason, and no jackbooted thugs are after me! Canada, what a country.

Getting a job is also highly overrated, if you can just live at home and write blogs and shit.

Jury Duty, if you can’t wiggle your way out of it (pro tip: dress like a hobo during the screening round!) is just an excuse to skip work, drink free coffee and learn about sexy crimes.

If voting were an actual, enforced responsibility, everyone you see around you would be in jail right now.

Volunteering is basically work without pay, which is double bullshit.

And hey, NDP guy I saw complaining in the Globe about this guide never mentioning the environment, they DO mention the environment! It’s RIGHT THERE! Right after the part about “heritage”, which, as we’ll later learn, means “White Christians playing hockey”.

Page 10:

Section about aboriginals – it’s not worth screenshotting, but I just want to mention that they do mention residential schools, so good on ‘em for not trying to cover that up. Although they do close by saying that the Government apologized in 2008, so I guess it’s all good then!

Page 11:

Finally, we get to the “strength through diversity, cultural mosaic” bullshit I’d been waiting for! Anyways, here’s the picture they chose to represent diversity: some pasty ginger kid celebrating the vomit-themed holiday of St Patrick’s Day, some pasty-white kid whose parents forced her into Highland Dance because they thought hip hop was too suggestive, a white kid posed on top of a non-white person of some kind, and a Metis fiddler. The Conservatives really dropped the ball here, how did they let that non-white guy slip in?

I need a break. TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2!

[Article via Globe & Fail]

[Pamphlet available here]