Boyko talks about is sanctioned discrimination. This is where the discrimination becomes entrenched in our laws and practices. After that the next step is systematic racism, which is seen in laws that promote segregation. This step leads to the next step, a need to purify the nation through exclusion or expulsion. And finally that last step, which is genocide, the deliberate extermination of a race. (Boyko; 1998) In this essay I would like to talk about the 5th step in the ladder, sanctioned discrimination. Canada, which prides itself on being a multicultural nation, has a history of sanctioned discrimination. It is only in the lat 2 or 3 decades that Canada has really tried to change it legislations to help combat discrimination. The first thing I would like to talk about is Immigration in Canada. In our country one out of every six people are born outside of Canada. Canada sees immigration as positive, something that helps us prosper economically and helps us to be more tolerant of other people. This view has not always been true. There was a time in Canadian history when Canada did not embrace the immigrant. In fact Canada’s immigration laws use to be full of racist tendencies. (Jakubowski in Comack, 1999) In 1945, Canada director of Immigration, A.L. Jolliffe, wrote:“The claim is sometimes made that Canada’s immigration laws reflect class and race discrimination: they do, and necessarily so. Some form of discrimination cannot be avoided if immigration is to be effectively controlled in order to prevent the creation in Canada of expanding non-assailable racial groups.”(Cohen: 1987) Discriminatory immigration laws may appear in many different forms. For example immigration laws may expressly apply only to a particular group. This happened in the case of the Chinese immigration Act. In the last half of the 1800’s Chinese were admitted in large numbers to help work on the railroad. The government enco...
