Minorities, Multiculturalism, and the Constitution

If the Canadian Multiculturalism Act is not appropriate for Canada's social structure, why is it still the official policy for population management? This is the question the paper attempts to answer after contrasting the structure and content of the 1982 Constitution and Charter with that of the Multiculturalism Act to see how the aspect of social composition is reflected in them. I examine whether the ideological foundation of Trudeau's vision clashes with the modified views of the confederation proposed by the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords (1987, 1992). I propose that it is essential to differentiate between the phenomena of multinationality and polyethnicity in both the theory and the practice of multiculturalism.