Page - 170 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Augie Fleras | Ethnic and Aboriginal Media in Canada 170 2006), the very changes that minorities want of the newsmedia (responsible coverage of minority interests, less sensationalism, more context, toned-down language, and less stereotyping) are precisely the newsnorms that media rely on to sell copy or capture eyeballs. Challenging the conventional news paradigm will prove a difficult sell. To the extent that changes happen, it will arise only when the issue of power (-sharing) is addressed by transformation to the structural constraints that inform newsmedia production and the ideological mindsets of media workers (Mahtani 2007). 5. Ethnic and Aboriginal Media in Canada: A Blueprint for Living Together Differently How then do ethnic and aboriginal media reflect and reinforce Canada’s commitment to an inclusive Multiculturalism? Consider how multiculturalism originated and continues to exist as a response to the realities of new and racialized Canadians. Canada is a destination of choice for immigrants around the world. Just under half of Canada’s population at present (47%) can claim some non French, non English, and non aboriginal ancestry. Visible (or racialized) minorities constitute 13.4 percent of the population in 2001, a sharp increase from the 6 percent that existed in 1981. This figure is expected to expand to about 20 percent by 2017 (Canada’s 150th birthday), in large part because of Canada’s robust immigration program including approximately 250 000 new Canadians each year, with about 60 percent arriving from Asia and the Middle East. Neither immigrants nor racialized minorities are distributed evenly across Canada. Racialized minorities account for nearly 40 percent of the population in Toronto and Vancouver, while about one half of the population is foreign born (‘immigrant’). Not surprisingly, perhaps, about 70 percent of Canada’s population growth is immigrant driven (reflecting a low replacement rate of Canadian births). By 2017, the entirety of Canada’s population (and labour market) growth will reflect immigration intake. Of those initiatives at the forefront of ‘managing’ this demographic revolution, the most notable is official multiculturalism (Kymlicka 2001, 2008; Fleras 2002; Stein et al 2007; Banting et al 2007). In contrast to the colonial paradigm that equated Canadian culture with the unquestioned mainstream while ethnic cultures and minorities were marginalized as subcultures, a commitment to multiculturalism signified a major paradigm shift (Canada Heritage 2003). Canada is now widely recognized as a multicultural society whose engagement with the inclusiveness principles of multiculturalism is unmatched. But notwithstanding over 35 years of official multiculturalism and