Immigration Minister Jason Kenney on immigrant children

The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism was interviewed on TVO’s The Agenda last week. Click here to see and hear the entire interview.
Did the Minister have anything to say about immigrant/newcomer children? Yes! On integration:

“We want to be deliberate about it and we want to make sure that we don’t end up with a series of parallel communities where children grow up in a community that more resembles their parents country of origin than Canada”.

An example on “basic social and linguistic integration”:

“If you’re a young guy, you’re arriving with your parents from China, you live in Richmond, you might go to a school where all the kids speak Cantonese or Mandarin as first language, that’s the language of entertainment, at home on the computer, at the movie theatre, with your peer group, I/we want to make sure that a young guy like that doesn’t end up limiting his opportunities in Canada just by retarding linguistic integration, which is after all the pathway to successful economic and social integration”.

An interesting interview, uncovering Kenney’s plans to reshape citizenship and multiculturalism. Look for an announcement soon from Minister Kenney on a Blue Ribbon panel to tackle a new citizenship test.