An exploratory study of how multiculturalism policies are implemented at the grassroots level.

Yan, Miu Chung ; Chau, Shirley ; Sangha, Dave 等

Abstract

The concept of multiculturalism has become a fixture in Canadian society as part of a nation-building mechanism. In many ways, this suggests a perception that public policies promoting multiculturalism are working. However, this perception is based on assumptions that there is a coherent and shared definition and understanding of the implementation of multiculturalism policies. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study that examined how multiculturalism policies are actualized at the grassroots level through community organizations. This study involved key informant interviews and focus groups of government staff responsible for the delivery of multiculturalism at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels, as well as discussions with service users and service providers of multiculturalism. Findings of this study show that, first, there is a difference in the understanding of the meaning of the policies among these research participants. Second, there has been a subtle shift of governmental interpretation of multiculturalism policies to an antiracist perspective. Third, although both federal and provincial governments have positioned community organizations as key partners in actualizing multiculturalism policies at the grassroots level, their relationship has been strained, i.e., in order to attain their goals for multiculturalism, community organizations have had to adapt to changing rules and to learn how to maneuver through the funding process. Some policy implications are suggested at the end of the paper.

Resume

Le concept du multiculturalisme fait partie integrante du mecanisme de la reconstruction d'une nation au sein de la societe canadienne. De plusieurs facons, cela suggere qu'une perception existe selon laquelle les politiques des gouvernements ayant pour but de promouvoir le multiculturalisme fonctionnent bien. Toutefois, cette perception se base sur la premisse qu'il existe une definition et une comprehension coherentes et partagees de la mise en oeuvre de politiques qui gouvernent le multiculturalisme. Cet article presente le compte rendu des donnees recueillies Iors d'une etude exploratoire de la maniere dont les politiques gouvernant le multiculturalisme sont actualisees au niveau fondamental par I'intermediaire d'organismes communautaires. Cette etude presente aussi des entretiens tenus avec certaines personnes-ressources cles ainsi qu'avec un groupe de discussion forme de membres du personnel de la fonction publique charges de la mise en oeuvre du multiculturalisme aux niveaux federal, provincial et municipal, aussi bien qu'avec les utilisateurs et fournisseurs de services relies au multiculturalisme. Les donnees recueillies dans cette etude demontrent que, premierement, il existe differents niveaux de comprehension de la signification des politiques parmi les participants de ces recherches. Deuxiemement, il existe dans I'interpretation faite par les gouvernements des politiques du multiculturalisme, un transfert subtil vers une perspective antiraciste. Troisiemement, bien que les gouvernements aient vise certains organismes communautaires comme partenaires-cle dans I'actualisation des politiques au niveau fondamental, la relation entre les gouvernements et ces organismes demeure un peu etrange. De pLus, a la fin de cet article, nous suggerons certaines implications des politiques gouvernant le multiculturalisme.

INTRODUCTION

Canada's multiculturalism policy is being praised as the model for many other countries that are struggling with the increasing diversity of their demographic landscapes. Nonetheless, what is evident in the literature is that the Canadian debate on the nature of multiculturalism has always been contentious, and Canadians appear to have a very diverse understanding of what the policy is actually about. Moreover, there has been very little examination within the existing literature about how this policy is actually implemented. This paper reports the findings of a study on how both the federal and provincial multiculturalism policies are implemented in British Columbia (BC). There are many ways for these governments to implement the policies. Our concern is particularly about the partnership between governments and community organizations that have been portrayed as the governments' official partners in implementing Canada's multiculturalism policy. Based on the findings, we argue that the ambiguous nature of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act has led to shifts in the interpretation of the Act by the provincial government and community organizations. The implementation of both the Canadian and BC multiculturalism policies has also been compromised by shrinking funding and the introduction of new funding processes, which together have jeopardized the partnership between governments and community organizations. As a result, the community infrastructure, which governments need in order to realize the policy at the grassroots level, has been weakened. Our findings raise questions about the commitment of both the federal and provincial governments in actualizing these policies at the grassroots level.

The Policy Context

The federal government of Canada has been actively promoting its multiculturalism policies since the policy's inception in 1971. Its commitment to multiculturalism as a public policy was further cemented with the passage of legislation (the Canadian Multiculturalism Act 1985, c. 24 [4th Supp.]) in 1985. Subsequently, many provincial governments have developed their own multicultural policies. Indeed, the passage of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act (CMA) also made Canada the first country in the world to officially embrace diversity in its national policies. As specified in the Preamble, this Act

   recognizes the diversity of Canadians as regards face, national or
   ethnic origin, colour, and religion as a fundamental characteristic
   of Canadian society and is committed to a policy of
   multiculturalism designed to preserve and enhance the multicultural
   heritage of Canadians, while working to achieve the equality of all
   Canadians in the economic, social, cultural, and political life of
   Canada.

This Act, as Fleras and Elliot (2003, 287) suggest, offers "a principle and a practice for engaging diversity as different yet equal" in Canadian society.

Although the idea of "multiculturalism" is politically loaded and contestable (Goldberg 1994; Gutman 1994), Canada's multiculturalism policy has become a model for many other countries that are facing similar challenges often associated with increasing cultural/ethno/racial diversity due to unprecedented global human movements. However, in the post-9/11 era, it has been observed that multiculturalism in many European liberal states has actually been in retreat. France, for example, has recently banned cultural and religious dress in schools (Joppke 2004; Legrain 2007; Palumbo-Liu 2002). The European debates on multiculturalism have also reignited controversies regarding multiculturalism in Canada.

Perceived as a nation-building policy (Abu-Laban and Gabriel 2002; Mackey 2002), official multiculturalism has sparked a series of political-philosophical debates regarding its meaning vis-a-vis the Canadian identity, the right of recognition, and the rights of minorities (e.g., Charles Taylor's "Politics of Recognition" in Gutman 1994; also the discussion of Liberal Multiculturalism by Kymlicka 1991, 1998b, 2003; Kymlicka and Marin, 1999). On the one hand, the policy has been criticized for dividing the country (Bissoondath, 1993, 1994); on the other, many scholars question whether this policy can genuinely safeguard the rights of minorities (Bannerji 2000; Li 1988; Thobani 1995). Indeed, since its inception, not only has Canadian multiculturalism policy been subject to various kinds of scrutiny, both friendly and hostile (Ley 2007), its focus, reference point, and mandate have also been evolving (Kunz and Sykes, n.d.). In the last four decades, the official policy interpretation of Canadian multiculturalism has at least gone through four stages of evolution: Ethnically Multiculturalism in the 1970s, Equity Multiculturalism in the 1980s, Civic Multiculturalism in 1990s, and Integrative Multiculturalism in the 2000s (Fleras and Kunz 2001; Kunz and Sykes, n.d.).

Despite these ongoing debates and evolutions, as Fleras and Elliott (2003) point out, as the signature piece of legislation of Canadian multiculturalism policies, the CMA has institutionally transformed policies at all levels of government through related federal, provincial, and municipal legislation. The implementation of the CMA, therefore, involves social engineering of an intertwined multilevel infrastructure composed of different levels of government and non-government organizations. However, as the core piece that glues all the relevant policies together, the CMA remains a commonly criticized "toothless" policy (Kunz and Sykes 2007; Mackey 2002), i.e., a highly symbolic document without adversarial effect. In other words, it has no legal power to coerce people and organizations to comply. According to the CMA, all government departments and agencies are only required to submit an annual report of their compliance, (1) which is largely based on each department's internal self-examination. At the societal level, the government has created "diversity-driven" funding programs to encourage the promotion of multiculturalism. One of the major programs is Canadian Heritage's Multiculturalism Program (CHMP), which funds non-profit and non-government organizations (hereafter referred to as community organizations (2)), including educational institutions, for projects that meet the priorities and objectives of the program (Abu-Laban and Gabriel 2002). This program supports a broad range of activities at the community level through an extensive network of community organizations that are positioned as community partners.

Multiculturalism is, of course, not only a federal concern. The factors that led to the development of the federal legislation have also had a similar impact on provincial governments. Although constitutionally, provincial governments have a great deal of autonomy in developing and implementing legislation in many areas, including multiculturalism, many provincial governments followed the federal government and enacted their own provincial multiculturalism actor policy. As Garcea (2006) observes, while most of these provincial acts or policies have similar purposes, policy goals and the conferral rights or benefits to groups vary in terms of their organizational mechanism. Only a few provincial and municipal governments have allocated dedicated resources for similar diversity-driven funding programs to support implementation of the policy at the community level. British Columbia, which enacted its own British Columbia Multiculturalism Act (BCMA) in 1993, is one of the provincial governments that has a formal government unit to oversee the implementation of the provincial act. Like their federal counterparts, under the provincial act, all BC departments and agencies are required to submit an annual report of their compliance with the BCMA. The BC government has also established a funding program, the BC Antiracism and Multiculturalism Program (BCAMP), which is similar to the federal program in providing support to community organizations to take part in the implementation of BCMA.

CHALLENGES OF POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

Social scientists have long pointed out that gaps between policy intention and actual implementation are common (e.g., Lineberry 1977; Lipsky 1980; Pressman and Wildavsky 1984; Yan 1998). Institutionally, government policies are interpreted into some social programs, which in turn have their own specific interpretation of the original policies. Based on the funding criteria and reporting systems established by governments, community organizations funded by these social programs are required to develop their own policies and procedures for their staff to follow (Yan 2003). The assumption that the original intention of a well-designed policy will be smoothly reinterpreted through the organizationally complex implementation process has long been challenged in the literature (Lineberry 1977; Pressman and Wildavsky 1984). The official tenets of the multiculturalism framework reflect the governmental ideology of multiculturalism, which as Kymlicka (1998b) argues, is overwhelmingly focused on integrative society-building functions. However, as Li (1999) notes, the CMA is ambiguous and always subject to individual interpretation. It becomes even more ambiguous when its actualization is further subject to constant reinterpretation by the ministers, civil servants, and community organization staff and volunteers who have discretion during the implementation process to match the stated intentions of the policies and funding criteria with their localized knowledge of community needs (Evans and Harris 2004).

Both the federal and BC governments have stated the importance of community organizations as their partners in the implementation of social policies? Through the diversity-driven funding programs, community organizations, as partners, are encouraged to actualize policy intentions and to promote multiculturalism at the grassroots level. To understand the process of implementing multiculturalism policies, we cannot ignore the gap between the official discourse on multiculturalism as embedded in government policies and the actual practice of community organizations. Since government funding is based on a narrow conceptualization of official multiculturalism by the corresponding government departments, such as the Multiculturalism Branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage (CH) (4) and the Settlement and Multiculturalism Division (SMD) under the British Columbia Ministry of Attorney General,>> local activities and practices that embrace popular understandings of multiculturalism may not be captured and reflected in the respective governments' tracking record. This can be especially important when the existing funding and tracking systems directed by governmental bodies responsible for multicultural policies may leave little room financially for community organizations to respond effectively to the unique local challenges associated with the growing diversity in each community.

Many people criticize multiculturalism as "lip service." Despite the fact that there is a myriad of literature on the political-philosophical debates surrounding multiculturalism, there is very little information on how multiculturalism policies are implemented, particularly at the community level, and how these policies are reinterpreted in the funding process, as well as in the day-to-day programming of community organizations. To assist in filling this gap, we decided to seek funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Multiculturalism Strategic Grant Program to conduct an exploratory study. We chose British Columbia as the site of the study, not only because the investigators are researchers affiliated with three different higher education institutions in different parts of this province, but also because BC receives a relatively large proportion of the immigrants and refugees coming to Canada. In 2006, over a quarter of the population of British Columbia was comprised of individuals from a visible minority group. Diversity is a reality in most BC communities, particularly in urban areas. According to the 2006 Census, (6) 45% of City of Vancouver residents were immigrants and 51% were visible minorities. Despite the fact that the Multiculturalism Act is a national policy, its concern is overwhelmingly focused on urban areas, where most immigrants tend to settle (Edgington and Hutton 2002). Diversity is readily apparent in the demographic landscape of many larger urban communities, while in smaller urban and rural areas, the notion of diversity is less pronounced, as evidenced by demographic profiles that are predominantly homogeneous and White (Beshiri 2004). Taking this into consideration, this study has taken the geographic differences into perspective by focusing on three major cities in BC--Vancouver, Kelowna, and Prince George.

This perspective is important particularly when there is an increasing policy preference on the part of governments to diversify the settlement choices of immigrants (see Citizenship and Immigration's 2001 report on the geographical distribution of immigrants). This has led to new initiatives that encourage immigrants to settle in rural regions. In British Columbia, recent government policies and initiatives, such as the establishment of three new universities--in Prince George, Kelowna, and Kamloops--and the temporary foreign worker program, have initiated demographic changes in rural areas. The "traditional face" of these cities and towns is becoming more diverse due to the need to attract students and employees, which, in effect, has led to the abrupt increase in minority faces in rural areas. At the time of this study, 15% of Kelowna's total population was immigrant and 6.2% visible minority, while in Prince George, 9.6% of the population was immigrant and 6% visible minority.

RESEARCH METHOD

The study, which was conducted from May to November, 2006, employed a mixed-method approach including a survey, media analysis, and qualitative interview to obtain answers to three specific research questions. Due to the complexity and richness of the data, in this paper, we will focus on the findings of the individual and focus group interviews which were designed to seek answers to the following question: from the perspectives of community organizations, local-level government officials and service recipients, what are the challenges they face when implementing multiculturalism policies, as a response to the increasing diversity in their local communities. The design of the qualitative interview was informed by Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967), particularly in the analysis process. Qualitative data generated from interviews and focus groups were organized and analyzed by using open and axial coding methods. The constant comparison principles were also used to organize the codes into themes reported below.

Altogether, eleven local leaders and government officials from all three levels of government were interviewed. The government officials were identified through their departmental affiliations. The local leaders and formal officials were identified either through the researchers' personal contacts or referred by the officials whom we interviewed. They are (or were) all directly responsible for the implementation of either the CMA or BCMA. Since this study focuses on the operation of the two Acts, we decided not to interview politicians, who are seldom directly involved in the actual implementation of policy. These interviews, which lasted from sixty to ninety minutes, were largely conducted at the respondents' respective place of work, usually in their private offices or boardrooms. We also conducted six 90-minute focus groups in the three cities. The participants of these six focus groups were recruited by our community partners and were mostly from a group of multiculturalism, antiracism, immigrant, and community service organizations listed on the BC government website. (7) Three of the focus groups (N=17) investigated how members of community organizations in each city perceived their roles and the actual work of implementing the policies. In order to capture the routine practice of multiculturalism at the community level, only frontline workers who were responsible for the day-to-day service delivery were invited. The focus groups with service providers were conducted at a local service organization in Vancouver, at a room at the public library in Prince George, and in a meeting room at the back of a local coffee shop in Kelowna. Another three focus groups (N=14) were conducted to investigate service users' perceptions and experience of services delivered under the auspices of multiculturalism policies. Therefore, only service users who attended programs classified as multiculturalism programs by the referring community organizations were invited. The focus groups with service users were conducted in a meeting room at a local service agency in both Vancouver and Prince George, while the focus group of service users was conducted in the meeting room at the back of a local coffee shop in Kelowna. We also conducted a textual analysis of a selected set of documents including the two Acts, annual reports of the last ten years from the provincial and federal departments responsible for multiculturalism, and other relevant information.

FINDINGS

Findings from our study indicate that multiculturalism has been discursively embraced by all levels of government and community organizations in civil society. Our findings also reveal some different understandings of multiculturalism at various levels of government, which, however, have been moving in the same direction in supporting community organizations, a recognized partner in implementing policies at the grassroots level. Funding for multiculturalism programs at both the federal and provincial levels has been reduced and application procedures have been reconfigured into more convoluted forms in order to meet the increasing accountability requirements. As a result, service providers and users participating in our focus group interviews, who tend to have a broader perception of multiculturalism, have expressed their frustration, resistance, and creativity in actualizing the a multiculturalism policies in their everyday practice.

Implementing Multiculturalism: An Ambiguous Policy Process

Before we report our findings, we need to understand the policy context that the funding program is designed to serve. To secure funding for multiculturalism programs, community organizations in BC must refer to two separate sets of multiculturalism Acts and their respective funding criteria. Both the federal and the BC funding program criteria can be understood as the expression of the interpretation of the respective acts. A key question in this regard is: are these two Acts and funding criteria interconnected?

1. Weak Inter-government (8) Connection

BC adopted a multiculturalism policy in 1990 and enacted the BC Multiculturalism Act in 1993. Although the BCMA shares a similar policy concern with its federal counterpart, the relationship between the two Acts is not clear. According to our key informant at the local Canadian Heritage (CH) office, the province did consult their office when they were drafting the BCMA. In fact, as one of our key informants who was directly involved in the enactment of the act remembered, the BCMA includes ideas from a variety of sources, including the CMA and other provinces' multicultural legislations. The two Acts, therefore, resemble each other in terms of their purposes: the recognition of diversity, respecting multicultural heritage, fostering full participation, and advancing harmony. However, as one of our key informants involved in implementing this Act in the early 1990s pointed out, unlike the CMA, the BCMA did not include the term "preservation" in regard to cultural heritage. In terms of organizational structure, both Acts established an advisory body to provide advice to the minister responsible for overseeing their actualization, as well as a mechanism to ensure the compliance of all their departments and agencies through annual reporting. Other than this weak inter-textual relationship, our key informants from both CH and the Settlement and Multiculturalism Division (SMD) suggested that, in the implementation process, these two acts do not have any other connection. As stated by one of our key informants from the SMD,

   We don't have [a] direct relationship to the federal government's
   act. The provincial government has its multiculturalism act.... The
   provinces created it, [the] Multiculturalism Act. So it's a little
   bit different.... [O]ther than collaboration, or communication with
   the federal government in the areas that are responsible for
   multiculturalism and racism, there isn't anything that goes back to
   linking to the Federal Act.

The intergovernmental relationship between the two responsible departments is informal and incidental. To a large extent, it depends on the people who run the program. As a CH key informant told us,

   As I say, there were very formal and very good [working
   relationships], in the 90s. I mean, we were all over one another,
   it was a loving game. And you know, we consulted them every step of
   the way, we went to their meetings.... [W]e even traveled together
   occasionally, and we targeted communities together.

Previously, the federal and provincial operation units shared information and co-funded some projects, such as the Hastings Institute in Vancouver. Another major example of the collaboration between these two levels of government was a multiculturalism funders committee, members of which included representatives of three levels of government in charge of multiculturalism funding and representatives of some local foundations. At these meetings, they discussed issues related to funding priorities and duplication.

This committee is no longer active, according to our key informants at the provincial and federal levels. This can be attributed largely to the change in personnel in different jurisdictions and the ongoing reduction in funding programs that has resulted from various new regimes at both levels of government. As another CH key informant observed, there is always tension between them and their provincial counterparts, a tension also intensified by a sense of competition between the two levels of government. One key informant from SMD noted that

   at a government level ... you've got, especially the national
   level.... Canadian Heritage has a lead, but ... we're certainly
   doing [things] at a [provincial] level, and when we look at
   national comparative studies in what we're doing.... Compared to
   others, it's [the provincial effort] all over the map. We're
   actually doing quite a bit in British Columbia, compared to others.

2. Interpreting Multiculturalism Policy: A Floating Signifier

Of the eleven key informants whom we interviewed, nine have been, or are currently, government officials who are responsible for the implementation of multiculturalism policies. Their understanding of the intent and nature of multiculturalism sheds light on how these policies are interpreted in the implementation process. As indicated in our findings, the interpretation among these key players is diverse. Perhaps as Gunew stated (quoted in Fleras and Elliott 2003), multiculturalism is a "floating signifier" without one fixed meaning. The inherent fluidity of this policy is caused and shaped by the ideology of the ruling regime, which sees multiculturalism as a tool for other political and social purposes.

At both the federal and provincial levels, the implementation of multiculturalism policy has experienced constant institutional change. In the last few decades, the federal multiculturalism file has been shifted from the Ministry of Multiculturalism (1985-1989) to the Ministry of Multiculturalism and Citizenship (1989-1993) to the Ministry of Canadian Heritage (1993-2007) and, most recently, back to the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration (2008-present) (see Dewring 2009). This shift also signifies a new political mandate of the multiculturalism policy and programs. (9) At the provincial level, the multiculturalism file has experienced shifts from the Ministry of Environment and Human Rights (1993-1994) to the Ministry of the Attorney General (1994-1999) to the Ministry of Government Services (1999-2000) and to the Ministry of Community, Aboriginal, and Women's Services (2001-2004), then back to the Ministry of the Attorney General (2004-2009). In June, 2009, it was relocated to a new ministry, the Ministry of Citizens' Services. Changes in ministers are also often accompanied by a possible reinterpretation of the policy, as one veteran provincial key informant suggested:

   Our last minister was minister "H". But they liked, they wanted to
   be associated, that government wanted to be associated with
   anti-racism, multiculturalism, supporting members of races,
   immigrants. They believed in that. So, uh, in fact, you know
   something like they always had things for us to do.... So, it was
   an act of time, when the new government came in (authors' italics)

In other words, the official interpretation of the policy is always subject to the ruling regime's ideology and political purposes. Indeed, the policy may just be a floating signifier.

In our conversations with key informants, we noticed that among all the institutional shifts, the relationship between multiculturalism and immigrant settlement is always a major issue. Like its federal counterpart, the BC multiculturalism file has been merged with and separated from the immigration file. In the most recent provincial government restructuring, the multiculturalism file has been separated from the immigrant settlement file, while at the federal level, it was again merged with the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration. Almost all of the provincial key informants have pinpointed that, at least at the provincial level, the spirit of the BCMA is not only about immigrants and ethnic minorities, but about everyone in the province. As one provincial informant noted,

   Well, multiculturalism is inclusive of everybody. If there is no
   distinction in terms of holding in a particular ethnic group,
   multiculturalism is about everyone, everyone, and that's also in
   the Multiculturalism Act.

Our key informant who had taken an active role in the enactment of the BCMA has even indicated that lumping multiculturalism with immigrants and even antiracism may run the risk of marginalizing the BCMA to focus only on visible minorities. This is of particular concern to him since most ministers in charge of the multiculturalism file, at both the provincial and federal levels, have tended to be visible minorities and/or immigrants.

However, this perspective is not shared by the officers who had or have run the provincial multiculturalism program. Four key informants, who have been involved in the operation of the BCMA, saw anti-racism as part of the multicultural mandate. Indeed, a closer look at the two Acts shows that they incorporate the perspective of race differently. Conceptually, the CMA is largely based on "cultural diversity," while the BCMA has a more elaborate understanding of diversity, which includes "race, cultural heritage, religion, ethnicity, ancestry or place or origin." Promoting racial harmony and racial diversity are clearly inscribed in the BCMA. One of the key informants pointed out that, unlike the CMA, the BCMA actually does not mention anything about the preservation of cultural heritage; however, he also admitted that the public generally perceives it does, due to the popular understanding of the CMA. This confusion certainly has caused different expectations during the implementation process, particularly at the community level, which we will examine later.

3. Multiculturalism on the Cheap? Shrinking Functions and Resources

The constant shifts among different departments have also hurt the continuity of the implementation process and jeopardized the partnership with community organizations. One key informant offered this astute observation:

   You know as well as I do that continuity--to address something in a
   continuous way and to have the kind of institutional knowledge and
   skills and competence even to get after something--you need that
   kind of history of not just the bureaucracy, but the relationship
   between the bureaucracy and community agencies, and when this moved
   along--they were basically, so often--and you have agencies in the
   community that you are supposed to be funding, and then they are
   supposed to be carrying out that kind of function in the community.
   All of that gets turned ... the equilibrium in the relationship and
   the kind of skills that people have, get turned around and develop
   a whole new beginning. So it's like starting over again, building a
   relationship with the bureaucracy, building a relationship with the
   minister. And so you are always at the beginning stage in terms of
   the relationship with the bureaucracy, with the minister, and
   applying for grants.

The constant shift of the responsible department's institutional position at both levels of government has also come with a redelineation of the function of the policy. At both the federal and provincial levels, the key informants indicated that in the constant shifting process, the institutional change function of the policy has been curtailed. The most noticeable example cited by many key informants is the legacy of the Hastings Institute, which was originally supported by three levels of governments through the multiculturalism programs. One CH key informant described the Hastings Institute as a good example of what is "essential for what's called a good institutional change project" because of its unique institutional change training focus. The Hastings Institute was set up by the City of Vancouver to provide cultural diversity and leadership training to its staff and other public institutions (http://vancouver.ca/hastingsinstitute/about.htm). However, it was pointed out by a few key informants that due to the loss of financial support and the change in government policy priorities, the Hasting Institute is no longer in a position to provide this kind of training. Meanwhile, this move away from institutional change was also reflected in the change of the CH staff title from "social development officer" to "program officer" At the provincial level, the branch in charge of the multiculturalism file is no longer hosting inter-ministry meetings to facilitate the implementation of the policy across government, as it has in the past.

The weakening of the institutional change function occurred at the same time as the budget for multiculturalism at the federal and provincial levels was reduced. As Li (1999) wryly observes, the federal budget for multiculturalism was always meager. The 2006/2007 total budget of CH (10) was 1,419.2 million dollars. Broadly speaking, the CH has a set of diverse funding programs, mainly encapsulated under the Canadian Identity Strategy, which are seen as a critical part of the multiculturalism policy. However, only 7.7 million dollars (11) of this budget was allocated to funding programs that community organizations could directly access. At noted in table 1, there is a downward trend in funding allocated to this program. Budget cuts have also led to the discontinuation of some other programs such as the Canadian Ethnic Studies and Heritage Language programs.

A similar cut in provincial programs was observed by the provincial key informants. In 2006/2007, the budget for the multiculturalism programs amounted to five hundred thousand dollars, a drastic decrease from the forty million dollar budget of 1994/1995. (12) Moreover, within this budget, only a portion of the funding is allocated to funding programs directly accessible to community organizations. For instance, in 2006/2007, close to 40% of the half-million dollar budget was allocated to the Critical Incidence Response Model, which funds projects mostly initiated by the staff of the SMD in collaboration with local partners; community groups cannot directly apply for these funds.

In sum, at least in BC, both the provincial and federal governments continue to be active in supporting multiculturalism programming at the community level. However, although the CMA has provided a broad base for the BCMA, the latter has extended the cultural discourse embraced by the official federal version of multiculturalism to a cultural-racial discourse. As we later report, this extension has led to some confusion at the community level. Meanwhile, the relationship between these two Acts is, at most, a weak inter-textual one. In actual implementation, no clear effort has been recorded to coordinate the activities initiated under the auspices of federal and provincial multiculturalism programs. Although the federal and provincial governments may have many mechanisms to put the tenets of the CMA and BCMA into practice, it is doubtful that there is a clear commitment from either government to implement these multiculturalism policies, when one considers the shrinking financial resources invested by both levels of government and the shifting departmental base of the programs. It is under these conditions that community organizations often engage in efforts to actualize multiculturalism at the community level in ways that are often not documented in official reports.

Community Organizations: An Odd Partner

In the case of both the CMA and the BCMA, community organizations are included in the implementation plan. While the CMA states its intention to support and assist individuals, organizations, and institutions by way of a series of activities related to the purposes of the Act, the BCMA has explicitly stated that the minister may provide grants and that not-for-profit organizations may apply to the minister for grants under this Act to fund programs. As one provincial key informant stated, "I definitely feel community organizations are involved in implementing the Act, and ... I feel, they're part of the whole partnership building in the leadership in the Act." The role of community organizations in implementing the multiculturalism policy is also appreciated by the service users who attended our focus groups. One Vancouver focus group participant observed,

   I think in my experience with multicultural [community]
   organizations, they have done a number of good programs. Let people
   know about their rights with workshops like media advocacy. It was
   amazing and I know they have done a number of cultural stuff there.

The advantage that community organizations hold in actualizing the policy is perhaps due to their closeness to the people affected, i.e., they can relate the policies to the realities of people's everyday lives.

   I think we have the relationship with the people. We see
   individuals are individuals. This is actually a lot of work, and we
   have experience in doing it. We are closer to the clients than the
   government could ever get (a participant in the Vancouver service
   provider focus group).

1. A Commonsensical Understanding of Multiculturalism

When asked about their knowledge of the two Acts, a majority of participants in our focus groups acknowledged they had never read them. As one participant said, "Personally, I know there is something that exists. But since I am not a lawyer, I see no reason to learn them on my own. But I am aware that there is something in place." In other words, most of their understanding of the idea of multiculturalism is based on their "common sense" which, to a large extent, is the result of their own personal experience, coupled with the official version of multiculturalism embedded in the CMA and promoted by the media. Their understanding of multiculturalism is, consequently, far more diverse than what our key informants have articulated.

We can roughly categorize these diverse understandings into three major categories. The first, which is mainly generated from the perspective of service users, closely echoes the federal multiculturalism policy. They believe that it promotes respect for diversity and people's rights in Canadian society. As a service user from Prince George observed,

   Many times they think that multiculturalism is for visible minority
   [sic] and/or for immigrants but multiculturalism is for everybody
   and if we really see the philosophy and the sense of
   multiculturalism, it tells us that nobody is [a] stranger if we
   make [the] effort to know each other.

In other words, it is a means of community building, or as another service user suggested, "So then my, sort of, point of view, of multiculturalism is not just [about] existing different culture [sic]. [It] has to be well blended and all the nationality [sic], including Canadian, has to work together and make [sic] building better community." This is certainly aligned with the nation-building notion of official multiculturalism.

The second category of understanding is relatively critical of the concept of multiculturalism. Some in this category see multiculturalism as a political mechanism to control and to marginalize visible minorities and immigrants. As one service provider put it bluntly, "[M]ulticulturalism has become a new colonial tool of domination." Among the service providers in our focus groups, we noticed some rural-urban differences. Compared to their counterparts in the other two cities, service providers in Vancouver seldom express this kind of critical perspective. One of the possible reasons may be the social atmosphere in the local community. Service providers in both Prince George and Kelowna reported a resistance in their own community toward responding to the emerging multicultural and multiracial reality. As one non-Vancouver service provider noted, "[I]t just seems very interesting that there isn't the interest and the intention to multiculturalism in [City X], and that seems to act itself out in day-to-day activities." Similarly, a non-Vancouver participant from another city in our study pointed out that "in [City Y] there hasn't [sic] been any obvious, open issues. There is [sic] a lot [of] issues, but they are low, are laying pretty low, nobody is kind of admitting they exist until something happens, but there hasn't been anything really incidence [sic], not since the burning up [of] the crosses on lawns."

The third category of understanding views multiculturalism in Canada as a politically correct concept that is now both obsolete and ineffectual. In other words, multiculturalism is political rhetoric rather than a policy with true vision. As one service provider stated:

   Multiculturalism spoke to this. They do not deal with the real
   reality of the people and they do not promote change, they do not
   support sustained involvement. It is, politically driven, i.e., a
   catch phrase of some MLA elected. After elections are over, it
   disappears. It comes up again at the next election, whatever,
   whatever politician jumps on that bandwagon, you hear a lot about
   it, but then it's gone again. There is no persistency of [sic] with
   the policies, or with the agencies that are supposedly promoting
   the policies, they seldom last more than a year.

This kind of observation also reflects people's frustration with the ambiguity of multiculturalism policies. Addressing this issue, one Vancouver participant had this suggestion: "I would like to encourage the three levels of government to talk to each other about what multiculturalism really means. From what I have heard, they all have different interpretations." Unlike the key informants who had been involved in the actual operation of the policies at different levels of government and who tended to have a more concrete vision of what the multiculturalism policy embraced, people in the community have a more diverse and ambiguous understanding of the meaning of multiculturalism.

2. Dancing with Everyday Reality: A Pragmatic Approach

When asked about their understanding of the relationship between multiculturalism and immigrants, our focus group participants, who were either service users or frontline workers from community organizations, expressed a very consistent and strong consensus that multiculturalism policies cannot be separated from the immigrant settlement issue. Although some of them also agreed that multiculturalism policies are intended for everyone, many viewed multiculturalism and settlement as a continuum of the immigrant integration process. As one Vancouver service provider said:

   In terms of how settlement services are different than
   multicultural policies, I think again it is a continuum.
   Conceptually, the idea was that everybody coming into Canada,
   arriving here, has some rights, and to some extent, if you look in
   terms of multicultural policy, from the time you arrive in Canada,
   you have all the rights. It only takes time to look through the
   whole continuum from small services to more and more until you
   reach the citizenship status, then you have the whole range of
   services.

It is hard for these community organization participants to make the kinds of policy distinctions made by key informants. To them, immigrants are the multicultural reality that they face day in and day out:

   We partner with communities that promote multiculturalism, but our
   part of it is, we work with the immigrants, and that's already like
   they are the multicultural community that we are working with. This
   part seems to talk about the community making ourselves more
   welcome to receive immigrants (Kelowna service provider).

Interestingly, a majority of the service users referred to our three focus groups by our community partners were immigrants to Canada. These referrals may reflect the organizations' clientele, as well as how multiculturalism is understood by these community organizations. Indeed, from the service users' perspective, multiculturalism is a means to attract immigrants to this country.

   Immigration is the need of Canada right now. Canada cannot survive
   without immigration because of its low natural birth rate. However,
   it seems now every country in the world is trying to attract new
   immigrants. So there is vast competition in the world market for
   immigrants. Therefore, if Canada lacks the multiculturalism that
   attracts new immigrants, potential immigrants will not immigrate to
   Canada (Prince George service user).

Being immigrants themselves, the service users also have strong but diverse opinions on the relationship between multiculturalism and anti-racism. One group of participants tended to think that the promotion of anti-racism signified the failure of the multiculturalism policy, which--to them--was intended to advance the understanding and celebration of different cultures. One service user outside Vancouver told us of a racist incident she experienced right after exiting a multicultural celebration event:

   I think anti-racism is the outcome of not respecting
   multiculturalism. So this is advance state. There was a time that
   we used to get funding to hold multicultural night and then
   multicultural family night, multiculturalism fashion show, and all
   that, it was all mostly fun, fun and entertainment, people was
   relating multiculturalism just as sharing multicultural food and
   then, uh, having singing and dancing, but not serious, uh, it's
   like after that, they leave the event and everything is forgotten.

Some see that multiculturalism and antiracism represent two sides of the same coin--the proactive and the reactive. A service user from Vancouver shared his vision:

   I think racism exist [sic] because of the notion of "I think I am
   better than you." The meaning of multiculturalism is living in
   harmony together. And under multiculturalism, I do not think racism
   will exist. But again, it does not mean it will be eliminated. But,
   yes, certainly multiculturalism and racism are related together
   [sic].

Many agreed that we may need both anti-racism and multicultural policies. Indeed, as some service users suggest, dealing with anti-racism can generate more "concrete and effective" outcomes that governments need to address, while promoting multiculturalism "is much more long term and maybe the people who are funding or making the policy cannot see where to go from there" (Vancouver service user).

Compared to the service users, the service providers who attended our focus groups exhibited a more practical attitude towards the relationship between multiculturalism and anti-racism. Participants from Prince George and Kelowna were still struggling with the slow response of their own communities in dealing with the demographic changes in their local context. Therefore, their attitude was that anything was better than nothing. In Vancouver, service providers had a relatively longer history in dealing with both issues. Some of them expressed frustration at seeing funding shrink for the promotion and celebration of diversity. As a result, some learned to jump on the "bandwagon of antiracism" because, as one service provider commented, "that is how we [community organizations] interpret our chances of getting money." In the end, funding is often the driving force that motivates many community organizations to take part in the implementation of the BCMA and CMA.

Funding for Multiculturalism: Connecting the Policy with Practice in the Community

To engage community organizations in the implementation process, the most effective mechanism that government departments responsible for multiculturalism policies can use is funding. To accommodate shrinking budgets and the increasingly stringent requirements of public financial accountability, both levels of government have introduced a more complicated funding procedure.

1. The Ungenerous Partner: Balancing a Shrinking Budget in an Accountable Way

As a key informant told us, CH experienced a major audit in the late 1990s that resulted in a more stringent process of funding and a new emphasis on outcome and value for money principles. The CH Multiculturalism Program now provides mainly project-based funding. Core funding for community organizations has been eliminated. A key CH informant describes their position:

   Because--the thing is--my department, and the Multiculturalism
   Program is not there to fund people for the sake of keeping them
   going. We fund projects that are issue-based that would address a
   need, and you know ... in funding dollars available to us year by
   year by year, we have to have just project funding.

As one key informant suggested, this new funding program has led to a more accountable system, which balances local needs with national priorities. In 2006/2007, three objectives of the Multiculturalism Program were set as priorities: identity, social justice, and civil participation. The preservation of cultural heritage, as well as the celebration and recognition of cultural diversity, were no longer in the picture. Instead, antiracism was clearly stated as one of the six expected outcomes of the Program. If the Program intent was to actualize the CMA, the formal interpretation of the CMA had now shifted from the broader perspective of culture to a narrow focus on race.

The changes in both the process and focus of the Program have created complexities for community organizations that, as one key informant remarked, they "need[ed] to get their heads around." CH key informants claim that they have always tried to work with community organizations in the process. However, the Multiculturalism Program is managed directly by the Ottawa office, and the final approval of the projects always rests in the hands of the minister responsible. In other words, this program can be highly political, but the key informants claim that through a systematic consultation process, interests of local communities are incorporated well into the national business plan, and the application process is open and transparent. Nonetheless, community organizations indicated to us that they feel forced to compete, not on locally derived criteria, but on the basis of nationally derived criteria, i.e., the political needs and concerns of the ruling regime.

At the provincial level, the funding situation is not any easier or less political than at the federal level. The BC funding program, the BC Antiracism and Multiculturalism Program (BCAMP), has an unequivocal dual mandate. This dual mandate reflects the original intention of the BCMA, which is different from the CMA explicitly in terms of its racial articulation. Our provincial key informants who have been in the position of running the program during the last two decades share a common view of the purposes of the BCAME As one of them pointed out,

   It is [for] cross-cultural communication, the mutual respect, the
   elimination of barriers. Even going back to minister "M" days,
   multiculturalism, federally and provincially, used to be perceived
   as giving away money for festivals. Wrong! No money was ever given
   away for festivals. Unless the minister got involved, no!

However, a different and convoluted funding procedure was introduced by the new Liberal government in early 2000. Funding was no longer to be determined by the minister, deputy minister, or individual senior staff member. Instead, it was now determined through a request for proposal process, and an assessment committee comprised of program officers who often had no experience with the multiculturalism policy. The minister apparently had little direct involvement in making funding selections. Once decisions were made, the approved projects were handled by service agreement officers who had no direct contact with the community organizations involved and were mainly concerned with monitoring financial accountability criteria, which were often quantitatively defined. To this end, a logic model was implemented in order to rationalize this procedure of awarding funds to agencies.

This model was intended to ensure accountability by laying out a clear set of criteria to determine, or, as one provincial key informant told us, "What are the outcomes here? What are the measurables? What are the deliverables? What is appropriate for us to fund?" In 2006/2007, the BCAMP had three objectives: provide multiculturalism and anti-racism education; develop community partnerships and facilitate cross-cultural dialogue; and provide critical responses to racism and hate. A key informant clarified the BCAMP's position as follows:

   It's up to these agencies [community organizations], these
   communities to define multiculturalism, anti-racism, then link back
   to our three objectives within the BC Antiracism and
   Multiculturalism Programs. So, we are not going to put in an
   opinion to what, how we separate multi and anti-racism or how it's
   linked. It's as long as these agencies are clear about meeting the
   goals and objectives of our program.

2. A Reluctant Partner: The Struggle of Community Organizations Service providers who have been involved in multicultural programs for a long time have noticed changes in funding at both levels of governments. One service provider nostalgically commented,

   I think when I started in the early 90s that support was great, I
   really felt that we were accomplishing something. [When] we came up
   with certain things, we applied for it. We had the support. The
   funding agencies would come up here once a year and meet with all
   of the agencies that they would fund. We would share information.
   We work in partnerships trying not to compete with each other....
   [B]ut now in the last five years, I believe that they are
   determined to eliminate any funding for multiculturalism.

The shrinking funding has hit community organizations that lack core funding for operations especially hard. Project-based funding tends to be unstable and hampers program planning:

   Agencies are looking for sort of long-term funding rather than just
   project-based. It would be good if that funding was [sic] on an
   on-going basis.... [I]t takes a lot of work to write a proposal for
   a project and then implement a project and then it's done. And you
   know then there is no further funding.

This quotation from another service provider also indicates the difficulties of securing funding for a project.

The complicated application and reporting system has created tremendous pressures on community organizations. It is so complicated that community organizations have to deploy their limited resources to deal with the endless paperwork and even to attend workshops to learn how to complete the application form. In terms of the provincial BCAMP program, a service provider had this observation:

   The reporting requirement and the applications are so complex. You
   have to have a master's degree just to fill them out sometimes. And
   ... if you are applying for five thousand dollars, you have to go
   through the same process as if you are getting the maximum, which
   is twenty-five thousand dollars, right? And they don't allow you
   any funding to actually do those proposals.

The extra burden added through the required paperwork is evident in others' experiences. Another service provider informed us how their application was rejected only because they missed one signature on the application form.

Participants from community organizations also feel that the funding process is a political process, which is not always fair to small communities due to their limited influence on federal and provincial electoral politics. As a service provider observed,

   If you can get somebody [on] your side elected, then you have some
   chance to get the money. If you come from a small community, you
   have a lesser chance because you cannot help a politician to be
   elected, so you lose the bargaining power. The complaints from the
   small communities have always been that the funding goes to the
   larger community.

Indeed, this observation is consistently echoed by service providers from all three cities in our study. For example, one community organization applied to the CH Multiculturalism Program and had its project recommended to the minister responsible at that time; this minister then sat on the project for some time before finally turning it down. This incident reflects how the political will can be a tricky trump card of the "rational" process.

The funding difficulties have not discouraged community organizations from taking part in efforts to promote multiculturalism (including fighting against racism), particularly when most community organizations do not distinguish promotion of multiculturalism from helping immigrants settle and integrate. In other words, promoting multiculturalism is part of their day-to-day programming. This holistic perspective seems to allow them a more creative and flexible approach to finding resources. A few of our focus group participants have mentioned that their agencies have given up pursuing grants from the two multiculturalism funding programs. In fact, only a very small number of community organizations in our focus groups had received any funding from the Multiculturalism Program and the BCAMP. As a service provider explained, this short-term funding only "makes the people have high expectations next year. And then you are in trouble. So I am no longer very interested in doing this kind of thing. I don't want to stir up something and fail people's expectation next year."

Instead of relying on these two funding programs, many community organizations have creatively pooled resources from a variety of sources. One way is to channel funding from other programs funded by different sources--including government departments, such as Service Canada, health and public safety programs, settlement services, gaming and the United Way--in order to support their multicultural programs. For instance, one of the service providers of our focus groups had hired a student through Service Canada to organize a festival that celebrated diversity in Canada. What they need to do, as one service provider explained, is to "put efforts into areas where you know they are going to fund it. And then hope that there is 10% leeway to channel, to put the money where it really needs to go [for multiculturalism programming]." With limited financial resources, almost all community organizations have appealed to volunteers for help in providing multiculturalism programs. However, the lack of designated financial resources for multiculturalism programming also marginalizes this important work to a "sideway kind of thing" as described by one Kelowna service provider, for many community organizations.

DISCUSSION AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

As an exploratory study employing a qualitative method, the findings of this study have limitations of generalization and of not being able to fully answer the research question originally posed. However, we believe the richness of the data provides some important observations that may shed light on the implementation of multiculturalism policies in Canada, at least at the community level. Our findings indicate that there is considerable variation between governments and service agencies as to what multiculturalism means on a day-to-day basis in terms of how services are or need to be delivered, and how Canadian citizens of diverse backgrounds experience multiculturalism in their daily lives. At the Federal government level, the focus, reference point, and mandates of multiculturalism policies have undergone at least four different stages of evolution since its inception (Fleras and Kunz 2001). Intriguingly, according to our findings, the evolution of the official multiculturalism policies has not received much attention in the community. The varying understandings of multiculturalism in Canada have always been diverse. As Kymlicka (1998a) has long suggested, the Canadian government may have the responsibility to initiate a clarification of Canada's multiculturalism policy. A further study on the disconnection between the evolution of official discourse and the everyday practice in the community is deemed necessary.

Judging from our findings, the funding program under the CMA, i.e., the CHMP, has shifted from a narrow construction of cultural inclusiveness and "preservation and celebration of cultural heritage" to a broader construction which conflates culture with race (or more specifically, visible minorities) and emphasizes removing barriers to full participation and integration. The shifting of focus in funding to antiracism programming at both levels of government has further signified such change. However, the spirit of celebrating cultural differences embraced by the early version of official multiculturalism has still been a major frame of reference for the public, at least at the community level.

The unwitting shift from preservation of cultural heritage to the elimination of racial barriers may just be a reflection of the government's prompt reaction to key structural problems in Canadian society that may hamper the nation-building mission of the government. However, this shift may have inadvertently led to more confusion because it has not been explicitly and widely discussed through public consultation (Kunz and Sykes, n.d.). Judging from the responses of the participants in our six focus groups, whose understandings and perceptions of Canadian multiculturalism may reflect those of the general public, this subtle shift is not necessarily a welcome one, regardless of whether the changed focus is well intended. Our findings suggest that both preservation of cultural heritage and elimination of racism may still be important to many people in the immigrant community as well as to the general public. Concerns have also been raised when antiracism is subsumed in the discourse of multiculturalism (Day 2002; James 2008). The conflation of culture with race may lead to a "culturalization of difference" (Razack 1998), and further confuse the public understanding of how multiculturalism policies are implemented. It also leads to a denial of the need for the structural change that is necessary for an effective elimination of racial barriers. Learning from our European counterparts, these barriers constitute one of the most detrimental structural factors that have contributed to the recent social conflicts in many European countries. This is particularly alarming when the funding for actualizing multiculturalism policies is shrinking. The reactive approach, coupled with the shrinkage in funding, can only support band-aid solutions. To properly deal with cultural and racial diversity issues in the twenty-first century, the Canadian and BC governments should either revise their respective Multiculturalism Acts or introduce new legislation to eliminate racial barriers in Canadian society.

As both levels of governments have formally recognized in their policy, community organizations are their chosen partners, at least at the grassroots level. However, our findings indicate that this partnership is not an easy one. Indeed, shrinking resources have weakened the community partners who are struggling for stable and core funding for survival. The convoluted procedures in the funding application process also discourage community organizations, which often have resources too limited to even attempt to apply for the meager funding. While ethno-specific organizations have already been cut out of multiculturalism funding (Abu-Laban and Gabriel 2002), mainstream community organizations, as at least reflected in some neighbourhood-based organizations, are also financially under siege (Anucha et al. 2006; Fabricant and Fisher 2002; Yan and Lauer 2008). If governments truly believe in the roles and functions of community organizations as their partners in implementing the multiculturalism policy, they may need to reconsider a funding program that has a simplified application procedure and offers the resources needed to support a stable and permanent community infrastructure that translates this policy into people's everyday lives at the grassroots level.

We also observe that diversity and multiculturalism are experienced differently in different locales in British Columbia. This process is, in part, shaped by the frequency and types of contact that communities and groups of people have with others of diverse backgrounds in their particular socio-cultural-racial context. In other words, the needs of community organizations are not necessarily always the same. A flexible funding policy is needed to address local needs.

It is our hope that this exploratory study may provide some insight into the implementation of multiculturalism policies in BC. However, more studies are needed to examine how the multiculturalism policy is actualized in other parts of Canada. Even within BC, our preliminary rural-urban comparison is only tentative. More in-depth studies of rural BC are needed, given the changing demographic landscape. The continuing trend to diversify the destination of new immigrants to Canada highlights the need to ensure that multiculturalism is relevant in places outside large, urban, metropolitan centers. Immigrants, regardless of their ethno-racial backgrounds, are encouraged to settle in less urban and smaller cities and towns in Canada as a way to diversify the population, as well as to contribute to the local economy of these places.

To conclude, this exploratory study indicates that the interpretation of the multiculturalism policy has shifted since it was first officially introduced in the CMA and BCMA. Due to the ambiguity of the policy, different interpretations have been adopted in different arenas and at various stages of the implementation process. To actualize this policy at the community level, there is a great need for government to reinvest in building relationships with community organizations so that, together, they can build and sustain the capacity to deliver much needed services and programs.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The paper is based on the findings of a study funded by a Multiculturalism Strategic Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We would also like to thank our community partner, Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of British Columbia, for their support and valuable advice regarding the design of data collection instruments and process, as well as their assistance in recruiting participants for our focus groups. However, the authors are fully responsible for the information, analysis and arguments presented in this paper.

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NOTES

(1.) Since, in this paper, our focus is on the implementation at the grassroots level, we will not discuss how and how well this reporting is done.

(2.) We understand that the non-government, non-profit sector is diverse. Some members in this sector may not identify themselves as community organizations. However, in our experience and in the literature, "community organization" is a common self- and externally imposed identification among members of this sector.

(3.) See the Final Evaluation Report of the Voluntary Sector Initiative Process Evaluation published by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/ cs/sp/sdc/evaluation/sp-ah213e/page00.shtml) and the Draft Discussion Paper: Better Outcomes: Stronger Communities: Enhancing the BC Government Non Profit Relationship (http://www.cnpm.ca/PDF%20Files/GNPI_ExSumm_V15_Sept2008.pdf).

(4.) This branch was recently moved to the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, which has been renamed the Ministry of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism.

(5.) This division was restructured after we completed our study. The immigrant settlement section of this division has been reassigned to the Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development.

(6.) Data re the three cities are based on the data retrieved from the 2006 Community Profiles at http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92-591/ search-recherche/frm_res.cfm?Lang=E/.

(7.) A full directory of all these agencies can be found on the BC Government's Welcoming BC website at http://www.welcomebc.ca/en/service_providers/agencies.html.

(8.) In this study, we did interview three informants from the three municipalities. However, all these key informants suggested that, although the municipal governments have tried to deal with the multiculturalism issue in their local communities, they lack the constitutional mandate and necessary resources to do so. They also reported that as cities of Canada and BC, they are obliged to adhere to the two Acts, but there is no inter-textual or institutional connection between the cities and the federal and provincial government on these particular policies. Therefore, we decided not to include municipal government in this analysis.

(9.) For a brief history of the implementation of the CMA, refer to Abu-Laban and Gabriel (2002) and Fleras and Kunz (2001).

(10.) Canadian Heritage was responsible for the Multiculturalism Act when this study was done. Since November, 2008, the Harper government has reassigned the multiculturalism file to the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, which has now become the Ministry of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism.

(11.) See Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat at http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/rpp/0708/pch/pch04-eng.asp#name4.2.1.

(12.) This information was provided by one of our key informants--one of the managers running the program during that period.

MIU CHUNG YAN is associate professor in the School of Social Work, University of British Columbia. He was also the leader of the Settlement, Integration, and Welcoming Community Domain of Metropolis British Columbia. His research interests include labour market experience of new generation youth from visible minority immigrant families and the bridging functions of place-based community organizations at the neighbourhood level.

SHIRLEY CHAU is assistant professor in the School of Social Work, UBC Okanagan in Kelowna. Her research interests are marginalized populations, cross-cultural social work, and anti-racist social work practice. Her publications are concerned with the experience of immigrants in Canada, including understanding the cultural predictors of health among Chinese seniors and the settlement experience of Asian "satellite" adolescents in Canada.

DAVE SANGHA is assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Northern British Columbia. His research interests include antiracism, human rights, diasporic communities, and northern social work practice. Prior to his appointment at UNBC, Dave worked with the Ontario Race Relations Directorate, the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Ethnocultural Equity Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Education.

TABLE 1. Funding for the federal multiculturalism program *

Year      196-97   197-98   198-99   199-00   101-02   103-04

Funding   29.2M      31      23.5     24.5     7.5      11.2

Year      105-06   106-07

Funding    6.5      7.7

* Information abstracted from information posted on the website of
the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (http://www.tbs-sct.gc.
ca/tbs-sct/index-eng.asp). The table was created based on information
on May 12, 2008.However, due to various changes in government policy
strategies and accounting systems, these data are useful  only for
referencing purposes.