WATERLOO—Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was rumoured to be headed for a promotion in last week’s cabinet shuffle — a reward for all the ethnic and immigrant voters he lured to the Conservative fold on the way to the election victory May 2. But Kenney stayed put in his post. And now, according to early analysis of the election results, we may know the reason: Kenney’s work is far from done. In fact, as political scientists have been sifting through the data of May 2, they’re learning that immigrant voters did not flock to the Conservatives in any large way in the election.
The Conservatives intend to reintroduce their controversial anti-human smuggling bill when Parliament resumes, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said on Wednesday. Anyone considering handing their life savings over to a smuggling organization that promises to send them to Canada by ship should “think again†now that the Tories have a majority, the Minister said in an interview.
As election controversies go, the one about to be spooled out here might just end up winning the Conservatives more votes among its anti-gay base, but it’s telling about the lengths the party of Stephen Harper will go to troll for votes among the more fringe elements in this country.
By RITA TRICHUR, Globe and Mail Update, April 22, 2011
This federal election campaign has turned me into an angry “ethnic” voter and the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP are all to blame. While all three political parties have pandered to so-called ethnic voters in previous elections, they have never been this brazen. In fact, the callous tactics that have come to typify the 2011 campaign mark a new low for Canadian multiculturalism. This country has witnessed some of the most appalling acts of ethnic reductionism in recent memory and it is fuelling a backlash from voters.
“Stories They Better Not Sound” performed by David James Hudson in the 4 minute round of the 2011 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Championships in Vancouver, BC on April 21, 2011. (c)David James Hudson 2011
