OTTAWA — Canada 's sometimes-smug attitude that nothing could disturb its multicultural society took a hit this week as police alleged Muslim citizens wanted to bomb Parliament and other key institutions, and behead the prime minister.
It suddenly struck home that Canada appeared to be at risk of its own home-grown terrorism—not in the United States or England, not in Spain or Indonesia, but in downtown Toronto or Ottawa.
"Canadians were a bit complacent, because we're so focused on identifying ourselves in contrast to Americans," said Audrey Macklin, a University of Toronto law professor who specializes in citizenship and criminal law.
"Canadians imagine that the world perceives them as somehow nicer than the United States."
It was largely in respectable suburbs of Toronto that 17 arrests were made on Friday and Saturday. Police alleged they were a ring inspired by al Qaeda and that they had taken steps to acquire three tonnes of explosive material.
Besides a possible attack on Parliament, it was alleged that they discussed bombing power plants and attacking economic, military and security targets.
Mosaic or Melting Pot
Partly stemming from the country's former status as colonies of both France and Britain, Canada has celebrated and even encouraged linguistic, cultural and religious differences—the multicultural mosaic approach.
This distinguished it from the U.S. melting pot as well as from France, where the government banned overt religious symbols such as Muslim headscarves from schools—whereas in Canada Sikh students even bring traditional daggers to school.
But this week's revelation has sparked a vigorous debate on whether the mosaic approach has worked.
"If the allegations are true and the plot more than a fantasy that became a conspiracy, we are under attack from ourselves," contended Toronto Star columnist Jim Travers. "In pursuing multicultural tolerance, Canada has been negligent in reinforcing essential, common-denominator values."
The Toronto -based Globe and Mail declared it would be "rash and unjustified" to "leap to the conclusion that our experiment with mass immigration and multiculturalism is failing, that our very tolerance and openness have become a weakness."
This won a rebuke from Frank Hilliard of Grand Forks, British Columbia, who wrote the paper: "Only in Toronto , where political correctness has replaced logic and careful observation, would a major newspaper argue the opposite."
However, terrorism expert Martin Rudner of Carleton University in Ottawa said the answer was not to go after multiculturalism but after terrorists.
"We don't surrender to the enemy," he said, noting that the security tools—including those authorized in legislation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States—were good and should not be discarded in an upcoming review.
Conservative Jason Kenney, who speaks for Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Parliament when Harper is absent, said multiculturalism itself could not be blamed.
"In France, they reject multiculturalism and they promote social integration. That hasn't exactly been a successful model in preventing violence," he told Reuters.
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