"Everything was fine for the first several years. Then in about 1973, the liberal party, headed by then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, out of compassion took in five thousand Uganda Asians who were Ismailis by religion. They had British citizenship, but Idi Amin expelled them from Uganda, and Britain refused to accept them in spite of their British passports. It was an act of kindness by the Canadian government led by Trudeau to accept this group of five thousand refugees. There was, however, an unexpected, immediate, and violent racist reaction against these non-Europeans, who had money and who were buying houses in good neighborhoods. Suddenly, the Canadian government at that time floated policy papers asking the question, "What kind of Canada do we want?" in purely racial terms. The government described people like me, with brown skin and still Canadian citizens, as "the visible minority." That's the government phrase. The policy papers also stated that we, the visible minority, were "straining the absorptive capacity" of Canada. Meaning that there were too many brown people and that Canada wouldn't remain the same."
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Academics from CanadaPrime Ministers of CanadaLeaders of the Official Opposition (Canada)Politicians from MontrealLawyers from Canada
Original Language: English
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2005 interview in Conversations with Bharati Mukherjee Edited by Bradley C. Edwards (2009)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pierre_Trudeau
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Pierre Trudeau
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau (October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000) was a Canadian politician. He was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984. His eldest son Justin Trudeau was a teacher before entering politics, becoming the 23rd Canadian Prime Minister in November 2015, the first child of a previous prime minister to hold the post.
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