Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
Another thing is that the more regressive aspects of the older established belief systems in Canada have largely been forced underground in the past decades. It's a legitimate question to ask if a massive influx of people from abroad with more socially conservative values won't also prompt those already in Canada (but keeping a low profile) to come out of the woodwork.
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There are a bunch of ridings in BC that switched over to a Conservative plurality in recent years due to immigration, and the Conservative party explicitly targeted immigrant voters. The federal Conservatives had a debate in 2016 over whether or not to finally get rid of the anti-gay marriage stuff in their official policy document. If Conservative support had been a bit higher in Canada from 2000 onward we never would have gotten same-sex marriage.
And by the way, there are still a bunch of extremely important gay rights issues active in Canada. The biggest examples are in health care. BC didn't cover HPV vaccines in males because it was argued at one point that if women were vaccinated that would be sufficient for the whole population, because only women would give it to men, right? HPV causes throat cancer in anybody just as it can cause cervical cancer. PreP is another big issue. There's medication available that's cheap and is nearly 100% effective at preventing HIV, but it's not covered yet in Canada, so people are needlessly getting HIV (and a whole bunch of other STIs because it turns out when people go on PreP and get good health care their STI incident rate goes down by 50% for a whole bunch of other things, not just HIV). Guess which parties talk about covering it and which don't?
Whether we accept it or not, immigration has de facto political implications. And Canada's political policies are keenly aware of this because they have to be.