Monte Solberg Puts His Foot into his Mouth
Monte Solberg, Canada's Federal Citizenship and Immigration Minister, is being pulled over hot coals by the media for a slip up yesterday. When speaking about his department's increased focus on language training (a good thing) Solberg suggested the training was increasingly necessary as more immigrants are originating from Asian countries (a bad thing). Solberg claims being unfamiliar with the Latin alphabet makes learning English or French more difficult for Asians.
While his reasoning is unsound (it doesn't take overly long to learn 26 characters, especially for those who have already trained their ability by committing thousands of characters to memory) his conclusions are likely truthful, at least to a degree. On average students with European mother tongues can pick up English slightly faster than Asians. The reasons are likely multiple, but include greater grammatical and sound differences between Asian languages and English.
Nonetheless Solberg should know better than to make ANY generalizations about race. It's simply taboo in Canada. Our chequered racial-relations history has left us with an understandably wary public. That said, more funding for language training is undoubtedly a good thing. Immigration is essential to Canada, and the more well integrated immigrants become the more we are able to share in the benefits they offer our society, and the more they themselves will be able to enjoy life in Canada.