A final version of this draft appears in the following journal:

1993. "Multiculturalism, or the United Colors of Capitalism?" Antipode 25(4): 263-294.

Multiculturalism, or the United Colors of Capitalism?

Katharyne Mitchell
University of California at Berkeley*

In a period of three hours on December 9, 1988, buyers in Hong Kong purchased 216 luxury condominiums constructed by Grand Adex Developments in The Regatta, on the south shore of False Creek in downtown Vancouver. The sale prompted a tremendous outcry and public debate about Canadian and foreign ownership and local control in Vancouver that has continued into the present decade. In the case of the Regatta units, concern from Vancouver residents focused on the connection of Victor Li to the development and sale of the condominiums, as well as to their exclusive and rapid marketing in Hong Kong. Victor Li, who holds a thirty percent interest in the Cheung Kong Real Estate Agency through which the condos were sold, is also the president of Concord Pacific Ltd., the company involved in the mega development of the former Expo lands on the north shore of False Creek. These lands comprise a full one-sixth of downtown Vancouver. Victor Li is a naturalized Canadian citizen and the son of the wealthiest man in Hong Kong, the multi-billionaire, Li Ka-shing.

The marketing of the Regatta condos, which fuelled anti-Hong Kong sentiment in the city, was publicized and debated in all the major media channels in Vancouver and in many other Canadian cities. Members of various political parties became involved in the discussion, as did representatives from international business centers, universities, multicultural institutes and neighborhood organizations. Politicians who spoke scathingly of the sales included Committee of Progressive Electors (COPE) councillor Harry Rankin. Rankin, a progressive leftist, said at the time, "The basic issue is to give Canadians the first and only chance to buy: that means Canadian residents or landed immigrants. No offshore people should be allowed to speculate in this market." Michael Goldberg, chairman of the Vancouver International Financial Centre (a non-profit society acting as conduit between government and business to promote Vancouver as an international business center) responded by dismissing negative reactions such as those of Rankin's as fuelled by racism and fear of change. "People who experience change... look for a bogeyman to blame. Now it is really easy to blame foreigners, especially visible minorities for these changes. If the same units had been marketed in London, I suspect the outcry would have been much less."

In the preceding remarks by Rankin and Goldberg, the age-old theme of globalism versus localism emerges. This theme has been part of an ongoing debate in Vancouver since the late 1960s, and has recurred with each successive period of prosperity and renewed urban development. Most frequently the politicians who have aligned themselves on the side of localism and slow-growth development have been members of left or liberal parties such as COPE. Believing that uncontrolled international investment and rapid development often produce major, unacceptable dislocations within the city, these politicians and parties have fought (usually unsuccessfully) for more stringent local controls over land and urban form over the past quarter century.

This is an old story. But the twist introduces a new dimension to this pervasive development conflict. When Goldberg accused Rankin of inhibiting international capitalism, he accused him of being a racist at the same time. This new strategy, involving the political manipulation of the meanings of race and racism, has had profound repercussions for political and economic alliances, consciousness formation, and urbanization in Vancouver. Although the dislocating effects of rapid capitalist development present a familiar theme, the importance of contemporary international relations with wealthy Pacific Rim players, particularly those operating out of Hong Kong, introduces a crucial subtext; identification of major international capitalists such as Li Ka-shing and Victor Li, brings 'race' into the equation, and control over race construction and the meanings of race and racism has thus become an extremely desirable and highly contested prize. Capitalists and politicians seeking to attract Hong Kong Chinese investment target 'localists' as racist, and endeavor to present themselves and the city as non-racist. Their willingness to attract foreign capital, to advertise the city as 'open for business' is deliberately conflated with a willingness to engage with Chinese immigrants and businesspeople in the spirit of racial harmony.

One of the stakes in this strategy of ideological production and control has been the liberal doctrine of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism, which was heralded as Canada's answer to the flawed and tired American melting pot metaphor, appeared to many as the only possible solution for a diverse society with an indigenous population, two European colonizers, and a burgeoning community of non-European immigrants. Upholding citizens' equal rights under law, yet respecting individuals' fundamental differences stemming from diverse cultural and 'racial' backgrounds, the tenet of multiculturalism seemed to be the perfect solution for Canada's disparate and often ornery population.

In this paper I examine how this hopeful, shining concept has been politically appropriated by individuals and institutions to facilitate international investment and capitalist development in Vancouver. The city's increasing integration into the global economy in the 1980s intensified many of the experiences of capitalism for urban residents and led to new forms of capitalist ventures and to new types of resistance to these ventures. Incipient relationships between Canadian and Chinese capitalists have thus required a reworking of social as well as economic understandings for the ventures to succeed. As economic activities are socially embedded practices influenced and gradually transformed by local social contacts and contexts, the personal interactions between people can have major repercussions for business activity and capital flow. Gereffi and Hamilton have noted, "regulatory institutions, such as those created by the state, provide a prescriptive environment in which people fashion their involvement in economic activities. People, however, respond not only to an institutional environment, but also to each other."

Racism, particularly against the Chinese, has been a long-standing problem in British Columbia, which has only recently been addressed in a vociferous manner in Vancouver in the past decade. As racism hinders the social networks necessary for the integration of international capitalisms, it has been targetted for eradication. Multiculturalism has become linked with the attempt to smooth racial friction and reduce resistance to the recent changes in the urban environment and experiences of daily life in Vancouver. In this sense, the attempt to shape multiculturalism can be seen as an attempt to gain hegemonic control over concepts of race and nation in order to further expedite Vancouver's integration into the international networks of global capitalism.

Integration and Attraction: Bringing in the Bucks

Vancouver's urban environment has been shaped by several periods of capital investment, following the boom cycles of the economy. The most recent period of rapid transformation prior to the late 1980s, occurred two decades earlier, when mammoth glass office buildings began to crowd the city skyline. The most recent changes introduced by international investment are thus part of an ongoing cycle, but reflect the shock of the new in a particularly acute manner owing to the intensity and speed of the transformations. Statistics on Vancouver's rapid growth and internationalization in the past decade have been documented in a number of places, as have the city's increasing links to the Pacific Rim and shift to a more service-oriented economy. Increasingly high-profile trade with Asian countries has been crucial for Vancouver’s growth and establishment as the primary commodity gateway for the U.S. market pending final settlement of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994.

In the early 1980s, there was a determined effort by municipal and provincial representatives and businesspeople to attract offshore Asian capital into Vancouver. In the hopes of enticing some of the wealthy Hong Kong elite to make investments in advance of 1997, there was a campaign to 'sell' Vancouver as a secure, profitable and livable city in which to do business and reside. This campaign crossed political divides and led to unlikely alliances between liberals and conservatives; it was advocated by B.C. Premier Vander Zalm of the Social Credit (Socred) party throughout his term of office, and is currently a major concern of Premier Harcourt of the New Democratic Party (NDP). Harcourt visited Hong Kong as Mayor of Vancouver and returned to reassure Hong Kong residents of his ongoing loyalty to the city one month after his election as Premier.

The major reason for the heightened interest in attracting Hong Kong capitalists to Vancouver is quite simple: there is a lot of money there. Estimates of the actual amounts of capital flowing between Hong Kong and Vancouver vary widely and figures are not documented by statistical agencies connected with either city government. At a private banking conference in Geneva in 1990, however, president-elect of the Swiss Private Banker's Association, Pierre Mirabaud, was quoted as saying that people in Hong Kong and Taiwan transfer about a billion Canadian dollars a month to Canada. How much of this capital stays in Canada, how much goes to Vancouver, and how much flows to the United States, back to Hong Kong or elsewhere is impossible to even estimate. One more specific measure of capital flow between Hong Kong and Vancouver, although still highly approximate, is through the business immigration program statistics. The category of business immigration was initiated in Canada in 1984 and was targeted for the Hong Kong elite diversifying their portfolios in advance of the 1997 changeover to Chinese communist control. The category includes investors and entrepreneurs who are required to bring a certain amount of money into Canada and are then given higher processing priority for immigration. As of 1991, the total amount required for investors in British Columbia was a minimum personal networth of C$500,000 with a promise to commit C$350,000 to a Canadian business over a three year period.

The statistics on the number of business immigrants to Canada show that Hong Kong has consistently led in this category, with 604 arriving in 1984, and 1,106 arriving in 1988. Of this later group, 335 indicated British Columbia as their first choice destination. Although Vancouver is second to Toronto in the preferred destination for most of these immigrants, the amount of estimated funds brought to British Columbia in 1988 (most of the funds brought into the province wind up in Vancouver), was nearly one and a half billion Canadian dollars, three hundred million dollars more than to Ontario. I consider these figures quite conservative. Bankers and immigration consultants I interviewed in Hong Kong put the overall figure as high as six billion dollars flowing from Hong Kong to Canada annually. Of that amount, over one third would be destined for British Columbia.

Banking networks between the cities have grown tremendously in order to accommodate and encourage the financial activity. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Group (Hongkong Bank), the largest non-Japanese bank in Asia has, through rapid expansion in the past two decades, incorporated many wholly owned and subsidiary firms in diverse geographical regions and financial sectors. The Bank now owns the largest foreign-owned bank in Canada (Hongkong Bank of Canada) and handles many of the large-scale financial transactions involving Hong Kong and Vancouver. The Hong Kong Bank of Canada has assets of over 10 billion Canadian dollars, and Asian customers (mainly operating out of Hong Kong) account for 25% of the bank’s business.

Capital Connections and Consciousness

New forms of capitalism, involving the intensification and acceleration of global linkages and local fragmentations, has led to new experiences of modern life and to new forms of consciousness. In examining consciousness formation, however, it is necessary to emphasize the various hierarchies of power that affect each individual's experience. If the social relations of power are not acknowledged, it becomes possible to offer a somewhat apocalyptic and universalistic vision of modern life as a fragmented and schizophrenic experience where "the truth of (the) lived experience no longer coincides with the place in which it takes place." In Jameson's vision, for example, the new global realities of late capitalism are 'inaccessible' to any individual subject; individuals, who are trapped in a kind of 'monadic relativism' cannot negotiate the disorienting new spaces that have become both fragmented and compressed owing to the insidious saturation of voids, the suppression of distances, and the barrage of immediacy. Although this depiction may be accurate for some, it in no way corresponds with the practices and consciousness of the individuals I have interviewed who are living, travelling, and doing business in both Hong Kong and Vancouver.

The transnational elite, professionals and businesspeople living and working in several global sites and involved in the control of capital and information flows between these sites, negotiate the new spaces of 'late capitalism' to their supreme advantage. One highly successful real estate agent spoke of the efficacious use of the fifteen hour time difference between Hong Kong and Vancouver. With an immediacy of communication juxtaposed with a real time lag she is able to maintain nearly continuous buyer-seller information and connections. As a result of this 'postmodern condition', she obtains market information from Hong Kong and sells Vancouver real estate twenty-four hours a day. She is also occasionally able to get a jump on the local market for her Hong Kong clients depending on the time of day that the Vancouver office buildings are made available. She said in an interview:

Several businesspeople in Hong Kong spoke to me of the strategic location of their children in universities in Canada, the United States and England in order to acculturate them to different areas of the world in which there might be the potential to live or do business. This move is partly an effort to safeguard the family's wealth and well-being in the case of negative ramifications after 1997, but also represents a desire to extend the family network spatially. Parents and children travel and communicate easily and on a frequent basis. The power involved in the ability to control the experience of travel, trans-cultural communication, habitation, education and business thus produces a completely different experience of late capitalism than that described by Jameson. It also leads to new and different forms of cultural identity, and to a need for new ideological meanings of race and nation in the context of the growing economic ties as international capitalisms become intertwined.

A frequent interviewee and friend in Hong Kong operates in the spaces of 'late modernity' quite easily and profitably. Susan Liu was educated in English from the first year of primary school, and went to secondary school in England. She is the wife of a prominent surgeon in Hong Kong, and the daughter of a wealthy Shanghai businessman who emigrated to Hong Kong in the 1940s. She is currently educating one son at Eton and one at Dartmouth. Susan has recently obtained a green card from the United States and is pondering a move to either the United States or Canada, depending on her husband's job and business opportunities. She often told me that she considered herself an 'internationalist' or 'global citizen' when I asked her questions about personal identity. She has friends all over the world, speaks several languages, travels frequently, and feels comfortable in many different cultures. Her 'national' allegiance is based on a special familiarity with the culture of Hong Kong, not with a 'racial' allegiance. She said in an interview: Hong Kong is always home. Hong Kong is in a way my country. I don't have an allegiance to China. I don't understand them, I don't know them. I don't want to know them. I would feel more at home with an American or British or Canadian than mainland Chinese.

Another friend and informant in Hong Kong is also a member of the transnational or 'internationalist' camp. She and her husband are considering a move to Canada or England as a result of the 1997 transition to communist control. Lucy was born and raised in Trinidad until the age of eleven. After her father's death, her mother moved the family to England, where she was educated at convent and grammar school. She and her husband studied dentistry in England and now practice in Hong Kong. Her two oldest children were educated in medicine at Cambridge University, and her youngest has just graduated from Oxford. When I asked Lucy about her Chinese heritage and feelings about personal identity, she responded that she felt Chinese, but that her values and beliefs, her 'form of consciousness' was a complete mix:

These two women, new 'global citizens,' members of a transnational elite, expressed to me some of the multiple experiences around issues of cultural and national identity that are being formed and reformed in the context of the recent joining of global capitalisms. Their feelings about the experiences of modernity are important for politicians and capitalists in Canada because of the desire to entice them and people like them to invest in Canadian society. In Gilroy's (1991) examination of race and nation in Britain he demonstrates the ways in which race and culture have been conflated to legitimate the exclusion of 'blacks' from 'being British.' The linking of race and culture and the naturalized sense that white culture is equivalent to British culture has positioned black culture and black people permanently outside the possibility of national belonging. In Vancouver, in contrast, the desire to attract members of the transnational elite, powerful individuals like Susan and Lucy and Victor Li, who have global connections as well as global capital to invest, has initiated efforts of an opposite nature. Although culture is still conflated with race, the intent of this linking is one of inclusion and attraction. The contemporary message of Canadian identity and nationhood is the message of multiculturalism. Rather than one culture (white) being identified with the essence of the nation, as in Britain, all cultures together will form the essence of what it means to 'be Canadian.'

Race and National Identity in Canada: Powerful Interests and High Stakes

Meanings of race and nation are particularly delicate in the Canadian context because of the country's early colonial history. Divisions between the two charter groups, the French and the British (who were believed to be different racial groups), as well as territorial struggles with indigenous peoples has made the search for common symbols and meanings of community and nationhood hazardous at best. Early efforts to increase a unified spirit of nationalism heightened English and French antagonisms and threatened to break the federal system apart. Yet the growing threat of U.S. hegemony and the fear of being absorbed into American culture and the American economy was and continues to be felt by both sides. In this context, the production of meanings of race and national identity have been bound up with the necessity of placating those of different 'races', yet avoiding the use of American symbols, such as the melting pot. Cultural pluralism, the ethnic mosaic, and then multiculturalism were the original, celebratory examples of the state-led attempt to forge a unique 'Canadian' identity.

Although the 'interested' and contextual nature of race construction has been stressed by numerous scholars, the understanding of the nation and nationalism as a similar process and production is less well articulated. National identity is often presented as a cultural relationship or pact shaped over time; incipient problems of acculturation stem from the alien-ness of immigrants and their inability to share in the 'deeply grounded and active social identities' of the common working man. What this image elides is the element of power and material gain implicated in the production of national identity. As with race and racism, the production of categories and meanings around this concept is neither static nor innocent. When the meanings of race and nation are articulated, as they are in the ideology of multiculturalism in Canada, it is necessary to interrogate that joining as a process that is imbricated in historically and geographically specific networks of power.

In examining race and nation in Vancouver in the past decade, the social relations of power involved in the struggles over meaning become immediately apparent. Those who perceive Vancouver's integration into the global economy as a positive move facilitate the transition by presenting the issues of progress, growth, internationalism, world class cities, Pacific Rim investment and racial diversity in a positive light. Those who believe integration to be harmful emphasize concepts of conservation, environment, nationalism, localism, neighborhood and control. Interrogating who is claiming what becomes imperative to discover some of the motives and rationale behind each particular skirmish. When Libby Davies, a COPE city councillor and a proponent of localism, told a newspaper that she was displeased with Victor Li's marketing strategy of the Expo luxury condos in 1990, her position was immediately attacked as racist. Davies said in an interview:

The ideologies in contestation are not monolithic nor are they necessarily instrumental or oppressive, but they are always bound up with power. Davies, like Rankin was labelled racist despite her legitimate concern about unacceptable dislocations and the loss of a 'quality' of life, and her professed aims of local, neighborhood protection and slow-growth development. Although she contests the label for herself, she acknowledges that the issue of local neighborhood protection has, in fact, served as an alibi for some Vancouver residents with decidedly racist agendas. She said, "I did get racist phone calls, particularly from older, white people—people who were born in Vancouver and from the west-side who would say, goddamn Chinese, it's the Chinese moving into our neighborhood." The presence of Vancouver residents with an active racist motivation for 'protecting' their neighborhoods from change elucidates the difficulties that Davies and Rankin face in disentangling their agendas and beliefs from actual racists, and underscores the inherent strength of the attack against them. Since many of the ideological contestations in Vancouver spring from a multiplicity of sites impossible to pinpoint clearly, the manipulation of meanings of race and nation in the interests of international capitalism has been particularly well camouflaged and efficacious.

Race and Place

Racism, like capitalism, is an old story in Vancouver. The power of definition over what constitutes race and racism is central to the forms it takes over the years. White Vancouverites' conceptions of 'Chineseness' have often been bound to these definitions, and also to the construction of an Anglo Canadian identity through this process of othering. The identities that have been constructed along racial lines for Chinese Canadians and Anglo Canadians have been historically tied to place in Vancouver, with ‘Chinatown’ and ‘Shaughnessy’ exemplifying two contrasting neighborhoods with formerly rigid racial boundaries and class distinctions.

Until recently, wealthy Anglo neighborhoods in Vancouver's west-side, like Shaughnessy, were almost completely homogenous. The symbols of distinction in these neighborhoods were predicated on the links to a British aristocratic past, one that expressed both class and racial separateness. Recent expressions of racism against wealthy Hong Kong Chinese immigrants, which have increased in number in the past decade, often become manifest in struggles over boundary protection and land control in these areas. These struggles reflect an anxiety about the loss of both economic and symbolic control over the defining and marking of place.

Some longterm, white residents fear exclusion from the business practices of the Hong Kong entrepreneurs, whom they perceive as directing or channeling their capital and opportunities along racial, regional, or family lines. Much of the anger and resentment at the 1988 marketing of the Vancouver Regatta condominiums in Hong Kong stemmed from this fear of exclusion. At the same time, media articles, popular books, jokes and anecdotes from the late 1980s also emphasized the threat of engulfment. Words relating to water, such as tide or wave, were used frequently in reference to the new business activities and immigration of the Hong Kong Chinese. Floods and tides of destruction had been evident in images of "Asian" takeovers in earlier years as well, with Lothrop Stoddard's popular post-war treatise, The Rising Tide of Color recommended to the Canadian House of Commons by the member for Burrard in 1922. In this book, Stoddart wrote of the vulnerability of "white race-unity" and the "very imminent danger that the white stocks may be swamped by Asiatic blood."

Other conflicts centered on the transformation of the urban environment. In the late 1980s, demolitions, 'monster' houses and the destruction of trees and gardens were the source of greatest strife. The Monster House is a term that is used for recently constructed houses that are especially large in the context of Vancouver neighborhoods on the west-side of the city. The original, smaller houses, built on Canadian Pacific Railroad land in the 1920s, were demolished to make space for the new Monster Houses, which often extend to the extreme edges of the lots. Before the demolitions began in the early 1980s, one long-term resident of Kerrisdale described his west-side neighborhood as "one of the most conservative, fossilized landscapes in the province."

Many of the new houses are perceived as ugly and cheap by the older, white residents, who are drawn from the ranks of the upper middle class and wealthy. Although the new houses are much larger than most of the buildings that were there formerly, the general neighborhood impression of these houses is that the quality of materials is poor, the architectural style is boxy and clumsy, the landscaping is unappealing, and the entire package is non-contextual. Residents spoke to me frequently about the loss of ambience, tradition and heritage in their neighborhoods, bemoaning the new buildings' lack of 'character.' Implicit in many of the statements was a perceived threat to an established way of life, a way of life predicated on the symbols, values and distinction of a white, Anglo-Saxon protestant tradition. One person wrote in a letter to Vancouver City Council, April 10, 1990:

In addition to the actual physical changes in the landscape, there have been extreme economic changes as well. The most prominent real estate company in Vancouver, Royal LePage, shows average prices for an executive detached two-story in the west-side, rising from C$185,000 in 1979 to C$500,000 in 1989. The price for a detached bungalow doubled in just four years, from C$200,000 in 1985 to C$400,000 in 1989. Forecasts by real estate agents for the future show prices soaring to C$700,000 in 1995 and C$800,000 by the year 2000 for the average Kerrisdale home. Word of mouth stories and newspaper accounts depict far more acute price changes, including stories of houses that were flipped for great profit three or four times within a single year.

The association of the influx of wealthy immigrants from Hong Kong with the aesthetic and economic changes in neighborhoods like Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale was made both directly and obliquely in letters to Council, letters to the editor and in interviews with me. The anxiety surrounding a loss of way of life was often expressed as a concern about individual and national identity as well as a concern about urban change. One person wrote in a letter to the editor:

The reference to profit is a direct jab at the Hong Kong Chinese, who are perceived as responsible for house price escalation as a result of using homes for profit through the practice of speculation, rather than as places to live. For wealthy white residents, investing in 'tasteful' or 'high' culture in Vancouver society, which includes the home where one lives, secures profit yet does not have to be pursued as profit. Living in an established and wealthy area such as Shaughnessy purportedly because the character of the neighborhood "feels right", allows the homeowners to profess ignorance and innocence of any cynical or mercenary motives such as profit, yet establishes their fundamental connection to the underlying systems that generate it.

Although the letter refers to the destruction of a national identity, the concern over social identity is implicit; profit-generating development in Vancouver's east-side and outlying areas is rarely contested, nor are those areas (which are far more economically and racially mixed) defended on the grounds of preserving heritage, tradition, character or identity of any kind. The violence of the reaction against the aesthetic and economic changes in Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy betrays the profound fear that the symbols and meanings of the established and dominant Anglo group are being eroded, and with them, the chance of appropriating, and naturalizing the appropriation of the rare rights and assets that are dependent upon one's position in social space as well as the distribution of those assets in geographical space.

The repercussions of these economic, morphological and social changes in west-side neighborhoods have been extreme. Many people living in areas such as Kerrisdale have expressed a twofold anxiety: first, that the quality of the neighborhood that they are living in is being eroded through the imposition of large and "ugly" buildings and the influx of people with different tastes and values, and second, that because of the fantastic price leaps in housing, their children will not be able to live in the same area where they grew up. The anxiety expressed is that an elite lifestyle, represented largely through both the choice of neighborhood and the style of house and gardens within that neighborhood, can no longer be reproduced in succeeding generations.

Although the rise in house prices and the construction of the Monster Houses may derive from a number of causes, including intra-provincial migration and demographic shifts, there is a general feeling among many residents of these neighborhoods that the Hong Kong Chinese are largely responsible for the changes. Some residents I spoke with felt that the cultural differences, the different practices of daily life that they envisaged as the norm for people in Hong Kong, were changing the patterns of daily life in Vancouver. Here the conflation of race and culture operates in an insidious way to legitimize the exclusion of the Hong Kong Chinese from west-side neighborhoods. Residents invoked cultural difference as the reason that they felt uncomfortable with the new immigrants and were thus able to mobilize resistance to the changes on relatively neutral grounds. One woman in her fifties, a resident of Vancouver who had been born and raised in England said of the changes in her Kerrisdale neighborhood:

Spatial Integration and the Circulation of Capital

Other urban changes that affected Vancouver in the late 1980s included declining vacancy rates for apartments, the demolitions of apartment buildings where many elderly resided, the loss of single resident occupancy hotels, and the gentrification of some neighborhoods surrounding the former Expo lands. As mentioned before, some (although certainly not all) of the dissatisfaction with these urban changes was associated with the entry of the wealthy Hong Kong immigrants into the Vancouver real estate market. Most of the resistance to the changes, however, became embodied in urban social movements focusing on local control of development, zoning, rental agreements and the provision of public housing. Tenant action groups attempted to stop the demolitions of viable apartment buildings, while zoning control groups aimed at controlling the size and style of new houses.

One neighborhood movement resulted in a new amendment to control the zoning of property in a small area of south Shaughnessy. John Pitts, a Shaughnessy resident, spent C$15,000 to draft a bylaw to rezone nearly 200 houses between 37th and 41st and Granville and Maple streets. The zoning law, labelled the 'Pitts-Stop' by city planners, was approved by City Council in June, 1990. The law reduces floor-space ratio and sets out stringent property set-backs specifically designed to end the construction of monster houses in the neighborhood. Harry Rankin of COPE said of the new bylaw, "This is going to be the start of a lot of other neighborhoods wanting to protect the integrity of their neighborhoods. That is a reasonable demand." Gordon Price, an NPA member of city council, objected to the idea of putting the neighborhood "in formaldahyde." He felt that there would be negative consequences for other areas of the city if the bylaw were implemented, and blamed the political left for helping to increase local area power for political purposes. He said in an interview: "The left and the right have both bought into it; (restrictive zoning). In fact, the left is more aggressive in supporting the Pitts because COPE sees their opportunity to build a constituency on the west-side and undermine the traditional NPA constituency."

The "Pitt-Stop," or "Preservation District 1" social movement outlined above demonstrates both the growing local resistance to change in Vancouver and also the disparate reactions to that resistance by city council representatives. The fears of the NPA, pro-development representative, Gordon Price, concern the potential loss of a political constituency to the opposition, but also touch on the wider threat of a loss of 'rational' control over land use and land exchange by the city bureaucracy. The rationalized, systematic control of urban space is crucial for the free flow of capital through the city. If local groups are able to wrest control away from city government and 'freeze' or remove neighborhood districts from the ravages of rapid development, the circuit of goods and capital will be hindered, reducing profit and perhaps driving investors from future projects within the city.

For capital to operate effectively in a city, physical barriers to its circulation must be reduced to a minimum. Local control of particular spaces within a city increases bureaucratic, physical and social frictions, which then cause an increase in transaction times. The increased friction caused by local barriers increases the costs of circulation, and may render the city a less profitable site for investment than a competing city without barriers. City officials interested in development and in attracting international investment thus seek to aid the circuit of capital by reducing the chaotic or unsystematized local control of specific neighborhood districts. Following the passing of the Pitts' zoning law in June, 1990, several other urban social movements were formed with the similar intent of protecting specific neighborhoods from unwanted change. The city attempted to block these movements by increasing bureaucratic entanglements and fees and by proposing new, stricter city-wide zoning laws of its own.

As the reduction of physical and social barriers to capital flow increases the overall value of the city, so too does Vancouver's spatial integration into the global economy. With the alteration of space relations comes an alteration in value; in general, the higher the degree of spatial integration on any number of levels—neighborhood, city, region, Pacific Rim—the higher the value of the city as a site for international capital investment. As in the case of Haussman's Paris 1850-1870, the planners and administrators of Vancouver increased the potential value of the city by increasing spatial integration and aiding the circuit of capital; this was accomplished in both cities with the freeing up of land and property values, increasing land speculation, opening to international competition and increasing immigration.

The contradictions and problems inherent in the attempt to integrate Vancouver on so many different levels have been manifold. As Harvey has noted, corporate and political hierarchies require complex coordinations and articulations, and "the problem of integrating local with global requirements always remains a thorny problem for any administration." Racism, as an autonomous process linked in complex ways with capitalism; localism, featuring the attempt to preserve and reproduce an established standard and quality of life; and patriotism, focusing on the search for a 'true' (Anglo) Canadian national identity are all processes that have hindered Vancouver's spatial integration both locally and internationally. The growing anti-Hong Kong sentiment in Vancouver is a complex mix of all of these processes, varying by place and person but uniformly antithetical to the interests of multinational capitalism.

Multiculturalism and Capital Accumulation: Whose Interest?

In the following section I will examine some of the strategies that have been taken to combat racism, localism and patriotism in the context of Vancouver's integration in the global economy. The ongoing attempt to influence and guide the production of meanings and the new articulations of race and nation are directly implicated in the production of a multiculturalist rhetoric in Canada. This rhetoric, in turn, is implicated in the strategy of spatial integration and the articulation of international capitalisms. The multiculturalist ideology has been produced and contested by many groups and individuals in Vancouver, but I will focus in particular on the role of the state and on one private institution.

Cultural pluralism has been promoted in Canada in different forms and with different meanings since the time of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's term in office. At the time that he was elected in 1896, Canada was experiencing an economic boom, and Laurier saw his mission as prime minister to be one of easing 'racial' tensions so that the country could expand geographically and economically without the drag of conflicting sentiments from the two charter groups. For most of the 20th century, government policy initiatives around the concept of cultural pluralism functioned as a relief valve for growing tensions with Quebec and as a framework for a national discourse on the possible reconstitution of Canadian society and Canadian identity.

The term "multiculturalism" became common after Prime Minister Trudeau's speech in October, 1971, in which he introduced a new plan for the country called, "multiculturalism within a bilingual framework." The specific 'multicultural' programs that were funded and the types of conferences that were convened in the first decade after this speech did not deviate much from the earlier initiatives, which had focused on general questions of Canadian national identity and on the reduction of animosity with the Québécois. Critics of multicultural policy in the early 1980s noted that the weakest policy programmes were those that were aimed at reducing racial and ethnic discrimination, and that aside from a noisy rhetoric, the general effort by the government was minimal at best. The budget allocated for the implementation of multicultural programs in 1980 was a miserly C$10.8 million, and relatively little labor or energy was expended by government agencies—aside from a cursory interest in producing a few films and a couple new radio programs.

In the mid 1980s, however, the emphasis began to shift. The early concern about identity in the context of friction with Quebec became more widespread and all-encompassing. Canadian national identity was no longer just manifested in expressive instances of multicultural unity and harmony, it was explicitly linked in language and law to the multicultural ethic. At the same time, the policy initiatives of the government shifted from interest in the maintenance of cultural language and heritage (which had been primarily focused at the French Canadians) to a far more extensive and stronger commitment to the improvement of what it termed 'race relations'. Government funding nearly tripled within a decade, with a far greater proportion of federal money allocated to programs dedicated to the improvement of race relations. The percentage allocated for community participation remained approximately the same. See table below:

Multiculturalism Expenditures under Three Federal Programs, 1984-85 to 1990-91

Source: Based on data from Multiculturalism and Citizenship Canada.
*Figures exclude one-time payments of $12 million to the National Association of Japanese Canadians in 1988-1989 and $24 million to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation in 1990-1991.

Alongside the increase and shift in government funding, there were concrete moves toward the entrenchment of multiculturalism in the constitutional and statutory levels of government. The 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms included two provisions that were related to multiculturalism; Section 27 explicitly linked the interpretation of the charter as consistent with the 'preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.' The Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988 was even more direct in its affirmation of the cultural diversity of Canada and the role of the government in "bringing about equal access for all Canadians in the economic, social, cultural and political realms."

With the commitment to multiculturalism enshrined in the Constitution Act of 1982, and entrenched in the nation's statutes with the Multiculturalism Act of 1988, yet with a clear emphasis on maintaining the privileging of the English and French languages, the first steps in the nation-building of a new Canadian order were taken. The language used in reference to the new act is explicit in the linking of multiculturalism with identity, nationhood, and progress. The connection of a new Canada with a new world order involving international cooperation and increased economic prospects is similarly categorical. David Crombie, the Secretary of State of Canada and the Minister Responsible for Multiculturalism, wrote in 1987:

Crombie's words echoed the sentiments of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who had emphasized the potential economic benefits of multiculturalism in 1986, at a conference called, appropriately enough, "Multiculturalism Means Business." In his speech, Mulroney is unequivocal about the pragmatic reasons for promoting a new multiculturalism. He makes the link between Canada's need for export markets and increased trading opportunities with a more nurturing, progressive stance of government vis à vis the nation's ethnic members who might perhaps have links to "other" parts of the globe. The changing patterns of immigration into Canada make it more than likely that the "other" parts of the globe to which Mulroney refers, will be located in Asia. The gamble for increased business opportunities with the booming Pacific Rim countries through the particularist ties of well-coddled Asian-Canadians, is unambiguous and unapologetic, couched as it is in the lingo of humanitarianism and the entrepreneurial spirit:

The connection between the government's promotion of better race relations and human rights and the increasing immigration of wealthy Asian investors is made in several government publications, albeit indirectly. In a statement by the Economic Council of Canada in 1991, called "New Faces in the Crowd," the authors juxtapose statistics showing the decline of British immigration and growth of Asian immigration, discussions of the economic impact of the immigrant investor category, and government expenditures showing increases in funding for multiculturalist programs engaged with group acceptance and tolerance and improved race relations. The interconnections are implicit but fairly clear: the government has embarked on a new ideological strategy involving the mitigation of racial tensions surfacing around the increase of wealthy Asian immigrants into the society. Two new Bills and a national campaign in 1989 and 1990 were directly engaged with defusing racial animosity and educating people about racial discrimination. It cannot be entirely coincidental that the national public education campaign to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was organized less than a month after the following two articles appeared in Canada's major daily newspaper, the Globe and Mail:

The set of beliefs around what multiculturalism is and should be reflects private concerns as well as those of government agents. In addition to a flourishing of government organizations in Vancouver in 1989 and 1990 such as the Hastings Institute and the Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Services Agencies of B.C. (AMSSA), there have been some key private institutions involved in promoting multicultural understanding, particularly between Vancouver and Hong Kong. The Laurier Institute, headquartered in Vancouver, is the most prominent and well-financed of these organizations.

The Laurier Institute came into existence legally in the middle of 1989 but, according to the executive director, was operational for a year prior to that time. The goals of the institute are quoted in a number of brochures and publications. In short, they are "to contribute to the effective integration of the many diverse cultural groups within Canadian society into our political, social and economic life by educating Canadians of the positive features of diversity." Orest Kruhlak, the executive director of the institute, specifically mentioned the attempt to defuse potential racial friction as an important principle of the organization. He cited the organization's worry about future problems arising as a result of the increase in immigration and the growing racial diversity of Vancouver.

One of the first projects that was commissioned by the Institute was a study on real estate price increases in Vancouver. According to Kruhlak, this study had not been planned, but was in response to "a growing and emerging problem." In the report, entitled, "Population and housing in metropolitan Vancouver: changing patterns of demographics and demand", the author's results seemed to indicate that the rising house prices were a product of demand from the aging post war baby boomers. Baxter wrote in the executive summary:

Although this paragraph is fairly general, seeming to indicate that demographic change is at least partially responsible for changes in housing demand in Vancouver (with the implication of increasing house prices), the following paragraph in the summary demonstrates the persuasive rhetorical strategy that is at the heart of the study. In this section, Baxter makes it clear that the report is not so much concerned with showing the possible reasons for price increases as showing what are not possible reasons. What is not possible and not acceptable in the dictates of multiculturalism and the Canadian way, would be to label and identify and otherwise pinpoint a particular group. In an avuncular, warning tone, he writes:

The findings of Baxter's report, part of a series of joint research projects sponsored by the Canadian Real Estate Research Bureau and Bureau of Applied Research (at the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration at the University of British Columbia) as well as the Laurier Institute, were picked up and commented on by nearly all of the major newspapers in Canada. The effect of Baxter's warning statement on the media was immediate, and immediately conveyed to the public. The Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail, still recovering from the accusations of racism in articles written on Hong Kong and Vancouver in 1988 and early 1989, made the connection between Baxter's statement on "unusual or exotic groups" with wealthy immigrants from Hong Kong. This connection, although implied, was not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the text. The media, in an ecstacy of self-flaggelation and expiation for former sins, printed the story with explicit reference to Hong Kong. The Globe and Mail wrote in November of 1989, "Aging baby boomers, not foreign immigrants, are the main reason Vancouver housing prices are rising, a study says... (the study) was prompted by public complaints that home-buying by affluent Hong Kong immigrants had been forcing up Vancouver home prices."

The other Laurier project reports, all focused in some way on housing and real estate in Vancouver, were also broadcast nationally in several forums. Professor Hamilton's study, entitled, "Residential market behavior: turnover rates and holding periods," claimed that immigration levels did not contribute to speculation (flipping) in the housing market. The Vancouver Sun declared soon after in headlines, "Foreign buyers absolved," and the local Vancouver paper, the Courier, wrote in April, 1990, "Home speculation not immigrants' fault." A study by Dr. Enid Slack on the impact of development cost fees charged by municipalities, (the fourth in the series) showed that the levies on developers (for financing water supply systems, sewage treatment plants, etc.) are often passed on to new home buyers in increased house prices. The Real Estate Weekly in Vancouver wrote of these findings, "Slack's report is part of a major study commissioned by the Laurier Institute to determine whether any basis exists for suggestions that Chinese immigrant buyers are driving up Vancouver real estate prices. So far, the Institute has found, "in fact there is no one to blame... the responsible group is everyone."

The continual reiteration of Baxter's statement that no one is to blame appears to operate like a mantra for warding off the evil spirit of racism. But in fact, the statement operates on a number of levels. In denying that blame for the specific results of higher real estate prices can be pinned on anyone in particular, the proponents of this belief achieve two results: first, those who disagree with this belief are not joining in the valiant effort to defeat racism, and thus can be seen as somewhat suspect in this area; and second, since everyone is responsible and no one to blame, there is no obligation and no need to uncover and demask the agents or systems involved in the process that has, in fact, led to higher prices. The workings of capitalism thus remain opaque, the agents involved in capital transfer remain faceless, and the spatial barriers and frictions that may disrupt the free flow of capital over and through municipal and international borders are eradicated.

The implications of Dr. Slack's report go one step further. Not only is no one to blame for the unfortunate (for house buyers) rise in house prices, but if anyone should be held accountable, it is city government. Although house prices have doubled and tripled in a single year, adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to house prices in certain neighborhoods, Slack's findings focus on the development costs imposed by municipalities on new housing projects. These costs (which only affect new houses, not those that are the main source of the controversies discussed earlier) range from about C$1,500 for new homes in Burnaby to about C$12,000 for a new home in Richmond. Furthermore, the costs are not imposed in many communities in Vancouver or North Vancouver. Nevertheless, Slack's report was commented on in the Vancouver Sun with the headline: "Study finds extra charges placing heavy burden on new home buyers." Here, it is the extra charges that are to blame; the charges, levied by the municipalities, are forcing people to pay more. Too much government obviously throws the whole supply and demand system off, and developers are naturally forced to pass off these onerous tax burdens onto the buyer. If anyone is to blame it is an overly controlling and paternalistic city government.

Why would the Laurier Institute, an organization whose express mission and role is to "promote cultural harmony in Canada" and "encourage understanding among and between people of various cultures" commission these particular reports? Although my sources indicate that the Laurier Institute was founded by "a group of businessmen," the organization's brochures do not identify the founders by name. The executive director mentioned that it was "created by a half a dozen people who were concerned about the implications of the change that was occurring in Vancouver and Toronto..." but did not identify these six individuals. The list of the Board of Directors of the Institute in 1990 included thirteen people and their positions. Of this group there are four lawyers in major law firms, three executives in large corporations, two investment and management counselors and one real estate executive. Of the corporations or firms represented, nine are directly or indirectly involved with Hong Kong business or investment. Of the seven founding donors (donating C$25,000 or more), there is a similar overlap with Hong Kong business concerns. For example, Lieutenant Governor David Lam immigrated from Hong Kong in the late 1960s and invested profitably in real estate in downtown Vancouver at that time. The Bank of Montreal is one of the major facilitators and beneficiaries of capital transfer between Hong Kong and Canada, etc.

The role of the Laurier Institute to provide guidance through the education of the benefits of multiculturalism has been expressed in a number of areas, including a video and curriculum guide for use in the schools called, "Growing Up Asian and Native Canadian." The dissemination of general information from studies that educate (and persuade) readers about 'what is really happening' is made public and broadcast via the media. In addition, the information generated from commissioned research is offered to companies who become corporate members of the institute. In seeking to attract corporate members, one brochure enumerates the advantages of having insider information on changes regarding cultural diversity in Canada that may be economically fruitful. Like Mulroney's speech quoted earlier, the emphasis on the economic potential of contributing to the multicultural ideology is clear:

Other corporate members and major supporters of the Laurier Institute include the Bank of Nova Scotia, The Canadian Maple Leaf Fund Ltd., Concord Pacific Developments, Grand Adex, Hong Kong Bank of Canada, Pacific Canadian Investment and the Royal Bank of Canada. All of the corporations mentioned above have major stakes in Hong Kong and in the continued flow of people and capital from Hong Kong into Canada. Those who helped to fund the reports mentioned earlier, plus sponsoring a number of Laurier Institute events and conferences, include the major real estate companies and foundations in Vancouver, all of whom have significant interest in facilitating the Hong Kong connection.

Reclaiming Multiculturalism

In Political Power and Social Classes Poulantzas describes how the dominant discourse of bourgeois ideology presents itself as innocent of power, often through the concealment of political interests behind the objective façade of science. In the production and promotion of multiculturalism in Canada, the particular configurations of power remain similarly concealed, but in this case, behind the façade of national identity and racial harmony. The struggle over ideological formation, such as the language and meaning of race and nation, resonates as an effort to shape a dominant discourse for specific ends; the internal complexity of the endeavor should not obfuscate the fact that is a struggle with particular material goals and rewards. The manipulation of ‘united colors’ as an increasingly common form of hegemony building in late capitalism is arguable to the extent that the control of tensions surrounding rapid and increasingly international spatial integration must be secured for the ongoing expansion of capitalism. The manner in which these tensions are controlled, however, remains historically and spatially specific.

In Vancouver, for example, increasing global connections and rapid urban development has been accompanied by an influx of wealthy 'Asian' immigrants and by several high-profile development projects by Hong Kong investors. Tensions around city transformation have reflected both anger towards the unacceptable dislocations occasioned by rapid capitalist development, and also by increasing antagonism towards Hong Kong Chinese investors, who are often represented as invaders flooding the city on a tidal wave of capital. As tensions have grown, resistance to change has become more vociferous, culminating in several local attempts to halt 'flows' of any kind. In this context, the reworking of multiculturalism as an ideology of racial harmony and bridge-building in the city operates as both a localized effort at damage control in a specific situation, and part of a much broader strategy of hegemonic production in the interests of multinational capitalism.

By emphasizing both the specific and the more general aspects of the production of multiculturalism in Canada, it is possible to recognize sites of resistance as well as sites of control. When examining who is saying what and why about multiculturalism, one can identify the different types of appropriations that are occurring in each setting. Demasking the individuals and institutions responsible for these appropriations is the first step in contesting and reclaiming meaning. Despite the difficulties of disentangling agendas and interrogating material gain, it is only through this process that more positive interpretations of hopeful, shining concepts like multiculturalism can be won.

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