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Just yesterday, I mentioned that a variety of more rural Canadians that I met on my last visit to the area all expressed some form of concern about their "culture changing" with respect to significant immigration. I didn't have great examples, because I'm still mostly an outsider to them.
This morning, my wife shared this with me. The Moncton city hall has, for the last twenty years, displayed a large menorah around Hanukkah. That tradition ends this year. The city cited "separation of church and state" as the driver of their change of course, as if something in the legal landscape has changed in the last twenty years concerning public displays of religious symbols. Spoiler: nothing in the legal landscape concerning separation of church and state has changed in Canada in the last twenty years concerning public displays of religious symbols. The city is getting mostly derided in social media, and a common talking point is that they're putting out this claim while, at the very same moment, prominently displaying all sorts of Christmas decorations.
So what has changed? Here is where I have a little bit of insider exposure. I don't have public sources for this, and so I'm not actually even sure of how accurate it is, but it's the story "on the street". Basically, there's not that many Jews in the area, anyway, maybe a couple few hundred, but they've been there for a long time. Part of the community. Part of the culture. On the other hand, the sense was that circa ten years ago, there was almost no Muslim presence whatsoever. I was told that ten years ago, the only mosque in the area was really just a small house that had been repurposed. Since then, massive amounts of immigration from Francophone North Africa. They've come with a predominant religion and, well, different cultural understandings. This is what seems to have changed.
Obviously, the cherry on top of what's changed is October 7. It's tempting to think that that is the only thing that's changed, and even if they didn't have all the immigration in the past several years, the city of Moncton would have made the same choice. However, I can't help but be reminded of the old quote about how you go broke two ways: first, slowly, then second, all at once. It's hard to detangle the two.
EDIT: I realized after posting that I wanted to mention something else that was in my mind, but never figured out how to include it. It's that, culturally, they're bloody Canadians! Their culture is obscenely polite and accepting of others, other cultures, and multiculturalism generally. They're more than happy to let people do all sorts of their own cultural things, and general tolerance skews quite high. They're really of the "we can all get along" mindset. This is one of those things that seems to be cracking as they struggle with new situations that they find themselves in, and seems to me to be one of the reasons why they're so confused about these changes occurring in their own midst.
Something I can speak of when I talk to friends and family about their shifting opinions on immigration is that there's a widespread sentiment that people feel their tolerance and generosity has been abused. Not necessarily by immigrants alone (or more accurately, not by immigrants who aren't international students), but also by federal and provincial governments. Most people I know are small-l liberals and up until a year or two ago were broadly supportive of immigration. Now people are much more skeptical, and think they might have been naïve about the intentions of government/business as well as the attitude of prospective immigrants. The change in opinions has been very rapid and has not necessarily come from people I would have expected. I think the Liberals might have killed the golden goose here by going too hard, too fast.
With respect to francophone immigrants from North Africa, in Canada there's been somewhat of a friction historically between them and middle Eastern Muslims. Maghrebien Canadians tend to be much more hostile to the hijab and other things they view as signs of Arabic cultural dominance within the Muslim world. Maghrebien immigrants broadly supported the Québec's government banning of public employees wearing "religious symbols" (which was effectively targeted specifically at the hijab).
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