Brick by brick

Sure, Jason Kenney's trifecta in imposing right-association, right-speak and right-language all in the same week is ludicrous enough without looking into the details. But let's note that his attacks seem to be related rather than serving as isolated examples.

After all, the Canadian Arab Federation's contract which Kenney plans to shred in order to punish the organization's leadership is...to provide language training to immigrants:

"We have a contract to provide English for newcomers," Boudjenane said. "The LINC (language instruction for newcomers to Canada) school and we have a workshop for newcomers. The agreement is until March 2010. I don't know what he is talking about," he said, adding that contracts were signed for two years.

But it surely isn't an accident that having deliberately attacked the language training which was otherwise available, Kenney now plans to blame immigrants for lacking what he's chosen to take away:

Kenney told an immigration conference in Calgary that more efforts need to be made to integrate individuals coming to Canada. He said newcomers should be required to have a working knowledge of either official language.

Kenney said rules are already in place and free language training is made available to new immigrants so there is no excuse.

And in turn, Kenney's barriers to citizenship will only ensure that immigrants don't have the opportunity to vote against the Con government which has chosen to try to isolate them. Which may make for an internally coherent political strategy to build walls around the immigrant groups in the Cons' "throw away" pile - but surely can't be taken as anything but an appalling excuse for government.

(Edit: fixed wording.)