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Ricardo Duchesne #fundie thevarsity.ca

A flurry of controversy has recently emerged over a University of New Brunswick (UNB) sociology professor’s research. In an essay sent to several Vancouver city councillors of Asian descent, professor Ricardo Duchesne claimed that rapid Asian immigration has damaged the once “beautiful British city” of Vancouver.

Duchesne was reacting to the city council’s recently proposed reconciliation efforts regarding Vancouver’s discriminatory treatment of Chinese immigrants between 1886 and 1947. He bemoans that such redress threatens to “tak[e] Canada away from the Europeans,” and guilt-trips Canadians into admitting “their history is a sordid tale of genocide.”

Unsurprisingly, his other academic work revolves around preserving Canada’s European ancestry, and curtailing the immigration of non-Western people. For instance, Duschene complains, “Sweden had practically no rape. Suddenly, they open their borders, they have one of the highest rape statistics in the world.”

Mr. Duchesne is a sociology professor at the University of New Brunswick who happens to believe multiculturalism isn't all that it's cracked up to be. He says research has shown that countries that are more demographically homogeneous are better off and don't have near the problems that more ethnically diverse countries experience. But the observation that recently thrust the professor in the spotlight concerns Vancouver.

It is Prof. Duchesne's contention that Asian immigration has hurt Vancouver. He said it was too fast and too pervasive, causing a "beautiful British city" to take on a "strongly Asian character." He also criticized the city for embarking on an exercise to study its records to determine if there were any recent laws or regulations that were racist and might have hurt ethnic groups.

He's taken aim at Vancouver Councillor Kerry Jang, accusing him of instituting this fishing expedition to try and pilfer white Vancouverites on behalf of ethnic Chinese using "the same white guilt our educational institutions inflict on white children." Mr. Jang, meantime, has complained to the university about Prof. Duchesne, suggesting his views amount to hate speech. The university, however, has defended the professor on the grounds of academic freedom.

So what do we have in Prof. Duchesne exactly?

Someone who holds the unwavering belief that Canada's white, European ancestry is being subjugated by the mass immigration of non-white Europeans. His writings on this subject can often be found on the website of the Council of European Canadians, an organization that opposes all efforts to deny or weaken the European character of the country. It is against the immigration of non-European, non-Western peoples into Canada, a phenomenon it believes "threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority within our lifetime." It also rejects the notion that diversity makes the country stronger.

In a recent post, Prof. Duchesne wrote an article titled The Great Fear – why do whites fear their own ethnicity? In it, he mostly rails against multiculturalism.