I

Immigration Policy

A cynical view of recent Canadian immigration policy would describe it as a mechanism originally designed to get the dishes washed in fast food chains that devolved into a system willing to let anyone wealthy enough buy their way into the country. It's much more complicated than that. Since the 1950s Canada has had no coherent or stable immigration policy, but rather a series of bureaucratic capitulations to circumstance mixed with political collapses in the face of expedience which together have resulted in one unfortunate ruling after another. What the solutions to the mess of immigration are isn't very clear to anyone, but some of the unadmitted effects are: 1.A patchwork set of entrance regulations based primarily on the worst sort of nepotism or on the principle of receiverless bribes; 2.the presence of several xenophobic and openly racist immigrant minorities in various parts of the country, some of them organized and militant, others simply wealthy enough to buy whatever tolerance or fear suits them. 3.A serious split between the major urban centres, which are multicultural and in several locations dominantly non-European; and the hinterlands, which are white and getting hostile about it. 4.) Neither the will nor effective mechanisms to introduce incoming immigrants to the indigenous culture of Canada-immigrants are invited to bring their habituations with them, lock, stock and barrel, even when they are refugees coming from dysfunctional cultures that have degenerated into barbarism. Presumbly they've come here for something than they had, but no one has the confidence to offer anything to them except television and the mall.

Imports

Imports are forbidden by theoretical economists as fruit of the devil--unless it is investment capital or is being brought in for direct use by the theoretical economists, funding agencies and other affiliated corporate officials, together with their friends and families.

Independent Weeklies

Mostly a carryover of what used to be called underground newspapers such as Toronto's Now Magazine, and Vancouver's Georgia Straight, they are 70 percent entertainment industry non-news and 20 percent ideological cliches that we'll all be embarrassed about within five years. But the other 10 percent will be about the only non-corporate political and cultural analysis available to casual readers in Canada's big cities, and that makes them pretty damned important. Too bad they're learning to behave like the papers they set out to provide alternatives to. See Weeklies

Industrial Resources

Once significant in volume and sited mainly in Ontario and parts of Quebec. Now on their way to Mexican Maquilidoros on American-owned transport trucks.

Innis, Harold

1950s University of Toronto academic who wrote several interesting essays on the fur trade to which he appended some tentative speculations about the need for efficient lines of communication north of the 49th parallel if Canada was to thrive economically and culturally. Innis' untimely death in 1953 has resulted in generations of unsupervised academic intellectual embroidery, blather, self-serving enthusiasms and other genial miscommunication. Innis himself is still a regular invitee to Liberal Party culture wanks, where he is able to interact without difficulty despite his condition.

Intellectuals

Canada has about 800 of these fragile devices, ninety percent of whom know one another but never talk freely except at conferences. Not to be confused with university professors or members of the media, who are not intellectuals and never talk freely about anything, least of all at conferences.

Internet

A few years ago it was the digital version of open mouth radio, but it is now fast becoming the digital equivalent of those advertising flyers that clog your mailbox. If this is how the Information Highway is going to transport people and ideas, let's blow the bridges and ramps while we still can.

Inuit

One-time Eskimos in the Eastern Arctic attempting to gain restitution for ecological and cultural trauma of incoming nature photographers through self-government, cultural self-deification and six-month annual government-paid vacations for Native population in global fun spots. See DAVIS INLET

Investor Confidence

A new and mysterious need of wealthy people and lending agencies to have their confidence constantly and egregiously bolstered by government tax breaks, policy wonks, and cruel treatment of persons with low incomes. This need is not uniquely Canadian, but it may put an end to Canada.