Introduction: Multicultural Futures? Challenges and Solutions/Avenirs Multiculturels? Problemes Et Solutions‪.‬

In 2006 Canada's official multiculturalism policy celebrated its thirty-fifth birthday. What better time to stop and reflect on where we are, where we would like to go, and how we expect to get there. This special issue of Canadian Ethnic Studies/Etudes ethniques au Canada does exactly that. Over the years, multiculturalism has come to evoke a peaceful image of an integration-based model in which many cultures live together within one nation-state. As Canada has evolved, the success of its multiculturalism policies has earned it worldwide admiration, though the policies are not without their critics and weaknesses. While it is recognized as a liberal country that welcomes diversity and can transform itself over time by including diversity in the social fabric, Canada must also deal with conflicts within and between groups of immigrants. At Canada's core is the duality of its two European colonizing peoples. However, during the twentieth century, Canada evolved into a country that acknowledges diversity, a policy that gained explicit recognition in the early 1970s and which came to the fore in the 1980s.