Intersections of Diversity (Policy Research and Identity Issues) (Editorial‪)‬

Rethinking policy-research within a progressive framework for interpreting identity issues is a priority for the Multiculturalism Program at the Department of Canadian Heritage. The influence of multiple and overlapping factors of diversity are becoming increasingly apparent in the kinds of community initiatives that the Program is called upon to support, whether those contributing factors include age, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status, alongside the concerns of race, ethnicity, culture, and religion. But this type of agenda should capture the attention of other government departments and programs as well since identity and diversity issues are becoming increasingly influential in policy areas like labour, justice, and health, to name a few. On Apri1 25-26, 2003, the Association for Canadian Studies, in partnership with the Multiculturalism Program, held a policy-research seminar on the Intersections of Diversity in Niagara Falls. This seminar was the fourth in a series of Multiculturalism Program policy-research conferences dating back to 1997. The papers selected for publication in this edition of Canadian Ethnic Studies/Etudes ethniques au Canada have been written by experts in various fields who were able to participate in that seminar. The papers were commissioned by the Multiculturalism Program in part for the purpose of providing a set of research monographs informed by the discussion at the seminar itself. Beyond the seminar, however, the authors whose articles appear in this edition were free to discuss the virtues and limitations of the "intersections" policy-research that they themselves are currently working on.