“I support Canadian and my mom supports Dutch soccer team – Mayor Fred Eisenberger”

Born in Amsterdam, Mayor Fred Eisenberger immigrated to Canada at a time when Canada offered a lot more opportunities to new immigrants. More than half of his family is spread across Europe, which allows him to appreciate cultural diversity. Nonetheless, he believes that immigrants who come to Canada should realize that they are Canadians first.

Following is Mayor Eisenberger’s conversation with Generation Next’s Asma Amanat:

GN: You’ve been an immigrant. How do you describe your immigrant experience?
It was typical in the sense that mothers stayed home and fathers worked. No one got rich but they made a living for themselves here in Hamilton. That’s classic immigrant experience.

GN: Most people move to the US for better opportunities. Was it the same for Canada?
Honestly, the choices were USA, Canada and Australia. Australia was dropped off of the list because it was far away. The US won’t take us so the only place left was Canada and many many years later, we feel it’s not a bad choice. From social perspective, Canada is a great model of how to bring people together to be socially acceptable and live in harmony…in almost complete harmony. We do pretty well in terms of inclusiveness and assimilation.

GN: When people come in, the first thing they think about is job. What was it back then?
It was the same. They thought about job. My father actually came a year before we did, so he had a job when we came. There wasn’t any social service or social welfare network, and a strong network of other folks who were in the process of immigrating from Denmark were an asset. That safety net is helpful and opportunities were more back then because Canada was looking for more people. Holland was not doing that well back then, so the country encouraged its people to move out, so it was a happy marriage. Circumstances are a little more challenging now because Canada is looking for people in certain sectors.

GN: What are the needs of the city of Hamilton?
The needs are in the steel, stamping and metallurgy industry. We’re putting an enormous focus on entrepreneurship, there’re gaps and that are not filled by graduates and can be filled by immigrants. There’s also the need of businessmen and entrepreneurs. It’s discouraging that many people come into the country with illusion that their skills are in high demand when that’s not necessarily the case.

GN: So doctors are compelled to drive taxis.
That’s a real problem. I know accreditation is the issue. Basically the medical association is responsible for providing it. The government should step in there. But it’s a difficult task. There’s a doctor shortage so the federal government should get involved.

GN: Generally the new immigrants are too busy to be involved in political process. How did you have enough awareness to be a Councilor first and then become a Mayor eventually?
Maybe it’s my folks that got me inspired to run for the office. I always had this inspiration to be in the office. So I ran for the office and won by 19 votes and thankfully the opponent didn’t ask for the recount. Circumstances and luck helped me.

GN: What are the predominant communities here?
English and French typically but there are Philippinos, Pakistanis, Sikhs who are very visible, Chinese.

GN: Are they involved?
They are to varying degrees. There’s a great effort to make sure that we are inclusive, so we have center for inclusion. We started a Center when the Hindu temple was fire bombed. We make an effort to celebrate the diversity, it’s challenging but we appreciate the interconnectivity. We look into how we can help them in businesses, what kind of lawyers would they need, what are the areas we need skills in…so we help people in variety of ways.

GN: These racial comments…are they delivered out of ignorance.
I think that’s ignorance. Some people don’t want to have exposure to other cultures so there is inherent tendency to break ties, so people make inappropriate comments. We need these issues to be exposed. People being quite about such issues in terms of their ethnicity or religion isn’t right. If the racial comments are intended to be funny or a slur… it should be brought into open. Once people spend time together, they find out that they are not all that different. There’re racial trends but they are not norms of the society

GN: How do we draw a line between assimilation and integration?
You can be a Dutch and a Canadian at a time. There’s no reason why people can’t bring their culture and celebrate each other’s cultures, but it does need to be Canadian first and other thing be second. There are some Dutch customs I still follow; there’s Dutch heritage that I’m really proud of. I still follow what happens in soccer team back home. But Canada comes first to me.

GN: So who do you support when Dutch soccer team plays against Canada?
It’s a real conflicting issue. I support Canadian team and my mom supports Dutch team.

GN: What are the challenges for you as a Mayor of the City?
There’re line of issues: we have revenue issue, we need growth revenue on commercial side, there’s poverty issue and they are connected; we are doing a good job in broad based economic development initiative that gets folks through schools regardless of ethnicity and we have program for graduates after they go through that program. We have infrastructure deficit we are dealing with, we’ve got community to build, increased diversity is very good for the city of Hamilton, so I welcome all the communities and would like to take them responsibility in city, we talk about minimum wage, in getting assistance from the province to deal with poverty, we are bringing together environment agencies and social service agencies because poverty is our collective program.

GN: So there’s are jobs available in steel industry in Hamilton?
There’re no new jobs. Steel industry is still a significant part of our employment base.

Author: Asma Amanat