{"id":100981,"date":"2026-06-24T01:25:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T01:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/100981\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T01:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T01:25:11","slug":"poilievre-says-there-are-too-many-heritage-months-in-canada-there-are-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/100981\/","title":{"rendered":"Poilievre says there are too many \u2018heritage months\u2019 in Canada. There are 17"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a B.C. town hall last week, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said there are too many federally recognized heritage<\/a> months, and that it\u2019s \u201ckind of getting hard to keep track of which month is for what cause or for what group.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spur for the question appears to have been a Liberal MP\u2019s recent attempt<\/a> to have July declared as Somali Heritage Month.<\/p>\n

In reply, Conservative MP Jamil Jivani sponsored a petition<\/a> for Canada to never declare another heritage month ever again.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnd the tokenism practice of recognizing a day or month in commemoration of any ethnic or heritage group; and celebrate Canadians for the sake of being Canadian not based on ethnicity or ancestry,\u201d reads the text.<\/p>\n

According to the Department of Canadian Heritage, there are 17 \u201cheritage months\u201d that are officially observed by the Government of Canada.<\/p>\n

This is obviously more than there are months in the calendar, meaning that some months are concurrently recognized as multiple heritage months at the same time.<\/p>\n

The busiest single month for this happens to be the current month. Right now, Canada is officially recognizing National Indigenous\u00a0History Month, Italian Heritage Month, Filipino Heritage Month and Portuguese Heritage Month.<\/p>\n

June also used to be Pride Month, until the Department of Canadian Heritage upgraded it to the four-month-long \u201cPride Season,\u201d meaning that one third of the Canadian year is now under pride observation.<\/p>\n

In addition, the Government of Canada also recognizes<\/a> five commemorative weeks, and 48 \u201cimportant and commemorate days.\u201d<\/p>\n

This includes the traditional entries of Remembrance Day, Victoria Day, National Flag of Canada Day and Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day.<\/p>\n

But particularly over the last decade, special days have been added to virtually every week in the Canadian calendar, ranging from Human Rights Day (December 10), to National Day of Observance for COVID-19 (March 11) to Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval (July 28), which marks the forced 1750s removal of Acadians from the Maritimes.<\/p>\n

As to which group gets the most days, Indigenous Canadians get six. There\u2019s National Ribbon Skirt Day, National Indigenous Languages Day, National Indigenous Peoples Day, Indigenous Veterans Day, Red Dress Day, and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.<\/p>\n

In second place, it\u2019s a tie between the military and transgender people, with four each.<\/p>\n

The military has the Anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge<\/a>, Canadian Armed Forces Day, Remembrance Day and the aforementioned Indigenous Veterans Day.<\/p>\n

While for transgendered Canadians, there is International Transgender Day of Visibility, Transgender Day of Remembrance and International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia and. There\u2019s also the International Day of Pink, which an official Government of Canada write-up describes as a day of action against \u201ctransphobia and transmisogyny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Transgender Day of Remembrance is not only held shortly after conventional Remembrance Day, but it\u2019s also the only day in the calendar to share billing with another calendar day, as November 20 was already National Child Day.<\/p>\n

Altogether, there are now just 20 days, all of them in December, in which the Government of Canada isn\u2019t officially commemorating something.<\/p>\n

On December 10, the federally recognized 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence comes to an end, and Tamil Heritage Month doesn\u2019t begin until January 1.<\/p>\n

In the interim there is only the Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster, which is marked on December 11.<\/p>\n

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com<\/a> and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a B.C. town hall last week, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said there are too many federally recognized…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,36631,36633,2070,36630,18060,36629,36634,36632,1214,445,15591],"class_list":["post-100981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-federally-recognized","tag-filipino-heritage-month","tag-government-of-canada","tag-heritage-month","tag-indigenous-canadians","tag-italian-heritage-month","tag-months","tag-national-flag-of-canada-day","tag-pierre-poilievre","tag-prime-minister-mark-carney","tag-remembrance-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}