Living together by design: multicultural policy in Singapore and Canada

Few governments leave religious harmony to chance, but Singapore and Canada have taken almost opposite routes to it. Singapore treats harmony between faiths and races as a matter of public order, backed by law, housing rules and a network of local circles; Canada treats diversity as a matter of rights and identity, written into its constitution and a federal statute.

Both countries are often cited as success stories, and both have serious critics. Singapore’s approach is faulted for narrowing what religious leaders and citizens may say. Canada’s is faulted for celebrating difference while saying less about inequality, and for fitting poorly with the claims of Indigenous nations.

This article sets out what each state built, what the survey evidence suggests, where the critiques land, and what a local interfaith council, city office or community foundation could borrow from either model. It is not a ranking. The two countries differ too much in size, history and political system for that.

Two countries, two starting points

Singapore is one of the most religiously mixed places on earth. Pew Research Center’s Global Religious Diversity study (2014) gave it the highest score on its Religious Diversity Index among 232 countries and territories. Its 2010 estimates put Buddhists at 34% of the population, Christians at 18%, the religiously unaffiliated at 16%, Muslims at 14% and Hindus at 5%. The 2020 census, as summarized in the U.S. State Department’s 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: Singapore, recorded Buddhists at 31.1%, no religion at 20%, Christians at 18.9%, Muslims at 15.6%, Taoists at 8.8% and Hindus at 5%, among roughly four million residents.

Canada’s diversity is newer in its current form and is changing fast. Statistics Canada’s 2021 Census release on religion and ethnocultural diversity found that 53.3% of people identified as Christian, down from 77.1% in 2001, while 34.6% reported no religious affiliation. Muslims made up 4.9%, Hindus 2.3%, Sikhs 2.1%, Buddhists 1.0% and Jews 0.9%. Immigrants were 23.0% of the population, one in four people belonged to a racialized group, and respondents reported more than 450 ethnic or cultural origins.

These starting points shape the policies. Singapore’s leaders remember communal violence on a small island with no hinterland. Canada’s debate grew out of a quarrel between English and French speakers and was later widened by immigration from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.

Singapore: harmony as a matter of law

The Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act was passed in 1990 and came into effect in 1992, following a White Paper issued in December 1989, according to the second reading speech by Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam on 7 October 2019. The Act lets the government issue a restraining order against a person who threatens religious harmony, and it created the Presidential Council for Religious Harmony to consider such orders and related matters.

The 2019 amendments changed the Act in several ways, according to the minister’s speech:

• Restraining orders take effect immediately rather than after 14 days’ notice, because of the speed of social media.
• Religious organizations must disclose foreign donations and affiliations, and their key leaders must be local, though visiting preachers are exempt.
• Religion-related offenses moved from the Penal Code into the Act, including a new offense of knowingly urging violence on religious grounds.
• A voluntary Community Remedial Initiative allows someone who has caused offense to make amends through restorative steps.

Most of the amended provisions took effect on 1 November 2022, according to the current text of the Act, which sets a reporting threshold of $10,000 for donations.

Singapore: harmony built in neighborhoods

The law is the visible part. Much of the daily work happens through housing, schools and local networks.

Mixed housing blocks

The Ethnic Integration Policy, presented to Parliament on 16 February 1989 by Minister S. Dhanabalan, sets limits on the share of each ethnic group in public housing blocks and neighborhoods. By the 1980s Malay households made up over 30% of residents in Bedok and Tampines and Chinese households over 90% in Hougang. The original neighborhood limits were 84% for Chinese, 22% for Malays and 10% for Indians and other minorities, with the minority limits raised in 2010.

Harmony circles

After 15 Jemaah Islamiyah members were arrested in December 2001, the government worried about distrust between Muslims and their neighbors. Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong announced local confidence circles in 2002, and the first was formed in Joo Chiat on 3 March that year (Harmony Circle). They were renamed Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circles in 2007 and Racial and Religious Harmony Circles in 2022. The Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth lists 93 circles, one in each constituency, running interfaith visits, heritage trails, crisis preparedness exercises and a charity program started in 2009. Members are trained to respond quickly when tensions flare.

Days and declarations

Racial Harmony Day falls on 21 July, the anniversary of the 1964 riots that broke out during a procession marking the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday and left 23 people dead and 454 injured. A non-binding Declaration on Religious Harmony followed in 2003, and religious leaders later drew up a Commitment to Safeguard Religious Harmony that builds on it and is also not legally binding.

Canada: multiculturalism as a framework of rights

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced multiculturalism as official policy on 8 October 1971 (Environics Institute), describing it as multiculturalism within a bilingual framework (The Canadian Encyclopedia). It answered Book IV of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, which in 1969 recommended the integration, not assimilation, of ethnic groups, according to a Library of Parliament background paper.

The idea then moved into law. Section 27 of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms requires the Charter to be read in a way consistent with preserving the multicultural heritage of Canadians. The Canadian Multiculturalism Act received royal assent on 21 July 1988, by coincidence the same date Singapore marks as Racial Harmony Day. The Library of Parliament describes it as the world’s first national multiculturalism law. It commits federal institutions to equal participation and requires an annual report to Parliament.

Canada’s community mechanisms are mostly grants rather than standing local bodies. The federal Multiculturalism Program had an annual grants and contributions budget of $8.5 million, according to its 2018 evaluation. The 2019 to 2022 Anti-Racism Strategy added $45 million, including $30 million for community projects, and stated that systemic barriers in employment, justice and social participation affect racialized communities and Indigenous Peoples.

The two models side by side

Timeline of key steps

What the surveys show

Singapore has unusually good trend data. The Institute of Policy Studies Indicators of Racial and Religious Harmony 2024 surveyed 4,000 residents between April and August 2024. It found that 65.4% rated racial and religious harmony as high or very high, up from 57.1% in 2018. The share who distrusted more than half of any other racial group fell from 42.7% in 2013 to 27.1%.

The same report shows weaker spots. The share with a close friend of another race slipped to 53.2% from 55.5% in 2018, and 43.5% said they make assumptions about people’s behavior based on race, up from 35.2%.

Canadian data point the other way on some measures. In the Environics Institute’s The Evolution of the Canadian Identity (2022), 64% said multiculturalism was very important to Canadian identity, up from a low of 35% in 1994, though only 51% in Quebec agreed. Its 2026 Canadian Perspectives on Multiculturalism and Diversity report, based on 6,818 adults, found 66% agreeing that multiculturalism had contributed positively to Canadian identity. Yet 71% said there was too much immigration, and the share describing relations between ethnic and racial groups as good fell to 61%, from 71% in 2019. A quarter said they felt pressure to hide or downplay their cultural identity, rising to 35% among racialized Canadians.

Our reading is that both countries show broad support for the principle alongside signs of strain in daily contact, and that neither survey series can tell us how much of the result is due to policy.

The critiques

Singapore

The State Department’s 2023 report lists restrictions that sit alongside the harmony framework: Jehovah’s Witnesses have been banned since 1972 and the Unification Church since 1982, conscientious objection to military service is not recognized, and offenses such as wounding religious feelings carry prison terms. Writing for the Australian Institute of International Affairs, Rebecca Penny argued in 2020 that religious harmony has become a quasi-constitutional norm that subordinates personal belief to collective order and that, after 2001, placed Muslim religiosity under security scrutiny. On housing, the government’s own explainer on the Ethnic Integration Policy acknowledges concern that minority owners may struggle to sell when a block’s limit is reached, and notes buyback assistance offered since 2022.

Canada

The Library of Parliament paper records long-standing objections: Neil Bissoondath’s Selling Illusions (1994) argued that the policy encouraged separation, and many Québécois saw it as reducing French Canadians to one minority among many. Will Kymlicka answered in 1998 that the evidence did not show weaker integration. Indigenous scholars raise a different objection. Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks (2014) argues that state recognition frameworks reproduce colonial power rather than resolve it. The 2018 evaluation adds a practical critique: limited outcome data meant little evidence on whether the program met its objectives, and informants found those objectives too broad.

What community organizations can learn

Most readers of this article run a congregation, a city office or a nonprofit, not a ministry. The parts of each model that transfer best are the small ones. We think the following five practices are the most portable, drawing on the Singapore circles and the Canadian grant programs. Readers interested in how exchange programs build these ties can see our piece on why people-to-people exchange still works.

Relationships before a crisis

Singapore’s circles were built in calm periods so that leaders already knew each other when tension arrived. A local interfaith council can do the same with a standing contact list and a meeting each quarter, even when there is nothing urgent to discuss.

Joint service and shared calendars

Shared work builds more trust than shared statements. Food drives, park cleanups and blood drives run jointly by several congregations give people a reason to meet. A shared calendar of festivals and holy days helps schools and employers plan, and avoids clashes over space, like the circle that helped plan a fire-walking festival outside a Hindu temple with minimal disruption to neighbors (SG101).

A response plan for incidents

When an attack, slur or online rumor hits one community, the first day matters. A simple plan agreed in advance might run as follows:

1. Confirm the facts with the affected community’s leaders before saying anything public.
2. Issue a joint statement signed by leaders of several faiths within 24 hours.
3. Arrange a visible visit to the affected site or congregation.
4. Correct false rumors through trusted local channels, including messaging groups.
5. Hold a follow-up meeting a month later to ask what support is still needed.

Measure trust, not attendance

Canada’s evaluation found plenty of output data and little on outcomes. A small group can avoid that trap by asking a few repeat questions each year, modeled on the IPS survey: whether members trust people of other faiths, whether they have a close friend from another tradition, and whether they felt welcome at a neighbor’s place of worship. Our earlier article on culture as development makes a similar case for measuring cultural work by results.

What policy cannot do

Neither model settles the hardest questions. Singapore’s record of calm since the 1960s coexists with limits on speech that some citizens and religious groups find heavy, and it is hard to know how much of the calm comes from law and how much from prosperity, small size and memory of the riots. A restraining order that has never been issued is difficult to evaluate.

Canada’s framework rests on goodwill that surveys show can shift within a few years, as the jump in concern about immigration levels suggests. A grants program of a few million dollars a year cannot reach most neighborhoods, and its own evaluation could not show what it achieved. Neither country’s tools were designed for Indigenous nations, whose claims concern land and self-government rather than cultural recognition.

For local groups the limit is simpler. A council can build contact and trust among people who already show up; it rarely reaches those who do not. Programs that involve young people and women from the start, as discussed in our piece on who gets a seat at the table, tend to widen that circle.

Key terms

Restraining order (Singapore): An order under the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act that can bar a person from actions or statements judged to threaten religious harmony.

Ethnic Integration Policy: Singapore’s 1989 rule setting maximum shares for each ethnic group in public housing blocks and neighborhoods.

Harmony circle: A local network of religious and community leaders in each Singapore constituency that builds ties and responds to tensions.

Multiculturalism within a bilingual framework: The description of Canada’s 1971 policy, which recognized many cultures within a state with two official languages.

Interculturalism: Quebec’s alternative model, which accepts diversity while keeping French as the common language and culture.

Questions for discussion

1. Which parts of Singapore’s model depend on a strong state, and which could a voluntary group copy?
2. Should a local interfaith council speak publicly on political questions, or keep to community relations?
3. How would you measure trust between faith communities in your own city?
4. What would a response plan for a hate incident look like for your organization?

Frequently asked questions

What is the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act?

It is a Singapore law passed in 1990 and in force since 1992 that lets the government restrain people who threaten religious harmony. It was amended in 2019, with most changes in force from November 2022.

When did Canada adopt multiculturalism?

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced the policy on 8 October 1971. It was written into the Charter in 1982 and into the Canadian Multiculturalism Act in 1988.

Which model works better?

The evidence does not allow a clean answer. Both countries report broad public support, and neither has data that separates the effect of policy from other factors.

What are Singapore’s harmony circles?

They are 93 local groups, one per constituency, that bring religious and community leaders together and respond quickly to tensions.

What is the main criticism of Canadian multiculturalism?

Critics have argued that it can encourage separation, sits uneasily with Quebec and Indigenous claims, and lacks good data on outcomes.

What can a small community group borrow from these models?

Standing relationships before a crisis, joint service projects, a shared festival calendar, an agreed response plan for incidents and a simple yearly trust survey.

Closing thoughts on religious harmony

Singapore and Canada show that interfaith harmony can be pursued through law and housing rules or through rights and grants, and that both routes leave hard questions open. Singapore buys order at some cost to speech. Canada protects expression but struggles to show what its programs change, and its public mood has shifted quickly.

For a local council the useful lesson is narrower. Build the contact list before it is needed, agree the first five steps of an incident response in writing, and ask the same three trust questions every year so that change can be seen. Examples of the kind of community work that follows from this appear on our programs page.

Sources

• Pew Research Center, Global Religious Diversity (4 April 2014).
• U.S. Department of State via ecoi.net, 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: Singapore (26 June 2024).
• Statistics Canada, The Canadian census: A rich portrait of the country’s religious and ethnocultural diversity (26 October 2022).
• Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore, Second Reading Speech for the Maintenance of Religious Harmony (Amendment) Bill (7 October 2019).
• Singapore Statutes Online, Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act 1990.
• SG101, HDB Ethnic Integration Policy (1989).
• Harmony Circle, About Harmony Circle.
• Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, Racial and Religious Harmony Circle.
• SG101, Racial Riots (1964 and 1969).
• Harmony Circle, FAQs about the Commitment.
• SG101, Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circle.
• Environics Institute, 50 years of multiculturalism (2021).
• Jack Jedwab, The Canadian Encyclopedia, Multiculturalism (updated 20 March 2020).
• Library of Parliament, Canadian Multiculturalism.
• Justice Laws Website, Constitution Act, 1982, Part I.
• Justice Laws Website, Canadian Multiculturalism Act (1988).
• Canadian Heritage, Evaluation of the Multiculturalism Program 2011-12 to 2016-17 (2018).
• Canadian Heritage, Building a Foundation for Change: Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy 2019 to 2022 (2019).
• Institute of Policy Studies, Results from the IPS-OnePeople.sg Indicators of Racial and Religious Harmony 2024 (3 February 2025).
• Environics Institute, The Evolution of the Canadian Identity (December 2022).
• Environics Institute, Canadian Perspectives on Multiculturalism and Diversity (July 2026).
• Australian Institute of International Affairs, The Constitutionalisation of Religious Harmony in Singapore (14 August 2020).
• University of Minnesota Press, Red Skin, White Masks (2014).
• Government of Singapore, HDB’s Ethnic Integration Policy: why it still matters.