I attended a ROM lecture entitled Politics of Culture, Politics of Identity, delivered by Princeton University professor Kwame Anthony Appiah.

I don't know if he was deliberately playing to the home crowd or not, but he came out strongly against public funding of private religious schools and received a healthy round of applause from the audience.

In a panel discussion afterwards, pollster Allan Gregg and Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, the issue of ethnic enclaves came up, with Gregg saying the number of census units where 30 per cent of the population comes from one ethnic group has shot up dramatically in the past 20 years.

More grimly, he noted that today's immigrants aren't doing well economically as those who came in previous waves of immigration. Gregg even said the older model of multiculturalism (be Canadian, but keep your old identity) may have worked for the Irish and Ukrainian immigrants of yesteryear, but not so well for today's newcomers.

Gregg also bemoaned the apparent lack of national purpose today, a big project or idea for everyone to get behind.

I bought Appiah's book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. While getting it signed, I asked him about the notion of national identity and purpose in a time of unprecedented global movement of capital and people.

In Canada's case, he saw it as people getting behind the notion of building a society where no one is left behind. He said in Africa, Canada is admired because it isn't a global bully like the United States and appears to strive to be a good global citizen.

My response? I told him that he may have inadvertently stumbled on the key issues that will be debated in this country over the next decade.