With three tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the jailed men were preparing something other than a huge garden, spelling out I Love Canada in tulips

Here's a country where 17 Muslims at home in Canada's relentlessly projected image as the Nicer New World — a Unicef Seasons Greetings card tableau of smiley-faced sarong, sombrero and tarboosh-wearers — lurched out of the picture of multicultural harmony and plotted to invade Parliament and cut off the prime minister's head

writes John Vinocur in his International Herald Tribune article on a new multicultural definition of Canada as the Non-America, including maple leaf patches on backpacks signaling don't-worry-I-only-sound-American.

Here's also a country, locked into the same self-portrait, that blinks in we're-good-guys bewilderment to think that savaging gentle, tolerant Canada was the idea driving these Islamic extremists from Toronto's immigrant community.

In a very politically correct place, the implications of what prosecutors have said are awful.

Like the notion that the enshrined status of multiculturalism in Canada may not provide some of its "visible minorities" (That's Canadian "correctspeak") with a new identity strong enough to drown out jihadist calls that their greatest loyalties and even murderous obligations are elsewhere.

This implication — that for all of immigrants' enrichment of Canada, something essential has gone wrong in an approach to integration that offers total accommodation but demands only limited compatibility — is resisted by a multicultural establishment.

But the issue may have started to tear at the nation's heart.

Here's the skirmish line: establishment forces against renegades drawing the conclusion that when it comes to Muslim extremism and homegrown groups of Muslims engaged in anti-Western violence, Canada's self-definition as Not The United States (or France or the Netherlands — hey, the Canadians would never force assimilation on an immigrant!) is a conceit that shields this country neither from hatred or reality.

The establishment's all-is-well reflexes can be extraordinary. After arresting 17 alleged Islamic extremists, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police insisted they "represented a broad strata of our community. It's hard to find a common denominator." Toronto's police chief, Bill Blair, even said, "I would remind you that there was not one single reference made by law enforcement to Muslims." …