Details on new immigrant integration bill
Details here on the new immigrant integration bill which includes forcing ethnic festivals to include Quebec content. Multiculturalism is “vicious”, apparently.
Is it just me, or is anyone else having trouble coping with this Quebec identity weirdness at the same time as economic threats are aimed at Canada from south of the border? I’m trying to keep my focus collimated on local news for the blog, but every time I pop open my media tabs, a torrent of alarming bad news floods out.
GC 22:10 on 2025-01-30 Permalink
SIGH. He already lost me at “made huge damage to the Quebec society.” What damage? How does he measure it? Can he demonstrate that it was *caused* by the law and not other factors in the past fifty years? I’d love for a journalist to challenge him on that, but of course the major news sources are mostly held together with duct tape these days.
Chris 00:16 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
>I’m trying to keep my focus collimated on local news for the blog
Appreciated! Only every other channel everywhere is non stop Trump. He’s genius at that.
>but every time I pop open my media tabs, a torrent of alarming bad news floods out.
When has it ever been otherwise? 🙁
Tim S. 09:08 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
I just figure Quebec nationalism is our shield against US expansionism.
Kate 10:31 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
Chris, we’ve never had the United States turning against us, and although Quebec has been flirting with identity politics for awhile, we’ve never seen it frame a law to demand that newcomers participate in Quebec culture either. And that’s leaving out all the international crises. These are exceptionally weird times.
Tim S., Quebec will be part of Canada’s defence, but it won’t be enough on its own.
Joey 10:44 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
Agreed, Kate. In the context of a US president who is hellbent on global economic war, the things that have seen so absurd the last few years, like PP talking about only being aware of two genders last week, seem even more batshit. Anyway, La Presse had a piece yesterday about the financing religious schools. I thought this passage is basically MAGA-QC (the quote is from Jean-François Roberge):
Le projet de loi prévoit d’ailleurs une modification à la Charte des droits et libertés de la personne pour « y énoncer que les droits et libertés de la personne s’exercent dans le respect du modèle québécois d’intégration nationale ».
« C’est parce qu’on voulait justement être certains que des personnes n’invoquent pas notre charte, nos lois québécoises pour essayer de faire invalider certains principes de cette loi fondamentale », souligne-t-il.
jeather 10:53 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
The Beaverton covered the US including Quebec.
jeather 11:01 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
It also says Quebecers have a duty to collaborate in welcoming people from different backgrounds and foster integration.
Maybe they could start by sending their kids to the same schools, that would help in integration.
Tim S. 11:07 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
Thanks jeather. I’ve seen a few of those but that one was pretty good!
Chris 12:03 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
>These are exceptionally weird times.
On a very recent time scale, I suppose. But (no disrespect), you should read more history. Things are not so exceptional now really.
Nicholas 13:03 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
On the topic of manifest destiny and US expansionism, the most recent Paul Wells Show podcast has its second part interviewing a prof whose research focus is this. I learned a lot, worth a listen (in general too). (Paul cut his teeth at the Gazette years ago, and occasionally Montreal things come through, but it’s mainly national/international issues, plus jazz.)
Meezly 13:58 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
This kind of thinking only makes sense if you’re xenophobic and feeled threatened by “foreigners” who are not like yourself. By that thinking, indigenous culture is even more threatened and should be protected, and the people were here first. Therefore, all Quebecois festivals should include indigenous content. But that’s not gonna happen.
Kate 14:47 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
you should read more history
Chris, I thought it was obvious that I meant exceptionally weird times that readers of this blog have experienced. Yes, the Black Death and the World Wars and so many other crises have been exceptionally weird times, but a worldwide pandemic followed by a general slide into fascism and a huge economic attack from the U.S. is new and weird for us.
Blork 16:51 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
On the plus side, 200 years from now, as the children of tomorrow scrape and scratch through the radioactive scrub land searching for six legged rodents to munch on, all of this will be forgotten. Instead, they’ll gather around their sparse little fires and keep the past alive through their only medium – oral history – and they will be consumed with religious fever over the lost world of the 21st century when the Marvel Universe characters tried to save us and apparently failed.
Uatu 17:01 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
Yawn. Hydro rates are up, overcapacity protocol in the ER, no family doctors, punishing tariffs coming up…. Time to pull out the ol’ cultural threats/language distraction again because it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Kate 17:05 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
Food’s going to get more expensive again soon, too.
bob 20:22 on 2025-01-31 Permalink
Same old same old – the elites bleed the place dry by cutting social services to the bone, privatize everything they can (most notably education and health care) and then blame Anglos, immigrants, and the RoC. They are basically the pre-révolution-tranquille fascist-friendly Church, privatized. The exploitations of the Church-demagogue nexus passed through a period of semi-socilist étatisme through to a neo-liberal rump state held together by adolescent ressentiment and bigotry.
Anton 03:40 on 2025-02-02 Permalink
Well, Canada did once burn down the white house… but that was like 200 years ago.
Annette 03:58 on 2025-02-02 Permalink
It was Britain that did it. The East Essex Regiment of Foot, the Royal Marines, under British-born Generals, etc.
Re: that Beaverton sentiment – I bet a white supremacist USA and Quebec ethnonationalists would have a lot to talk about. They burn the same fuel to maintain power. But the continent might suffer a scapegoat shortage were they to team up.