FIRST READING: Inside Quebec’s new plan to kill multiculturalism

NP on Bill 84. Lots of nuance given different understandings of multiculturalism which, in the Canadian context, has always been about integration, not separation, with accommodation aimed at integration, not separation. Implementation and behaviours of course are not perfect:

In what may yet prove to be a model for the rest of the country, Quebec is rolling out a comprehensive plan to kill Canadian multiculturalism in favour of “interculturalism.”

Bill 84, An Act respecting national integration, which was tabled Thursday, lays out an “integration model” under which immigrants to Quebec are expected to both learn French and adhere to a “common culture.”

“For the first time in our history, we’re going to define who we are and how we want to evolve as a nation,” said Jean-François Roberge, Quebec’s immigration minister, in a French-language web video promoting the bill that was posted on Monday.

“This model will let us build a society where the Francophone majority invites all Quebecers to adhere and contribute to the common culture of our nation,” he said.

In an English-language defence of the bill delivered at a press availability on Tuesday, Roberge said people coming to Quebec “must accept” its democratic values, such as the equality of men and women. “We don’t want ghettoes, we want one society.”

In an English-language defence of the bill delivered at a press availability on Tuesday, Roberge said people coming to Quebec “must accept” its democratic values, such as the equality of men and women. “We don’t want ghettoes, we want one society.”

The bill’s text states that Quebecers are “expected to … collaborate in the welcoming of immigrants and foster their integration into the Québec nation.”

Conversely, immigrants are expected to “participate fully, in French, in Québec society” and “participate in the vitality of Québec culture by enriching it.”

Quebec’s forays into cultural protection are often conspicuously out of step with the rest of Canada. That’s most obviously been the case when it comes to another piece of CAQ legislation, Bill 21. Passed in 2019, it forbids Quebec government employees — including nurses and teachers — from wearing religious garb at work such as hijabs, kippas, dastaars or Catholic pendants.

Bill 21 inspired widespread condemnation from across English Canada, including from the Conservatives.

But on the issue of integrating immigrants, nationwide polls show that Canadians are increasingly supportive of a system in which newcomers must adhere to certain “shared values.”

A Leger poll from November 2023 found 55 per cent of respondents agreeing with the notion that the Canadian government should be “encouraging newcomers to embrace broad mainstream values and traditions and leave behind elements of their cultural identity that may be incompatible with that.”

That same poll also found that a majority of non-white respondents did not automatically agree with the nostrum “diversity is our strength.”

Instead, 56 per cent agreed with the notion that “some elements of diversity can provide strength, but some elements of diversity can cause problems / conflict” — slightly higher than the share of Caucasian respondents (55 per cent) who said the same thing.

Source: FIRST READING: Inside Quebec’s new plan to kill multiculturalism