Regg Cohn | Anti-Israel protests expose the lack of leadership at city hall and Queen’s Park

2026/01/10 1 Comment

Indeed, sad example of passing the buck back and forth:

…The minister who oversees law enforcement says more needs to be done. The mayor says she’d like to see more arrests and has spoken to the chief about it.

The chief would like to clarify. Speaking the next day on Moore’s radio show, Demkiw said it wasn’t so simple.

“Listen, I do not know where she’s getting that narrative,” he countered. “The Crown attorneys guide us on the prospect of conviction.”

If these three community leaders are still talking past each other, it’s hardly surprising that protesters are still shouting and chanting at other residents of Toronto who have nothing to do with the issue at hand.

The Toronto Police Association issued its own statement after Kerzner’s missives appealing for “clear and consistent direction to our members and the public about what is lawful and unlawful when it comes to protest activity.”

Clarity amid ambiguity isn’t easy. But that doesn’t mean the crown prosecutors who are paid and educated to make these decisions shouldn’t be rising to the occasion — and pursuing test cases as needed.

For two years, protesters have been showing up outside the homes of Canadian Jews to loiter and litigate a conflict a world away — and a country away. That transgresses the universal value that a person’s private home is a private sanctuary — akin to a castle, not a consulate (the Israeli consulate is fully 15 kilometres away from that neighbourhood).

For two years, protesters have been free to hold their own demonstrations on the streets and squares of Toronto, where the right to assembly and peaceful protest is protected by the Charter of Rights. But the right to free speech is hardly unlimited, and freedom of assembly does not confer a right to trespass on private property — let alone empower people to wade in with megaphones to disrupt, drown out or trample on other people’s holiday celebrations in shopping malls (just as unionized workers, even in a lawful strike, cannot picket in a shopping centre).

To be sure, the policing of protests is always a balancing act. But trespass isn’t especially ambiguous on private property; and there’s a difference between peaceful protest (protected under the Charter) versus disruptions that escalate to harassment and hatefulness.

Interestingly, Jason Kenney, a former federal minister of multiculturalism (and ex-premier of Alberta) waded into the debate after the Boxing Day disruptions at Eaton Centre, asking why the authorities (notably his fellow Tories) couldn’t get their act together. Good question.

Kenney suggested they could invoke Ontario laws against trespass. Or apply criminal code laws on mischief; mischief “motivated by bias, prejudice or hate;” causing a disturbance; and unlawful assembly.

A better question is why, if the solicitor general is so vexed by the lack of action, he doesn’t send a letter to his cabinet colleague, Attorney General Doug Downey, suggesting that his ministry provide clearer guidance to Crown attorneys about how to proceed.

The only certainty is that we have a solicitor general who is publicly wagging his finger, a chief who says his hands are tied, a mayor who is washing her hands of the situation, a police union that is throwing up its hands, and an attorney general who may be sitting on his hands.

And no one pointing the way forward.

Source: Opinion | Anti-Israel protests expose the lack of leadership at city hall and Queen’s Park

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Idées | L’interculturalisme québécois est-il mort?

2026/01/10 Leave a comment

Good assessment:

L’un des faits marquants de l’année qui vient de se terminer, quasiment passé sous le radar, est la rupture opérée par le gouvernement caquiste à l’endroit de ce qu’il était convenu d’appeler le « modèle interculturel ». Si on se fie aux actions et aux paroles du gouvernement depuis son arrivée au pouvoir, on peut se demander si c’est la fin de l’interculturalisme, un modèle made in Québec qui visait à reconnaître le caractère pluraliste de la société québécoise, à valoriser la contribution de toutes ses composantes tout en insistant sur les relations entre elles et faisant du français la langue de la culture publique commune.

L’adoption, le 28 mai 2025, de la Loi sur l’intégration à la nation québécoise (loi 84) s’inscrit dans une trajectoire opposée qui jette aux orties une compréhension nuancée et respectueuse de la complexité des identités et des modalités d’appartenance à la société québécoise. Ce virage fut renforcé par le dépôt du projet de loi 9 (Loi sur le renforcement de la laïcité au Québec), puis totalement confirmé dans le projet de loi 1 qui cherche à cadenasser l’idée de l’intégration nationale en l’enchâssant dans la constitution québécoise.

Le préambule de la loi 84 énonce que les Québécois forment une nation au sein de laquelle ne se déploie qu’une seule culture, présentée ici comme une seule et unique « culture commune ». Il soutient que ce modèle s’inscrit dans la continuité de la Politique québécoise du développement culturel élaborée à la fin des années 1970 par Fernand Dumont, Guy Rocher et Camille Laurin. Il s’agit, selon nous, d’un véritable et tragique détournement de sens.

La politique de 1978 évitait délibérément l’utilisation de l’expression « culture commune » pour lui préférer celle de « culture principale de tradition française ». Les auteurs ne déclinaient pas la culture québécoise au singulier ni ne faisaient référence à « une » culture québécoise indifférenciée. Au contraire, ils citaient une « culture principale » et ses nombreux attributs, porteuse d’une identité, dont la langue représentait l’un des axes centraux et le signe premier de son identité. Loin de proposer une homogénéisation culturelle au nom d’une identité unique à laquelle les nouveaux arrivants devaient s’assimiler, l’énoncé reconnaissait « la pluralité des mondes culturels et la pluralité des voies d’accès à la reconnaissance que les hommes poursuivent de leur existence commune ».

En somme, la politique de 1978 prenait acte de l’hétérogénéité de la culture québécoise, reconnaissant la diversité au Québec non pas comme une menace, mais comme quelque chose lui étant intrinsèque.

Depuis cette époque, l’idée de l’interculturalisme s’est inspirée de cette volonté de favoriser les rapprochements culturels à travers les interactions positives, la réciprocité et le respect mutuel. Ces principes ont historiquement positionné le Québec à mi-chemin entre les approches assimilationnistes et multiculturalistes. Il importe de rappeler qu’ils renvoyaient aux dimensions civiques de la communauté politique dans un cadre bien précis, celui du Québec où le français est la langue officielle et la langue commune, surtout dans les dynamiques de la sphère publique.

Ainsi, plutôt que d’aborder l’interculturalisme à travers le prisme d’une « culture commune », ce modèle proposait un cadre civique dont les paramètres avaient déjà été bien établis dans l’énoncé Au Québec, pour bâtir ensemble de 1990 et qui ont été réitérés à maintes reprises, notamment dans les recommandations du rapport de la commission Bouchard-Taylor, en 2008.

Le gouvernement actuel a abandonné cette conception du vivre-ensemble, qui, rappelons-le, interpelle toutes les composantes de la société québécoise pour le remplacer par un modèle d’intégration qui ne concerne que les personnes issues de l’immigration. Cette approche s’inscrit dans une démarche assimilationniste qui repose sur une vision purement ethnique de la nation québécoise, qui nie les fondements de la culture civique au Québec et qui stigmatise un grand nombre de personnes qui ont décidé de s’installer au Québec et de s’y enraciner.

Loin de reconnaître la diversité de la culture québécoise, la loi 84 soumet les personnes issues de l’immigration à l’injonction à adhérer à une culture dite « commune », dont certains de ses éléments aux contours indéfinis, notamment les « valeurs sociales distinctes » et les « valeurs québécoises ». Le projet de loi 9 fait de la laïcité de l’État l’un des fondements de l’intégration nationale. Il en va de même du projet de loi 1, qui figerait dans la constitution québécoise ce modèle assimilationniste d’intégration.

Avec cette déformation du pluralisme, le Québec, à l’instar d’autres sociétés occidentales, devient frileux et se replie sur lui-même. Ce faisant, il tourne le dos à un demi-siècle d’efforts de reconnaissance de la diversité, qui en fait pourtant sa richesse, et de lutte contre la discrimination.

François Rocher et Bob W. White, Le premier est professeur émérite à l’École d’études politiques de l’Université d’Ottawa; le second est professeur titulaire au département d’anthropologie de l’Université de Montréal.

Source: Idées | L’interculturalisme québécois est-il mort?

One of the highlights of the year that has just ended, almost gone under the radar, is the rupture made by the Caquist government in the face of what was agreed to call the “intercultural model”. If we rely on the actions and words of the government since it came to power, we can wonder if this is the end of interculturalism, a model made in Quebec that aimed to recognize the pluralistic character of Quebec society, to enhance the contribution of all its components while insisting on the relations between them and making French the language of common public culture.

The adoption, on May 28, 2025, of the Quebec Nation Integration Act (Law 84) is part of an opposite trajectory that gives nettles a nuanced and respectful understanding of the complexity of identities and the modalities of belonging to Quebec society. This turn was reinforced by the filing of Bill 9 (Law on the Strengthening of Secularism in Quebec), then fully confirmed in Bill 1, which seeks to lock up the idea of national integration by embedding it in the Quebec constitution.

The preamble to Law 84 states that Quebecers form a nation within which only one culture unfolds, presented here as a single “common culture”. He argues that this model is part of the continuity of the Quebec Policy of Cultural Development developed in the late 1970s by Fernand Dumont, Guy Rocher and Camille Laurin. In our opinion, this is a real and tragic diversion of meaning.

The 1978 policy deliberately avoided the use of the expression “common culture” to prefer that of “main culture of French tradition”. The authors did not decline Quebec culture in the singular nor did they refer to “an” undifferentiated Quebec culture. On the contrary, they cited a “main culture” and its many attributes, carrying an identity, whose language represented one of the central axes and the first sign of its identity. Far from proposing cultural homogenization in the name of a unique identity to which newcomers had to assimilate themselves, the statement recognized “the plurality of cultural worlds and the plurality of access routes to the recognition that men pursue of their common existence”.

In short, the 1978 policy took note of the heterogeneity of Quebec culture, recognizing diversity in Quebec not as a threat, but as something intrinsic to it.

Since that time, the idea of interculturalism has been inspired by this desire to promote cultural rapprochement through positive interactions, reciprocity and mutual respect. These principles have historically positioned Quebec halfway between assimilationist and multiculturalist approaches. It is important to remember that they referred to the civic dimensions of the political community in a very specific framework, that of Quebec where French is the official language and the common language, especially in the dynamics of the public sphere.

Thus, rather than approaching interculturalism through the prism of a “common culture”, this model proposed a civic framework whose parameters had already been well established in the statement In Quebec, to build together of 1990 and which were repeatedly reiterated, in particular in the recommendations of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission’s report in 2008.

The current government has abandoned this conception of living together, which, let us remember, challenges all components of Quebec society to replace it with an integration model that only concerns people from immigration. This approach is part of an assimilationist approach that is based on a purely ethnic vision of the Quebec nation, which denies the foundations of civic culture in Quebec and which stigmatizes a large number of people who have decided to settle in Quebec and take root there.

Far from recognizing the diversity of Quebec culture, Law 84 subjects people from immigration to the injunction to adhere to a so-called “common” culture, some of which some of its elements have undefined contours, including “different social values” and “Quebec values”. Bill 9 makes the secularism of the State one of the foundations of national integration. The same goes for Bill 1, which would freeze this assimilationist model of integration in the Quebec constitution.

With this distortion of pluralism, Quebec, like other Western societies, becomes cold and withdraws into itself. In doing so, he turns his back on half a century of efforts to recognize diversity, which nevertheless makes it its wealth, and to fight against discrimination.

François Rocher and Bob W. White, The former is a professor emeritus at the School of Political Studies of the University of Ottawa; the second is a full professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Montreal.

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

A Supreme Court ruling could bring historic drop in Black representation in Congress

2026/01/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

The United States could be headed toward the largest-ever decline in representation by Black members of Congress, depending on how the Supreme Court rules in a closely watched redistricting case about the Voting Rights Act.

For decades, the landmark law that came out of the Civil Rights Movement has protected the collective voting power of racial minorities when political maps are redrawn. Its provisions have also boosted the number of seats in the House of Representatives filled by Black lawmakers.

That’s largely because in many Southern states — where voting is often polarized between a Republican-supporting white majority and a Democratic-supporting Black minority — political mapmakers have drawn a certain kind of district to get in line with the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 provisions. In these districts, racial-minority voters make up a population large enough to have a realistic opportunity of electing their preferred candidates.

But at an October hearing last year for the redistricting case about Louisiana’s congressional map, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared inclined to issue this year another in a series of decisions that have weakened the Voting Rights Act — this time its Section 2 protections in redistricting.

That kind of ruling could put at risk at least 15 House districts currently represented by a Black member of Congress, an NPR analysis has found. Each of those districts has a sizable racial-minority population, is in a state where Republican lawmakers control redistricting and, for now at least, is likely protected by Section 2. Factoring in newly redrawn districts in Missouri and Texas, which were not included in NPR’s analysis, could raise the tally of at-risk districts higher….

Source: A Supreme Court ruling could bring historic drop in Black representation in Congress

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Lederman: The antisemitism you might have missed over the holidays 

2026/01/09 Leave a comment

Depressing list:

…There is no question that the war in Gaza has been catastrophic. But Jews around the world deserve to live without discrimination. No other form of racism would be justified in this manner. Nor should it. All Jews are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government. Nor are all Israelis. Just like all Americans are not responsible for what Mr. Trump is doing in Venezuela (which the acting Venezuelan president, by the way, said had “Zionist undertones”) – and may be about to do elsewhere.

Back to Winnipeg. Two days after the synagogue incident, a Palestinian-owned restaurant was also hit with hateful vandalism. Its front windows were smashed, and there was a disturbing note: “Leave our country terrorists.” 

I wish I was in Winnipeg right now so I could walk through the front door of the Habibiz Café, order a hummus and shawarma plate and tell its owner, Ali Zeid, how sorry I am that this happened. We Canadians need to have each other’s backs and stand up against hatred of the other. As the world around us darkens, this is one thing we can do together.

Source: The antisemitism you might have missed over the holidays

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Older, 70% white, plunging fertility and lost faith: Who Canada is now

2026/01/09 Leave a comment

Good detailed overview of Census 2021 (albeit years late). Possibly preparing for debates and discussions regarding the 2026 Census:

Numbers can tell a story. Canada is home to 41.58 million people, according to the latest population estimates, and the average age was 41.7. At the time of the last census, just over half were women and girls, and just under half were men and boys. Of the nearly 30.5 million people 15 and older, 100,815 (0.33 per cent) were transgender or nonbinary. The average household size was 2.4 people. Five per cent of the population — 1.8 million people — self-identified as Indigenous. Almost one-quarter, or 8.4 million people, were immigrants, many hailing from the three leading places of birth: India, the Philippines and China. Of the 450-plus ethnic or cultural origins reported, “Canadian” was tops at 5.7 million people.

The last census conducted by Statistics Canada in 2021, and released in stages throughout 2022, revealed the ways Canada stands out among the G7, including fastest population growth (mostly due to people moving here from elsewhere), most educated workforce (again, thanks in large part to immigrants), highest proportion of common-law couples and, at almost one-quarter, the highest proportion of foreign-born people who are now citizens.

In December, it was revealed that Canada’s population decreased for the first time in about five years — thanks again to immigration or, rather, a drop in its numbers. Driven by caps on international students and temporary foreign workers, the country’s population as of Oct. 1, 2025, declined by roughly 76,068 people, or 0.2 per cent, from July 1, when the population was estimated to be 41.65 million….

Source: Older, 70% white, plunging fertility and lost faith: Who Canada is now

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Polansky: The uncomfortable reason antisemitism is festering in Canada

2026/01/07 2 Comments

Hard to imagine these protests, intimidation and disruption being tolerated if against another religious or ethnic group:

…It is only an emphasis on hatred, however, that would conflate these two disparate cases. Moreover, if there are specific threats against Jews that have arisen within Canada (as it seems there are), that is the result of policy failures. And all of these public gestures in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack represent a refusal to attend to those failures.

This refusal produces a number of externalities. The first is the substantial constriction of both public and private Jewish life within Canada. For cultures do not flourish under police protection. The second is the diminution of Canada’s sphere of genuine liberalism. For liberalism entails the tacit promise that disagreements can be managed peaceably via the political process. Not just violence, but the persistent threat of violence, is (as Hobbes would remind us) merely warfare by other means.

The problem then is not the hatred that lies in the human heart (except perhaps in the most generic sense). The problem is the attenuation of genuine liberalism within liberal societies, and this is a general problem. For Jews do not require special protection; they require the ordinary protections that liberalism is already designed to confer.

Meanwhile, the cause of this problem is not hard to identify: favoured groups, either on ethnic or political grounds, have declined to accept the impositions of liberal norms of behaviour, as both Muslims within Toronto and leftist fellow-travelers have taken to harassing Jewish institutions (and general passersby) as a kind of expanded theatre of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

This is an uncomfortable fact for those who have committed themselves to multiculturalism or general progressivism, and political authorities are understandably wary of the optics should they finally crack down after months of inaction. As a result, both municipal and provincial authorities have declined to enforce the relevant public square laws in the absence of compliance. This is, in other words, a profound failure to uphold basic liberal protections under the guise of liberalism.

That failure, in turn, has downstream effects as increasingly ugly and antisocial behaviours become normalized. Indefinitely occupying public areas opens the way for marching through Jewish neighbourhoods, which in turn opens the way to ripping down mezuzahs from the doorways of Holocaust survivors.

To blame all this on hatred is to avoid the hard choices of governance. It is plain that the reigning governments find it either politically inconvenient or merely bothersome to enforce their mandate to keep public order. But they, too, ultimately answer to their constituents.

The larger question is whether ordinary citizens themselves will continue to suffer rulers who defer the real obligations of ruling to committees, legal counsel, and so on. And it is ultimately the avoidance of those political obligations, rather than the power of amorphous hatreds, that has led to our present situation.

To paraphrase Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida, these daily outrages stand in our weakness, not their strength.

Source: The uncomfortable reason antisemitism is festering in Canada

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Robert Brym: Avi Lewis and Independent Jewish Voices are gaslighting Canadians about antisemitism

2026/01/06 Leave a comment

Needed dose of reality:

…Some white people use the N-word, despite the fact that doing so is deeply offensive to Black people. Black people are entitled to call such individuals racists. By the same token, anti-Zionists may think it’s legitimate to call for the destruction of the Jewish state in Israel. However, most Jews are entitled to call such people antisemites because, for them, support for the existence of the Jewish state is part of what it means to be a Jew.

Finally, based on the results of a 2024 survey, Lewis and Balsam assert that 49 per cent of Canada’s Jews are not Zionists. This claim is misleading. The poll found that 51 per cent of Canadian Jews consider themselves to be Zionists, 15 per cent express ambivalence about referring to themselves as Zionists, seven per cent say they “don’t know” and 27 per cent say they are not Zionists. However, the survey also found that 94 per cent of Canadian Jews support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

According to standard dictionaries and general encyclopedias, Zionists are people who support the existence of a Jewish state in the Jews’ ancestral homeland. Such supporters remain Zionists even if, like me, they favour the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state, oppose the extent of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, express outrage at Jewish settler attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and support equal rights for all citizens of Israel, including Arabs. 

What, then, does it mean when 94 per cent of Canadian Jews are Zionists by the dictionary definition yet 49 per cent of them decline to call themselves Zionists? 

I decided to find out by conducting a follow-up survey in 2025 asking the participants in the 2024 poll to clarify the matter. The follow-up revealed that many participants are reluctant to call themselves Zionists because the term has developed a strongly negative connotation, under the weight of frequent and often extreme attacks against everything connected to Israel in the media, schools, universities, workplaces and in the streets. 

Nearly all Canadian Jews are Zionists by the dictionary definition, but nearly half of them don’t want to be called Zionists because the term has become a pejorative. According to the poll, a mere one per cent of Canadian Jews say they are anti-Zionists like Lewis and Balsam.

It seems clear that Lewis and Balsam’s interpretations are guided by ideological animus. Antisemitism is a major problem in Canada. Rhetoric and actions denying the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state are antisemitic according to the great majority of Canadian Jews. With the exception of a tiny minority, including Lewis and Balsam, Canadian Jews remain steadfast in their support for a Jewish state in the Jews’ ancestral homeland.

Source: Robert Brym: Avi Lewis and Independent Jewish Voices are gaslighting Canadians about antisemitism

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«Migrations postcoloniales des Juifs du Maroc»: de Casablanca à Montréal, une mémoire en mouvement

2026/01/06 Leave a comment

Of interest and a reminder of the diversity within and among groups:

Ils sont partis dans l’urgence, parfois dans la peur, souvent sans les mots pour dire l’arrachement. À la sortie de la Shoah, dans le sillage immédiat de la création de l’État d’Israël en 1948 et tandis que l’empire colonial français se défait, près de 250 000 Juifs quittent le Maroc en l’espace de deux décennies. Longtemps réduit à une lecture strictement coloniale, cet exode révèle en réalité un espace migratoire bien plus complexe, façonné par des espoirs déçus, des discriminations persistantes et des décisions prises sous la contrainte des contextes politiques, sociaux et économiques.

Israël, la France, mais aussi le Québec s’imposent tour à tour comme les pôles de ces trajectoires fragmentées. Dans Migrations postcoloniales des Juifs du Maroc. Vers le Canada et la France, Yolande Cohen propose une synthèse majeure de ces parcours durablement relégués aux marges des récits officiels, en les replaçant dans le fil de l’histoire récente. « Il faut sortir d’une lecture simpliste des départs et comprendre que ces migrations s’inscrivent dans une vision beaucoup plus large et plurielle », explique l’historienne en entrevue téléphonique.

Professeure titulaire d’histoire contemporaine à Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Yolande Cohen voit dans cet ouvrage collectif, qu’elle a dirigé, un véritable aboutissement. Fruit de plus de dix ans de travail mené avec une équipe pluridisciplinaire, le livre marque un tournant dans son parcours. « Je suis sortie de l’aspect entièrement subjectif pour aller vers des subjectivités partagées », souligne-t-elle, insistant sur la richesse d’un regard construit à plusieurs voix.

Le livre rassemble ainsi une sélection de textes d’abord publiés dans des revues scientifiques, que l’historienne a souhaité rendre accessibles à un public plus large. L’ensemble s’attarde sur une dimension encore peu explorée de l’histoire singulière d’une diaspora, celle des Juifs marocains, souvent éclipsés par la visibilité des communautés ashkénazes, issues d’Europe centrale et orientale. Il met en lumière la diversité de ce groupe, sa réinvention au fil du temps et son profond enracinement au royaume chérifien. « La rupture avec le Maroc n’a jamais été une rupture affective », rappelle-t-elle, soulignant combien la marocanité demeure une composante intime de l’identité, transmise de génération en génération.

« Il faut sortir d’une lecture simpliste des départs et comprendre que ces migrations s’inscrivent dans une vision beaucoup plus large et plurielle. »

Parmi les apports majeurs de l’ouvrage figure le recours assumé aux témoignages et à l’histoire orale. Longtemps reléguée à la marge du champ universitaire, cette approche devient ici un outil central pour comprendre les migrations, en donnant accès aux récits de vie et aux perceptions que les archives administratives laissent dans l’ombre. « Sur des sujets où l’on étudie les perceptions, l’intersubjectivité est fondamentale », rappelle Yolande Cohen, attentive aux silences, aux hésitations et aux non-dits qui traversent la mémoire migrante.

La lecture postcoloniale irrigue l’ensemble des chapitres. Les départs massifs des Juifs marocains ne sauraient se réduire ni à un simple attrait pour l’Occident ni à un sionisme uniforme. Israël, destination majeure des premières vagues, fut aussi un espace de désillusion, marqué par de fortes discriminations envers les Juifs nord-africains. La France, pour sa part, refusa largement d’accorder la nationalité à cette population, révélant la persistance des hiérarchies héritées de l’ordre colonial. « Tout cela se savait », observe l’historienne. Dans ce contexte, le Québec s’impose comme une issue inattendue au sein de l’Amérique francophone.

Au Québec, la construction d’une identité sépharade

Dans les années 1960 et 1970, les Juifs marocains sont accueillis au Québec comme des réfugiés francophones. Le soutien logistique des institutions juives ashkénazes joue un rôle décisif, même si l’intégration n’est pas exempte de tensions. La question linguistique devient centrale. Alors que la communauté juive établie est majoritairement anglophone, les nouveaux arrivants revendiquent une insertion en français, dans le contexte de l’éveil du nationalisme québécois. « De cette friction naissent la Communauté sépharade du Québec puis l’école Maïmonide, la seule école juive francophone en Amérique du Nord », souligne Yolande Cohen. Un moment structurant pour la consolidation d’une minorité juive francophone.

L’essai s’articule autour de la notion de « champ migratoire », qui rompt avec une vision figée de l’immigration. Les trajectoires ne suivent pas une ligne droite, mais dessinent un espace de circulations constantes entre le Maroc, Israël, la France et le Québec. « Il y en a beaucoup qui viennent d’Israël, ils sont passés par là, ont été déçus et viennent ensuite au Québec », note l’historienne. Cette logique de déplacements successifs traverse d’ailleurs aussi son propre parcours.

Née en 1950 à Aubagne, près de Marseille, Yolande Cohen n’y passe que ses trois premières années. Elle découvrira bien plus tard qu’elle avait vécu dans un camp de transit, où séjournaient des Juifs marocains en attente d’un départ vers Israël. La guerre qui éclate dans le jeune État hébreu pousse ses parents à renoncer à ce projet et à retourner au Maroc, où elle grandit. Étudiante à Paris, elle rejoint finalement ses parents à Montréal en 1976, après leur immigration au Canada.

Source: «Migrations postcoloniales des Juifs du Maroc»: de Casablanca à Montréal, une mémoire en mouvement

They left in a hurry, sometimes in fear, often without the words to say the tearing. At the end of the Shoah, in the immediate wake of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and while the French colonial empire was defeated, nearly 250,000 Jews left Morocco in the space of two decades. Long reduced to a strictly colonial reading, this exodus actually reveals a much more complex migratory space, shaped by disappointed hopes, persistent discrimination and decisions made under the constraint of political, social and economic contexts.

Israel, France, but also Quebec are in turn emerging as the poles of these fragmented trajectories. In Postcolonial Migrations of the Jews of Morocco. Towards Canada and France, Yolande Cohen offers a major synthesis of these paths permanently relegated to the margins of official narratives, placing them in the thread of recent history. “We must get out of a simplistic reading of departures and understand that these migrations are part of a much broader and plural vision,” explains the historian in a telephone interview.

A full professor of contemporary history at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Yolande Cohen sees in this collective work, which she directed, a real achievement. The result of more than ten years of work with a multidisciplinary team, the book marks a turning point in its career. “I left the entirely subjective aspect to move towards shared subjectivity,” she emphasizes, insisting on the richness of a look built by several voices.

The book thus brings together a selection of texts first published in scientific journals, which the historian wanted to make accessible to a wider audience. The whole dwells on a still little explored dimension of the singular history of a diaspora, that of Moroccan Jews, often overshadowed by the visibility of Ashkenazi communities, from Central and Eastern Europe. It highlights the diversity of this group, its reinvention over time and its deep roots in the Cherifian kingdom. “The break with Morocco has never been an emotional break,” she recalls, stressing how Moroccanness remains an intimate component of identity, transmitted from generation to generation.

“We must get out of a simplistic reading of departures and understand that these migrations are part of a much broader and plural vision. ”

Among the major contributions of the book is the assumed use of testimonies and oral history. Long relegated to the margins of the university field, this approach is becoming here a central tool for understanding migrations, by giving access to life stories and perceptions that administrative archives leave in the shadows. “On subjects where perceptions are studied, intersubjectivity is fundamental,” recalls Yolande Cohen, attentive to the silences, hesitations and unsaid things that cross the migrant memory.

Postcolonial reading irrigates all chapters. The massive departures of Moroccan Jews cannot be reduced to a simple attraction to the West or to a uniform Sionism. Israel, a major destination of the first waves, was also a space of disillusionment, marked by strong discrimination against North African Jews. France, for its part, largely refused to grant nationality to this population, revealing the persistence of the hierarchies inherited from the colonial order. “All this was known,” observes the historian. In this context, Quebec has emerged as an unexpected outcome in French-speaking America.

In Quebec, the construction of a Sepharmic identity

In the 1960s and 1970s, Moroccan Jews were welcomed in Quebec as French-speaking refugees. The logistical support of Ashkenazi Jewish institutions plays a decisive role, even if integration is not free of tension. The linguistic question becomes central. While the established Jewish community is predominantly English-speaking, newcomers are demanding integration in French, in the context of the awakening of Quebec nationalism. “From this friction were born the Sepharic Community of Quebec and then the Maimonides school, the only French-speaking Jewish school in North America,” says Yolande Cohen. A structuring moment for the consolidation of a Francophone Jewish minority.

The essay revolves around the notion of “migration field”, which breaks with a fixed vision of immigration. The trajectories do not follow a straight line, but draw a space of constant traffic between Morocco, Israel, France and Quebec. “There are many who come from Israel, they have been there, have been disappointed and then come to Quebec,” notes the historian. This logic of successive movements also crosses its own path.

Born in 1950 in Aubagne, near Marseille, Yolande Cohen spent only her first three years there. She would discover much later that she had lived in a transit camp, where Moroccan Jews were staying waiting for a departure to Israel. The war that broke out in the young Hebrew state pushed her parents to give up this project and return to Morocco, where she grew up. A student in Paris, she finally joined her parents in Montreal in 1976, after their immigration to Canada.

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Adams and Parkin: Will 2025 be remembered as the year Canadians re-embraced nationalism?

2026/01/05 2 Comments

Good reflections:

…All of these flavours of nationalism that shaped events in Canada in 2025 will continue to swirl around us in 2026. We will wave the flags and sing the anthem and cheer on the athletes at the Winter Olympic Games – and sit on the edges of our seats as the men’s and women’s hockey teams play the Americans for gold. We will find comfort in our denouncements of Trump’s distasteful America-first rhetoric while reducing our own intake of immigrants and cutting back on our foreign-aid spending. We will see how much prosperity “Buy Canadian” policies will bring us. We will be challenged by Quebec nationalists to explain why Canada’s quest for independence is so much more noble. We will be equally challenged by First Nations to account for which nations stand to benefit from new “nation-building” resource projects. 

All of this is as it should be. We are and always will be a deeply multicultural society and federated country, hanging on next to an aggressive and sometimes expansionist United States. Our various expressions of nationalism will keep tying us up in knots, and for that we should be thankful. Canadians are better off when we are not only humble, but exasperated by the need to keep justifying and rethinking the terms of our own existence. There is no shame in having only enough national pride to get by. And struggling to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable claims to rights and status is what genuine democracies do. This ongoing soul-searching is our true national sport, the one at which we can be shyly confident of outperforming all others – though with luck we will take home ample gold from Milano Cortina as well.

Source: Will 2025 be remembered as the year Canadians re-embraced nationalism?

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Le Devoir Éditorial | Bouchard-Taylor, un legs ignoré

2026/01/05 Leave a comment

Good editorial:

À l’hiver 2007, le Québec semblait littéralement au bord de la rupture. Une série d’incidents impliquant des accommodements religieux enflammaient le débat public. L’installation de vitres givrées au YMCA d’Outremont, un jugement de la Cour suprême autorisant le port du kirpan à l’école, le code de vie de la municipalité d’Hérouxville destiné aux immigrants : les manchettes s’enchaînaient, nourrissant une perception de crise identitaire. Dans ce climat d’anxiété collective, le premier ministre Jean Charest annonçait, le 8 février 2007, la création de la Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles, confiée à deux éminences : le sociologue Gérard Bouchard et le philosophe Charles Taylor.

M. Charest en appelait alors à une réflexion sensée. « Il est clair que le débat s’enlise et qu’il sert la division plus que la compréhension », rappelait-il au moment de propulser Bouchard-Taylor. Pendant des semaines, les deux commissaires ont sillonné le Québec, permettant à quelque 3400 personnes de participer aux audiences publiques qui faisaient souvent salle comble. Cette vaste consultation populaire a permis de prendre le pouls d’une société profondément divisée sur la question de son identité et de sa relation avec les minorités religieuses. Certains témoignages étaient empreints de préjugés et de peurs irrationnelles, d’autres exprimaient un désir sincère de préserver les acquis de la Révolution tranquille. L’exercice démocratique a été aussi cathartique qu’éprouvant.

Dans leur rapport final, Fonder l’avenir. Le temps de la conciliation, les deux commissaires arrivent à un constat aussi cinglant que libérateur : non, il n’y avait pas de véritable crise des accommodements raisonnables au Québec, et ce, malgré les apparences. Ce que les médias avaient présenté comme une avalanche de demandes déraisonnables formulées au nom de la liberté de religion relevait largement de la distorsion des faits. La commission Bouchard-Taylor conclut que, parmi les cas les plus médiatisés, 71 % s’éloignaient de l’exactitude des faits. L’emballement médiatique avait considérablement enflé la « crise ».

Les commissaires décèlent derrière cette enflure un malaise identitaire dont souffrent plus particulièrement les Québécois d’ascendance canadienne-française. Ceux-ci vivent difficilement leur double statut de majoritaire au Québec mais de minoritaire en Amérique du Nord, et craignent peut-être d’être submergés par les minorités culturelles et d’être dépossédés de leurs valeurs communes. La crise des accommodements camoufle donc une réaction de défense de plusieurs Québécois inquiets de perdre leur identité culturelle.

Le rapport Bouchard-Taylor propose une voie médiane fondée sur l’interculturalisme québécois, un modèle distinct du multiculturalisme canadien et de la laïcité fermée à la française. Les commissaires recommandent notamment d’interdire le port de signes religieux uniquement aux personnes en position d’autorité coercitive — juges, policiers, gardiens de prison, procureurs de la Couronne — tout en permettant leur port ailleurs dans la fonction publique, y compris pour les enseignants. Cette approche visait à équilibrer la neutralité de l’État avec le respect des libertés individuelles. La formule n’est pas retenue.

Sous la gouverne du Parti québécois, le Québec adopte en 2013 la Charte des valeurs, qui propose d’aller plus loin que les recommandations de Bouchard-Taylor. La nation n’en a pas fini de ses crispations identitaires, car le Québec s’entre-déchire autour de cette charte. En 2019, la Coalition avenir Québec présente enfin le projet de loi 21 sur la laïcité de l’État. Sur le modèle de la Charte des valeurs, on y interdit le port de signes religieux aux personnes en position d’autorité, y compris les enseignants du primaire et du secondaire. La loi fait l’objet de vives contestations.

L’adoption de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État marque l’aboutissement d’un processus qui a pris le chemin inverse de celui tracé par Bouchard et Taylor. Là où le rapport de 2008 appelait à la conciliation, à la nuance et au dialogue, le Québec a opté pour une solution législative plus rigide qui, si elle répond aux inquiétudes d’une majorité, pose des questions profondes sur notre capacité collective à vivre ensemble dans le respect de nos différences et force la mise à l’écart de certains groupes.

Le véritable héritage de Bouchard et de Taylor réside dans la démarche qu’ils ont incarnée. À un moment où le Québec aurait pu basculer dans l’intolérance et la xénophobie pure, ils ont rappelé l’importance de l’analyse rigoureuse, de l’écoute et du dialogue. Ils ont démontré que les perceptions pouvaient différer radicalement de la réalité et que les débats identitaires devaient être menés avec intelligence et compassion. Dix-huit ans après leur nomination, Bouchard et Taylor nous rappellent qu’une société mature ne se construit pas sur la peur de l’autre, mais sur la capacité à dialoguer, à comprendre et à chercher des solutions qui honorent à la fois les valeurs collectives et les droits individuels.

Source: Éditorial | Bouchard-Taylor, un legs ignoré

In the winter of 2007, Quebec seemed literally on the verge of rupture. A series of incidents involving religious accommodations inflamed the public debate. The installation of frosted windows at the YMCA of Outremont, a Supreme Court judgment authorizing the wearing of the kirpan at school, the code of life of the municipality of Hérouxville for immigrants: the headlines followed one another, feeding a perception of identity crisis. In this climate of collective anxiety, Prime Minister Jean Charest announced, on February 8, 2007, the creation of the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, entrusted to two eminences: Sociologist Gérard Bouchard and Philosopher Charles Taylor.

Mr. Charest then called for a sensible reflection. “It is clear that the debate is getting bogged down and that it serves division more than understanding,” he recalled when propelling Bouchard-Taylor. For weeks, the two commissioners crisscrossed Quebec, allowing some 3,400 people to participate in public hearings that were often a fulle. This broad popular consultation made it possible to take the pulse of a deeply divided society on the question of its identity and its relationship with religious minorities. Some testimonies were imbued with prejudices and irrational fears, others expressed a sincere desire to preserve the achievements of the Quiet Revolution. The democratic exercise was as cathartic as it was trying.

In their final report, Founding the Future. At the time of conciliation, the two commissioners came to an observation as scathing as it was liberating: no, there was no real crisis of reasonable accommodation in Quebec, despite appearances. What the media had presented as an avalanche of unreasonable demands made in the name of freedom of religion was largely a matter of distortion of the facts. The Bouchard-Taylor Commission concludes that, among the most publicized cases, 71% were far from the accuracy of the facts. The media runaway had considerably inflated the “crisis”.

The commissioners detect behind this swelling an identity malaise suffered more particularly by Quebecers of Canadian-French descent. They hardly live their dual status as a majority in Quebec but as a minority in North America, and perhaps fear being overwhelmed by cultural minorities and being dispossessed of their common values. The accommodation crisis therefore camouflages a defensive reaction of many Quebecers worried about losing their cultural identity.

The Bouchard-Taylor report proposes a middle path based on Quebec interculturalism, a model distinct from Canadian multiculturalism and French-style secularism. The commissioners recommend in particular that the wearing of religious signs be prohibited only to persons in a position of coercive authority – judges, police officers, prison guards, Crown prosecutors – while allowing their wearing elsewhere in the public service, including for teachers. This approach aimed to balance the neutrality of the State with respect for individual freedoms. The formula is not retained.

Under the leadership of the Parti Québécois, Quebec adopted the Charter of Values in 2013, which proposed to go further than the recommendations of Bouchard-Taylor. The nation has not finished its identity tensions, because Quebec is torn around this charter. In 2019, the Coalition avenir Québec finally presented Bill 21 on the secularism of the state. On the model of the Charter of Values, it prohibits the wearing of religious signs to people in positions of authority, including primary and secondary school teachers. The law is the subject of strong challenges.

The adoption of the State Secularism Act marked the culmination of a process that took the opposite path from that traced by Bouchard and Taylor. Where the 2008 report called for conciliation, nuance and dialogue, Quebec has opted for a more rigid legislative solution that, if it responds to the concerns of a majority, raises deep questions about our collective ability to live together with respect for our differences and forces the exclusion of certain groups.

The true legacy of Bouchard and Taylor lies in the approach they embodied. At a time when Quebec could have turned into intolerance and pure xenophobia, they recalled the importance of rigorous analysis, listening and dialogue. They demonstrated that perceptions could differ radically from reality and that identity debates should be conducted with intelligence and compassion. Eighteen years after their appointment, Bouchard and Taylor remind us that a mature society is not built on the fear of the other, but on the ability to dialogue, understand and seek solutions that honor both collective values and individual rights.

From Bouchard lui-même: Quand l’espoir vient des citoyens

« En haut, en haut ! C’est un grand concept sociologique sophistiqué, ça, en haut ! », s’exclame-t-il d’un ton faussement bourru. Me sentant désarçonné au bout du fil, il éclate d’un grand rire.

Le ton est donné : interviewer Gérard Bouchard sera tout sauf ennuyant. Ce monument de l’histoire et de la sociologie a codirigé la fameuse commission Bouchard-Taylor sur les accommodements raisonnables, a enseigné à Harvard, a écrit de nombreux ouvrages. Et à 81 ans, le sociologue chéri des Québécois est vif, drôle, versant autant dans l’autodérision que dans les critiques acerbes.

Des critiques qu’il dirige beaucoup vers le gouvernement du Québec actuellement. C’est là, « en haut », qu’il déplore les plus grandes dérives. Mon intention n’était pas nécessairement d’amener mon interlocuteur dans l’arène politique, mais il y a sauté lui-même à pieds joints.

Lorsque je lui demande ce qu’il souhaite collectivement aux Québécois pour 2026, sa réponse est immédiate.

« Je souhaiterais que tout le débat sur l’identitaire perde enfin de l’actualité. L’identitaire est un sac vide. Cette affaire-là ne va nulle part. C’est un débat qui divise, mais qui n’ouvre pas sur grand-chose. »

— Gérard Bouchard

Il enchaîne en dénonçant la désinvolture avec laquelle, selon lui, le gouvernement Legault écarte les droits fondamentaux pour imposer sa vision de la laïcité.

« Ça relève d’un sentiment antireligieux, je ne vois pas autre chose, dit-il. L’idée qu’une société, pour être laïque, doit repousser le religieux dans ses derniers retranchements pour qu’il ne soit finalement plus visible du tout… Ce n’est pas un idéal pour une société, ça ! Ou alors, si c’est un idéal, ça en est un qui repose essentiellement sur la violation d’un droit fondamental. »

« On vit encore sur cette espèce de revanche que l’on prend contre les abus du clergé que notre société a subis jusqu’au milieu du XXe siècle, analyse-t-il. On avait de sacrées bonnes raisons de le faire, on a beaucoup souffert. Mais là, il faudrait en finir avec ça. On ne va quand même pas vivre sur ce ressentiment de génération en génération ! »…

“Up, up! It’s a great sophisticated sociological concept, that, at the top! “, he exclaims in a falsely gruff tone. Feeling distraught at the end of the line, he bursts out laughing.

The tone is set: interviewing Gérard Bouchard will be anything but boring. This monument of history and sociology co-led the famous Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Reasonable Accommodations, taught at Harvard, wrote many books. And at 81, the beloved sociologist of Quebecers is lively, funny, pouring as much into self-deprecation as in harsh criticism.

Criticisms that he directs a lot towards the Quebec government currently. It is there, “at the top”, that he deplores the greatest drifts. My intention was not necessarily to bring my interlocutor into the political arena, but he jumped there himself with his feet together.

When I ask him what he collectively wishes for Quebecers for 2026, his answer is immediate.

“I would like the whole debate on identity to finally lose news. The identity is an empty bag. This case is not going anywhere. It is a debate that divides, but does not open up much. ”

— Gérard Bouchard

He continues by denouncing the casualness with which, according to him, the Legault government discards fundamental rights to impose its vision of secularism.

“It’s an anti-religious feeling, I don’t see anything else,” he says. The idea that a society, to be secular, must push the religious to his last entrenchments so that he is finally no longer visible at all… This is not an ideal for a society! Or, if it is an ideal, it is one that is essentially based on the violation of a fundamental right. ”

“We still live on this kind of revenge that we take against the abuse of the clergy that our society suffered until the middle of the 20th century,” he analyzes. We had damn good reasons to do it, we suffered a lot. But now, we should end this. We are still not going to live on this resentment from generation to generation! “…

Filed under Interculturalisme, Laïcité, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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