Geoff Russ: Quebec’s cultural integration bill is a model for the rest of Canada

2025/02/13 Leave a comment

Contrary view to much of the commentary on Bill 24. Russ is correct in stating that multiculturalism was always about integration, allowing space for cultures and religions, with reasonable accommodations where warranted, and within limits:

…Nothing in Bill 84 suggests an intention to erase diverse identities or arbitrarily impose a dominant monoculture upon Quebec’s population. What it does attempt is to make a shared national identity possible in this era of digital globalization and mass immigration, both of which challenge our long-held assumptions about integration.

Civic identity is an issue that grows more pressing by the year. By the 2026 census, about one-third of Canadians will likely have been born abroad. They will more than likely be dual citizens and people who remain connected to their mother countries like never before, due to the spread of social media platforms such as X and TikTok, as well as streaming services.

The unspoken agreement to forget the conflicts and prejudices of the old world, which once helped newcomers integrate into Canadian society, is under threat of extinction. Since October 7, 2023, and even before that, we have seen the consequences play out in the streets of our cities and in our foreign policy.

Anti-Israel mobs have roamed freely, causing civil disorder and committing violence against the Jewish community. Khalistani protests outside Hindu temples have turned violent, and the separatist group’s presence in Canada has become so strong that it has damaged diplomatic relations with India. This is a new phenomenon: older generations of immigrants, such as Albanians, Croats and Serbs, did not bring the Yugoslav wars to Canada.

It’s also a global phenomenon, as synagogues are being outright burned down in Australia. With United States President Donald Trump’s recent pledge to take over the Gaza Strip and “resettle” the Palestinians elsewhere, do not expect this wave to end anytime soon.

However, finding Trump’s plan for Gaza unacceptable does not legitimize further violence and intimidation in Canada. No matter what happens thousands of miles away, it never gives anyone licence to break Canadian law.

Welcoming different cultures into this country is not the problem. We all have friends whose parents or grandparents were born abroad and who have retained their ancestral cultures and religions.

The problem today is the inability of many of our governing politicians to articulate the need for integration — and their fear of even broaching the idea. Multiculturalism was not intended to enable the balkanization of our communities into ethnic blocs that command more loyalty than that owed to pan-Canadian society.

Canadian multiculturalism was meant to be a process by which cultural traditions of all kinds could be retained alongside a shared Canadian identity, but that identity has been deeply eroded in 2025.

Even the current surge of patriotism felt across the country, triggered by Trump’s threat to wage economic warfare on us, should be treated as a dead-cat bounce. The moment external pressure from the White House begins to subside, Canada will revert to its previous state — an ever-fragmenting society coming apart at the seams. It cannot truly be recovered without a push for integration.

Many people shudder at the word “assimilation,” both in Quebec and the rest of Canada. There is no pride to be had in the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples over the past few centuries, nor in the softer attempts to erase Francophone culture. Still, despite the darker parts of Canadian history, governments today have a responsibility to build unity and prevent cultural division and destruction. Bill 84 is Quebec’s most recent attempt to see to this duty.

For too long, it has been assumed that cultural integration was inevitable and would happen by itself. However, that’s a misguided assumption: when communities remain separated and many of their most politically active members mobilize for foreign causes, Canada will fracture.

Government action in this delicate area cannot simply consist of words anymore, and Bill 84 recognizes that.

Far from scorn, Quebec’s proposed model for integration is something to emulate on both sides of the political spectrum. On the left, integration should be recognized as the only way to preserve a peaceful, diverse society that will not collapse under the weight of its own imported tensions. For those of us on the right, strengthening national unity is a pillar of conservatism.

The late English philosopher Roger Scruton wrote that conservatism is the simple preservation of what a society knows and loves. What Canadians and Quebecers recognize and cherish in their communities is part of what continues to attract newcomers, and this should be actively protected.

Integration has never meant abandoning one’s culture. When realized, it is the creation of shared civic and cultural bonds that allow all groups to co-exist peacefully. While those bonds steadily erode in English Canada due to its generally negligent, hands-off approach, Quebec is taking action to stop the same from happening.

Many may be asking why Quebec’s government is doing this. The real question is: why isn’t the rest of Canada doing the same?

Source: Geoff Russ: Quebec’s cultural integration bill is a model for the rest of Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Immigrants’ Sense of Belonging to Canada: The Role of Source-Country Gender Inequality

2025/02/13 Leave a comment

Interesting findings:

“A growing body of literature uses country-level indicators to examine the impact of immigrants’ source-country conditions on the home and work lives of immigrants after arrival. One measure that has attracted increased attention is gender inequality in immigrants’ countries of origin. However, little is known about the degree to which the transition from high to low gender inequality countries affects the development of connections with the receiving country and whether immigrant women and men are impacted differently. This article examines the association between source-country gender inequality and immigrants’ sense of belonging to Canada. Our regression analysis of data from the 2013 and 2020 General Social Surveys suggests a higher level of source-country gender inequality is associated with a stronger sense of belonging to Canada for both immigrant men and women. Despite concerns from some conservative critics that gender inequality in source countries hinders immigrant integration, the results show that immigrants from cultures different from Canada develop a strong sense of belonging to Canada. Our findings suggest that cultural distance does not necessarily have a negative impact on immigrant men’s and women’s self-perceived integration into their host country.”

Source: Immigrants’ Sense of Belonging to Canada: The Role of Source-Country Gender Inequality

Filed under gender, Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Former Shopify executives denounce platform for hosting Kanye West’s store selling swastika T-shirts

2025/02/12 Leave a comment

Would be nice to see some current ones doing so as well….. And surely promoting Hitler symbols should be an easy determination. UPDATE: Shopify removes Kanye West store selling swastika T-shirts, says violated ‘authentic’ commerce practices:

…In 2017, when challenged for hosting the store for the far-right news website Breitbart, Mr. Lütke wrote a blog post explaining the company’s position “as a platform without restriction,” saying the company frequently faced pressure to censor merchants operating its platform.

“When we kick off a merchant, we’re asserting our own moral code as the superior one,” Mr. Lütke wrote. “But who gets to define that moral code? Where would it begin and end?”

In the blog post, he asserted the company’s support of free speech and said it followed the practices of the American Civil Liberties Union, which itself states it has defended the freedom speech rights of unpopular groups such as Nazis in the past.

The Canadian e-commerce business has come under fire for hosting other controversial content. Last year, Shopify was criticized by advocacy groups the Anti-Defamation League and Stop Antisemitism for hosting a store associated with the brand “TheOfficial1984″ that touted content praising Adolf Hitler.

Incidents of antisemitism have been on the rise in Canada since the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza….

Source: Former Shopify executives denounce platform for hosting Kanye West’s store selling swastika T-shirts

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Dundas, Ryerson and Macdonald schools to be renamed in Toronto: TDSB

2025/02/12 Leave a comment

Silly move, dumbing down history:

…Sean Carleton, a historian and Indigenous studies scholar at the University of Manitoba, argues that the purpose of history is to learn from the past, and not simply lionize those from our history.

“In this moment, what people are doing (is), with new information reevaluating the symbols that we choose in society to, convey our values,” said Carleton in an interview. “Many people are saying, ‘Can we not do better than naming a school after someone who advocated for a system of genocidal schooling?’”

If Canadians have these debates, Carleton argued, it could be something we could be proud of.

“The process of having that debate is actually healthy, as long as the people engaged in it are learning from the past and engaging meaningfully in that dialogue, rather than just trying to push the politics of like, you know, ‘Macdonald is a monster,’ or ‘Macdonald is a saint,’” Carleton said.

Renaming, however, has been criticized by some historians.

Margaret MacMillan, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Toronto, has argued that the past cannot be changed by removing names.

“The past is something you can debate about, you can have different opinions about but, if we remove all traces of it, then we’re not even going to have those debates,” MacMillan said, as quoted by the Canadian Institute for Historical Education.

Several other school boards have previously removed names from schools. In 2021, the York Region District School Board voted to change the name of an elementary school in Markham, Ont., that was named after Macdonald. It’s now called Nokiidaa Public School. Nokiidaa is the Ojibwe word meaning “let’s work” or “let’s all work together.”

In addition to Ryerson University changing its name, the legacy of Ryerson was also removed from a Brantford, Ont., elementary school. That school is now named after Edith Monture, the first Indigenous woman to become a nurse in Canada and the first Canadian Indigenous woman to serve in the U.S. military.

In Ottawa, the National Capital Commission, which oversees federal lands in the National Capital Region, renamed the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway to Kichi Zībī Mīkan, which means “Ottawa River path.”

Multiple other schools around the country — and other public institutions and spaces — have also had their names changed, sometimes with controversy. In Alberta, some schools bearing the name of Jean Vanier, a Catholic philosopher, were renamed after revelations that Vanier was a sexual predator. An LRT station in Edmonton named after Vital-Justin Grandin, another architect of the residential school system, was also changed.

Source: Dundas, Ryerson and Macdonald schools to be renamed in Toronto: TDSB

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Gee: Toronto District School Board should reconsider the decision to rename three schools

2025/02/11 Leave a comment

Agree:

…None of this seems to have made the slightest impression on the TDSB, Canada’s biggest school board. A report that went to the board’s governance and policy committee on Jan. 27 noted that, under a section of the “Revised Naming Schools, Teams and Special-Purpose Area Procedure,” the TDSB was undertaking a “proactive critical review of school names.” Dundas, Ryerson and Macdonald are the first three to be sentenced to deletion.

The report says that for some students, the names might act as “a potentially harmful microaggression.” It goes on: “Having to enter school buildings commemorating such individuals may even contribute to mental-health triggers which negatively impact students, staff or families’ ability to effectively participate in the school environment.”

It may not occur to the kids rushing to gym class in Dundas Junior Public that they are the victims of microaggression (if they even know who Dundas was), but the TDSB is going to protect them from it all the same.

As for the cost of making new signs, plaques and team jerseys with whatever name is chosen to replace the three forbidden ones, well, not to worry. The report says that the changes “will be implemented within the existing budget framework.”

What the board seems to have missed is that the climate on historical erasure is changing. Most people don’t much like being called settlers in their own country, even if they accept that great crimes were committed against its original inhabitants in the process of settlement.

A reaction against all this is one reason that Pierre Poilievre of the Conservatives has been leading in the opinion polls and that the abysmal Donald Trump is in the White House again.

Decent countries acknowledge their past sins while also celebrating their virtues. It is a balancing act, hard to get right. Schools are a good place to learn it. They should be teaching students about residential schools and slavery, Expo 67 and Terry Fox. They should be showing them that history is more than a simple story of heroes and villains. They should be asking them to debate the record of names like Dundas, Ryerson and Macdonald, gathering all the evidence and weighing the good against the bad.

What they should not be doing is stripping those names from their front doors.

Source: Toronto District School Board should reconsider the decision to rename three schools

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , ,

To: DEI needs to fix systems, not people

2025/02/11 Leave a comment

True, but rather vague beyond better data:

…One key takeaway from implicit bias research is that interventions targeting individual biases often provide only temporary results because bias is embedded within systems. 

So, what can organizations do to address systemic bias more effectively?

Let’s look at hiring as an example. 

Instead of requiring hiring managers to participate in diversity training, organizations could implement hiring criteria that minimize the influence of race and gender bias in the hiring process. Some research suggests tailoring job descriptions to appeal to underrepresented groups. For example, HR postings that increase the transparency of qualifications or focus on benefits can attract more women for roles in traditionally male-dominated fields.

Policing is another area where systemic change can mitigate bias. Studies show police officers are more likely to stop, question, arrest or use force against Black people than white people. 

Rather than mandating police officers undergo diversity training to educate them about their biases — something that has only a fleeting effect — a restructuring of the policies and procedures around stops and frisks would reduce bias’s impact. 

For instance, policies to ensure the collection of race-based datain police stop and frisks and to encourage stricter accountability among police officers could go a long way to curb racial profiling. 

As DEI programs face increasing scrutiny and skepticism, and many employees feel frustrated by ineffective and repetitive online training, there is a growing need to reframe DEI as systems-focused work. If diversity, equity and inclusion are truly the goals, the solution lies in rebuilding the systems that shape our society.

Source: DEI needs to fix systems, not people

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Ivison: DEI screening comes before merit questions in Canadian university hiring

2025/02/10 Leave a comment

Disappointing that Ivison would cite this tendentious study without background, context, nuance and deeper analysis. And, of course, no real assessment of whether the quality of academics hired has decreased or increased given various inclusion and equity policies. Suspect a mix, as in most hiring:

…But Milke suggested the point is made just as effectively by pre-screening. 

“What they do at the front end is to try and sort through people who they may consider overrepresented, to use an awful word, in a certain profession or faculty.”

He said that merit-based appointments would naturally become more diverse, reflecting the more ethnically diverse country that Canada has become. 

“The problem with diversity, equity, and inclusion, and this attempt to make everything exactly equal at the end and discriminate at the front end to do that, is you’re not looking at merit and qualifications the way that universities claim they are. Instead, you’re basically banning people from the position who don’t fit some irrelevant, non-changeable category.”

Milke said DEI policies entrench the notion that Canada is a systemically racist state. 

“Now, 100 years ago, there was systemic racism. If you were Chinese, for example, you could not get into a white hospital. They had to set up their own hospital. The same with Jewish people in Toronto, which is why Mount Sinai Hospital was set up. But that was 100 years ago. Systemic racism has been outlawed in Canada since the 1950s. You still find individual cases of prejudice, but systemic racism as a policy, as a law, began to be abolished in places like Ontario in the early 1950s.”

Ivison noted that the Trump administration is moving quickly to dismantle DEI in its areas of jurisdiction but that in Canada, the Liberal government has been an enthusiastic cheerleader of the policies, linking DEI hiring to federal funding. 

Milke said he would like to see the federal government reverse direction and admit students and professors based on merit and achievement. 

“The fundamental nature of DEI is flawed and what governments and universities should be doing is saying, ‘look, how can we restructure this? We do want people of all colours, creeds, backgrounds to succeed and help them to do that, but not by focusing on irrelevant characteristics’.

“The more they go down the DEI path, universities are going to capture a segment of the population that believes racism explains all, or mostly all. So, I think a federal government should strongly consider going back to not only Martin Luther King’s vision of equality of the individual (but to) Pierre Trudeau’s vision, in which he believed in the equality of the individual.”

Milke said he believes diversity is a very positive quality and that successful cultures and civilizations need an array of ideas to flourish. 

“These days, we may be admitting too many immigrants at once to have everyone get or provide housing, (but) that’s a separate issue. In the main, cultures that beg, borrow, and steal from each other generally succeed. Diversity is not a bad thing. It can be a very good thing. But not when it’s top down and people look at you and assume because you’re a certain skin colour, you’ve got privilege. I mean, it’s a fallacy.”

Source: Ivison: DEI screening comes before merit questions in Canadian university hiring

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Rioux | Le sexe des anges [arguing #s more important for integration than approaches]

2025/02/08 Leave a comment

Rioux is consistent in the sources he cites and the positions he takes. Numbers are important, as recent Canadian and other experiences attest, but policies and approaches all matter too:

…C’est d’ailleurs tout le drame de l’immigration. Malgré certaines expériences individuelles positives qu’on aura beau brandir comme un étendard, dans l’immense majorité des cas, elle est d’abord une souffrance pour ces individus à qui l’on demande de faire table rase de leur famille, de leur langue et de leur culture pour être ballottés comme de simples produits au gré des besoins du marché. Ensuite, indépendamment des individus, cette immigration massive devient vite un problème. Cela se vérifie partout. On ne transplante pas impunément des populations entières dans n’importe quelle communauté sans ébranler la cohésion sociale et créer inévitablement des réactions de rejet. Réactions que les bonnes âmes auront beau condamner, mais que l’anthropologue Claude Lévi-Strauss jugeait « normales, légitimes même, et en tout cas inévitables ». Une réalité devant laquelle les discours soporifiques sur l’ouverture à l’Autre seront toujours impuissants.

C’est ce que disait Rémy Girard dans Le déclin de l’empire américain : « Il y a trois choses importantes en histoire : premièrement le nombre, deuxièmement le nombre et troisièmement le nombre ». Cette citation que l’on prête à l’historien Michel Brunet est encore plus vraie en matière d’immigration. Et Rémy Girard d’ajouter que « l’histoire n’est pas une science morale. Le bon droit, la compassion, la justice sont des notions étrangères à l’histoire ». Ce qui peut avoir du sens pour l’accueil d’un petit nombre d’individus n’en a plus guère dès lors que l’on parle d’un phénomène de masse. En France, même le premier ministre centriste François Bayrou, qui penche généralement à gauche, a dû se résoudre à parler de « submersion migratoire ». Les chiffres les plus récents étant d’ailleurs là pour le prouver.

Si le nombre est de loin le critère déterminant, d’autres comme la proximité culturelle et la volonté de s’intégrer jouent un rôle. C’est toute la difficulté que connaît la France aujourd’hui dans ses banlieues ethniques. L’intégration de populations de culture musulmane est évidemment plus difficile que celle, hier, des Italiens ou des Portugais. Cette intégration est d’autant plus ardue que des idéologies comme l’islamisme la combattent ouvertement. En 2015, le président Recep Tayyip Erdoğan était venu à Strasbourg présenter la Turquie comme le seul défenseur de la « vraie civilisation » et soutenir que l’assimilation était « un crime contre l’humanité ». Des organismes comme l’Organisation du monde islamique pour l’éducation, les sciences et la culture (ICESCO) incitent ouvertement les immigrants musulmans à ne pas acquérir les valeurs de leur pays d’accueil.

Mais encore faut-il aussi que pour intégrer, on ait confiance dans sa propre culture. Les efforts destinés à favoriser l’intégration sont évidemment louables. Mais ils ne pourront jamais rien contre le nombre. De grâce, cessons de traiter un problème démographique qui est en train de devenir la grande affaire politique du siècle comme une banale question de compassion et de bonne volonté.

Source: Chronique | Le sexe des anges

Filed under Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with

Clarkson: The Aga Khan believed in Canada

2025/02/07 Leave a comment

Good tribute:

…We didn’t always talk about profound things, but everything he said was measured, calm and meaningful. He thought very highly of Canada and had a great belief in our values. He wrote that he wanted his people to live here, “where the threat to democracy is minimal and seeks to draw on the experience of established democracy to make a vibrant and civil society and is sensitive to cultural difference. In this way, they can be effective in improving the quality of life of all their citizens. Canada is a prime example of such a country.”

He had such a belief in us. And that is why he established the Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa, which works to examine the experience of pluralism in practice. At a time when we are being faced with manic pronouncements and threats to our sovereignty from our nearest neighbour, we must remember that the Aga Khan, the greatest spiritual leader of our time, believed in Canada.

We must always remember how much he believed in us.

Source: The Aga Khan believed in Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

ICYMI: David | Le pays flou

2025/02/05 Leave a comment

More Quebec commentary from an indépendantiste slant:

Le ministre québécois de l’Immigration, de la Langue française et de l’Intégration, Jean-François Roberge, a parfaitement raison : « On ne peut pas reprocher aux gens de ne pas être au courant de quelque chose qu’on n’a pas clairement défini. »



M. Roberge voulait parler du « modèle d’intégration » québécois, qu’il estime « cassé » et qu’il veut remplacer par un nouveau « contrat social » entre l’État et les immigrants. Mais c’est plutôt la nature du Québec et son rapport avec le reste du Canada qui demeurent flous et difficiles à saisir pour un nouvel arrivant. Comment le blâmer de ne pas y voir clair ? À l’instar d’Elvis Gratton, de nombreux Québécois dits « de souche » ne semblent pas savoir eux-mêmes qui ils sont.



Depuis la création du ministère de l’Immigration du Québec, en 1968, on ne peut pas reprocher aux gouvernements successifs de ne pas avoir essayé d’expliquer aux immigrants que la société qui les accueille se veut résolument française et qu’elle est attachée à des valeurs qu’ils doivent respecter, à défaut d’y adhérer pleinement.


Dès qu’ils débarquent à l’aéroport et commencent à explorer Montréal, où s’installent la grande majorité d’entre eux, les nouveaux arrivants voient et entendent toutefois un pays essentiellement bilingue et multiculturel, où le français est sans doute un atout, mais pas une condition de survie. C’est le message qui leur est envoyé. Il existe une minorité anglophone suffisamment nombreuse et prospère, appuyée sur une masse de 360 millions de Nord-Américains, qui assure l’hégémonie de l’anglais.

Il faut aussi dire qu’en dépit de la loi 101, le gouvernement n’a pas toujours donné l’exemple en communiquant lui-même en anglais avec les nouveaux arrivants. La loi 96 a voulu corriger cette situation, mais la lettre de la loi et son application sont deux choses.

*****

S’acclimater à un nouvel environnement exige de grands efforts. Ceux qui trouvent encore le temps de s’intéresser au débat public constatent aussi que le gouvernement qui les presse de s’intégrer à la majorité francophone est le premier à déplorer la toute-puissance d’Ottawa, où le Québec a de moins en moins son mot à dire.

Ce que l’ancien souverainiste qu’est M. Roberge ne veut pas dire est que le maintien du Québec dans la fédération le condamne à subir ce multiculturalisme « vicieux » — une « caractéristique fondamentale » du Canada, reconnue par sa Constitution. À deux reprises, le PQ a proposé aux Québécois de s’en retirer, et la majorité d’entre eux ont refusé.

En 2015, la Coalition avenir Québec a proposé un « nouveau projet pour les nationalistes du Québec », qui se voulait « ancré dans la réalité » et dont l’objectif était de lui donner « les moyens d’affirmer et de protéger son identité », notamment en lui accordant la « prépondérance en matière d’immigration et de langue ».

Au cours des six dernières années, le gouvernement Legault a plutôt subi le choc de cette réalité. Le gouvernement fédéral lui a refusé de façon catégorique les nouveaux pouvoirs qu’il réclamait et rien n’indique que cela est à la veille de changer, peu importe qui remportera les prochaines élections.

Il est vrai qu’en 2022, il a réussi à faire inscrire dans la Constitution canadienne que le français est la seule langue officielle du Québec, de même que la langue commune de la nation québécoise. Dans les faits, cela ne change cependant rien à la progression de l’anglais et à la consolidation du multiculturalisme.

Celui qui vient de succéder à M. Roberge comme ministre responsable des Relations canadiennes, Simon Jolin-Barrette, présentera d’ici la fin du présent mandat un projet de Constitution propre au Québec, mais cela ne modifiera pas les dispositions de la Constitution canadienne.

*****

Que la fermeture des classes de francisation soit le résultat de compressions budgétaires ou de dépenses excessives faites par les centres de services scolaires, le Québec n’avait pas la capacité de répondre à la récente explosion de l’immigration temporaire.

Malgré le coup de frein qu’entend donner le gouvernement, il ne faut pas se faire d’illusion : le flot des migrants qui frapperont à la porte ou la défonceront au cours des prochaines décennies va s’amplifier, qu’il soit provoqué par la faim, par les changements climatiques ou par Donald Trump. Il est douteux que la loi-cadre élaborée par M. Roberge puisse renforcer la capacité d’intégration du Québec suffisamment pour y faire face sans un changement de paradigme qui lui permettrait d’échapper aux contraintes que lui impose son appartenance à la fédération canadienne.

Il y a sans doute à la CAQ des gens qui ont réellement cru, et d’autres qui ont voulu croire ou faire croire, qu’une « troisième voie » entre le fédéralisme et l’indépendance était encore possible, malgré les nombreux échecs du passé, mais l’aveuglement a des limites.

On peut toujours débattre des avantages et des inconvénients de l’indépendance sur le plan économique, mais personne ne peut sérieusement prétendre que l’appartenance au Canada offre la meilleure protection pour l’identité québécoise.

Source: Chronique | Le pays flou

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with

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