Le français, non merci – Language of Immigrants in Quebec

2016/01/28 Leave a comment

Interesting study on the degree to which Quebec immigrants integrate to French or English-speaking environments (the vast majority of immigrants settle in Montreal where this is an option).

Not totally surprisingly, Latin American and Arab immigrants tend to integrate into francophone environnement, those from China, South Asia and the Philippines remain more anglophone in orientation:

Plus de 200 000 Néo-Québécois, soit 20 % de la population immigrée au Québec, ne parlent pas français. La plupart de ces immigrants, soit 160 000, parlent anglais. En dépit de la sélection prioritaire de candidats connaissant le français — 60 % du total —, l’immigration continue de contribuer au déclin du français, surtout dans la région de Montréal.

C’est ce que signale un portrait des efforts du Québec en matière de francisation et d’intégration intitulé Le Québec rate sa cible. Commandité par la CSN, le Mouvement national des Québécois, la Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal et le Mouvement Québec français, le document exhaustif de 130 pages, rédigé par le chercheur Jean Ferretti de l’Institut de recherche en économie contemporaine (IREC), s’appuie sur des données du ministère de l’Immigration, de la Diversité et de l’Inclusion (MIDI) et de Statistique Canada ainsi que sur diverses études de chercheurs comme Marc Termotte, Paul Béland, Michel Pagé, Brahim Boudarbat, Gilles Grenier, Patrick Sabourin et Guillaume Marois.

« On dirait que par négligence, le gouvernement du Québec refuse de voir l’impact de l’immigration sur le français à Montréal », a affirmé Jean Ferretti au Devoir.

« La politique migratoire menée depuis 1991 ne permet pas d’atteindre l’objectif du [ministère] de pérenniser le français. Les efforts de sélection ont permis de hausser la part d’immigrants connaissant le français, mais ne sont pas suffisants pour endiguer le déclin du français », écrit Jean Ferretti.

Concurrence linguistique

Le Québec est dans une situation particulière par rapport à d’autres sociétés, note-t-il. « L’adoption de la langue de la majorité par les immigrants ne va pas de soi. À Montréal, la possibilité de vivre dans la langue de son choix et la forte présence des anglophones du Québec créent une situation de concurrence linguistique qui limite les transferts linguistiques vers le français. »

Jean Ferretti cite Paul Béland, qui a démontré que les immigrants de langue maternelle latine ou originaires de la Francophonie, quelle que soit leur langue maternelle, sont enclins à adopter le français, alors que c’est l’inverse pour les immigrants de langue maternelle non latine. Depuis 1971, la proportion des immigrants de langue latine qui adoptent le français a augmenté à 87 %, tandis que le transfert vers le français des immigrants de langue non latine est resté le même en 30 ans, à 15 %.

Ainsi 88 % des Latino-Américains et 90 % des Arabes installés au Québec connaissent le français, alors que plus de 40 % des Chinois et des Sud-Asiatiques ne connaissent pas le français. Dans le cas des Philippins, 58 % d’entre eux ne parlent pas français.

Pour préserver le caractère français du Québec, il importe non seulement de recruter une forte proportion d’immigrants qui connaissent le français, mais il faut choisir parmi les immigrants qui ne connaissent pas le français ceux qui sont les plus aptes à adopter la langue commune, estime l’auteur.

Si le gouvernement du Québec poursuit la même politique en matière d’immigration qu’à l’heure actuelle, le poids démographique des francophones continuera de diminuer. Reprenant les projections des démographes Guillaume Marois et Marc Termotte, les francophones ne représenteraient plus que 75 % de la population du Québec dans 40 ans, contre 82 % en 2006. Si le seuil d’immigration de 50 000 à l’heure actuelle était porté à 65 000 — Philippe Couillard a déjà indiqué son intention d’augmenter le nombre d’immigrants reçus au Québec —, le poids des francophones s’élèverait à 73 %.

De son côté, Marc Termotte évalue qu’avec un seuil de 60 000 immigrants par an, la proportion de francophones sur l’île de Montréal passerait de 52,4 % [donnée de 2011] à 42,3 % en 2056. Ces projections, qui montrent un accroissement de la présence des allophones (de 23 % à 34 %) ne tiennent pas compte des transferts linguistiques au terme de la deuxième génération d’immigrants.

Source: Le français, non merci | Le Devoir

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Angela Merkel opens Holocaust art show with warning on antisemitism

2016/01/27 Leave a comment

Making the lessons of the past relevant to today:

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has opened a major exhibition in Berlin featuring works by Jewish concentration camp prisoners, as she pledged to combat a feared rise in antisemitism in Germany linked to a record influx of refugees.

The show, Art from the Holocaust, brings together 100 works on loan from Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial. They were created in secret by 50 artists between 1939 and 1945 while they were confined to the camps or ghettos.

Twenty-four of the artists did not survive the second world war.

The drawings and paintings on display at the German Historical Museum depict the suffering, drudgery and terror endured by the detainees.

But about a third of the collection shows artists’ attempts to escape their plight with their imaginations, putting to paper treasured memories and dreams of freedom beyond the barbed wire.

Merkel, looking ahead to Wednesday’s commemorations of the 71st anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation in her weekly video podcast, said such exhibitions served as a crucial tool for educating younger generations.

She cited in particular the fears of German Jewish leaders that the need to impart the lessons of the Holocaust has grown more urgent with the influx of a record 1.1 million asylum seekers to Germany in 2015, many from the Middle East.

“We must focus our efforts particularly among young people from countries where hatred of Israel and Jews is widespread,” she said.

The head of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev, called the works on loan irreplaceable “treasures”, many of which were hidden by their creators and only discovered after the war.

They are “the expression of human beings under these unique circumstances to try and prevail … above the atrocities and deaths”, he told reporters at a press preview of the exhibition.

“After thinking and rethinking, we thought it might be the right time, the right place, to bring this collection to Germany.”

Merkel noted later at the opening that the collection had been sent to Berlin in two shipments “in case something happened, so that they would not all be damaged”.

Source: Angela Merkel opens Holocaust art show with warning on antisemitism | World news | The Guardian

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Quebec: Les cours de français boudés par les immigrants

2016/01/27 Leave a comment

Not a good development but the article offers few reasons to explain the drop from 60 to 40 percent of those taking language training. I have not seen any articles or studies on comparative take-up rates in English Canada (readers please correct or advise):

Environ 60 % des immigrants adultes qui ne connaissent pas le français en arrivant au Québec refusent de suivre les cours de français qui leur sont offerts gratuitement par l’État, une proportion en nette progression ces dernières années.

Selon le rapport annuel de gestion 2014-2015 du ministère de l’Immigration, de la Diversité et de l’Inclusion (MIDI), des 13 455 immigrants reçus qui déclaraient ne pas connaître le français en 2012, seulement 3689 s’étaient inscrits à un cours de français dans les deux ans qui ont suivi, soit un pourcentage de 27,4 %. Mais comme les cours offerts par le MIDI ne représentent que les deux tiers des cours de français offerts aux nouveaux arrivants, a-t-on précisé au ministère — l’autre tiers est le fait du ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale (MTESS) —, il s’agit d’un peu plus de 40 % des immigrants anglophones ou allophones qui jugent bon d’apprendre formellement le français dans les deux ans qui suivent leur arrivée.

Or en 2008, la proportion était inversée : 60 % des nouveaux arrivants ne connaissant pas le français assistaient aux cours offerts par l’État, évaluait-on au ministère. On s’inquiétait toutefois du fait que 40 % d’entre eux choisissaient de bouder les cours.

Délais et budgets en baisse

On montrait du doigt les longs délais que les immigrants devaient subir avant de pouvoir participer à un cours de français. Ces délais n’ont plus cours aujourd’hui. « En matière de francisation, le Ministère répond à la demande et les budgets sont ajustés en conséquence », a soutenu dans un courriel la porte-parole du MIDI, Karine Baribeau.

Et les budgets sont revus à la baisse : réduction de 1,45 million en 2012-2013, de 809 000 $ en 2013-2014 et de 3,4 millions en 2014-2015, pour un total de 5,7 millions, soit près de 10 % du budget consacré à la francisation des immigrants par le MIDI. Selon la porte-parole, la diminution de l’an dernier est due à une baisse de fréquentation des cours à temps complet alors que le nombre d’immigrants qui suivent des cours à temps partiel s’est maintenu. Près de 10 800 immigrants se sont inscrits au cours à temps complet, soit 15 % de moins qu’il y a deux ans, contre 15 350 à des cours à temps partiel et 3000 à des cours en ligne, pour un total d’un peu plus de 29 000 étudiants de tous les niveaux de connaissance du français.

Source: Les cours de français boudés par les immigrants | Le Devoir

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Les Iraniens les plus nombreux à avoir choisi le Québec

2016/01/27 Leave a comment

Good illustration of how immigrants adapt to revised regulations (changing federal skills preferences leading those rejected to apply to Quebec):

Quel pays a fourni le plus d’immigrants au Québec en 2014, dernière année complète pour laquelle on a la statistique? La France? La Chine? Le Maroc? Haïti? Vous avez tout faux.

La bonne réponse est l’Iran, révèle le plus récent bilan démographique du Québec. Un résultat étonnant puisque ce pays n’apparaît habituellement pas au sommet de ceux de provenance des nouveaux arrivants.

Hormis le cas de la Chine, les immigrants qui entrent au Québec proviennent habituellement de pays francophones, latins à la limite. Or, même si le français a eu un certain rayonnement en Iran, notamment à l’époque du shah, chassé du pouvoir au moment de la révolution islamique de 1979, la place du français au sein des élites s’est amenuisée depuis.

Cette donnée a pris de court les experts en immigration du Centre Urbanisation Culture Société de l’Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) et de l’Institut de la statistique du Québec (ISQ).

«J’ai été surprise, reconnaît Chantal Girard, démographe de l’ISQ. On a fait des vérifications auprès de l’Immigration et il y aurait comme un effet de concentration», dit-elle, en nous invitant à communiquer directement avec Immigration Québec pour les détails.

Changements à Ottawa

Il semble que les Iraniens qui se font refuser l’entrée au Canada aient décidé de passer par le Québec, quitte à déménager au Canada anglais par la suite.

«Cette variation pourrait être due à des changements apportés par le gouvernement fédéral en 2009», explique Karine Baribeau, porte-parole du ministère de l’Immigration. En effet, c’est à ce moment-là que le Ministère a modifié les domaines de formation recherchés, ce qui a causé le refus de nombreux candidats iraniens, qui n’avaient plus les diplômes privilégiés par le gouvernement fédéral. À ce moment, de nombreux candidats iraniens se seraient tournés vers le Québec et auraient présenté une demande.

«Nous avons donc reçu un nombre élevé de demandes de candidats iraniens de 2009 à 2013. En 2014, on a remarqué que le nombre de demandes reçues revenait tranquillement à la normale. Comme il s’écoule un certain délai entre la sélection par le Québec et l’admission, ça concorderait avec les fluctuations remarquées dans les admissions.»

Près de 6000 Iraniens sont entrés au Québec en 2014, comparativement à environ 3500 Français et 3500 Algériens. Après neuf mois en 2015, le Québec avait accueilli 3084 Iraniens, au deuxième rang des pays de provenance derrière la France.

Source: Les Iraniens les plus nombreux à avoir choisi le Québec | André Dubuc | National

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Action Canada Report: Barriers to Belonging – Paving a Smoother Path to Immigrant Inclusion

2016/01/27 Leave a comment

For those interested in Ottawa, presentation of a report February 5 by a group of young Canadian leaders on immigrant integration (Barriers to Belonging session – disclosure I was one of the people interviewed for the report):

Fellows Presentation Invite EN (Feb '16)There are currently 1.6 million permanent residents in Canada. These newcomers are central to the economic, social and political fabric of the country. Yet these recent immigrants continue to face considerable challenges to participating in the full spectrum of Canadian life.

Join us for the release of our report: Barriers to Belonging – Paving a Smoother Path to Immigrant Inclusion, and participate in a public dialogue around recommendations concerning the design of smarter services, building bridges to employment and strengthening the political engagement of recent immigrants.

What:              Action Canada Presentation of Final Report

When:             Friday February 5, 2016

Time:              8:45am – 9:45am (light refreshments and welcome beginning at 8:00am)

Where:           Sheraton Ottawa Hotel, Rideau Room, 150 Albert Street 

 

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What Does It Mean If An Attack Is ‘ISIS-Inspired’? : NPR

2016/01/27 Leave a comment

Good contrast between the centralized control of Al-Qaida and the lack of centralized control by ISIS, and greater number of lone-wolf or small group terrorist activity:

Today’s violent jihadist threat is very different from those associated with al-Qaida in the past. ISIS followers appear more troubled and more confused about their intentions and motivations than their al-Qaida predecessors.

Al-Qaida’s operatives typically went to Pakistan or Yemen to train. They usually had email connections and phone conversations with known terrorist actors as they prepared to attack. And Ayman al-Zawahiri, now the leader of al-Qaida, kept a tight rein on the group’s terrorist operations. He was keen to approve each and every attack and he loathed freelancers. He worried, among other things, that unsanctioned attacks could dilute the al-Qaida brand.

The ISIS model couldn’t be more different. The attacks dubbed as ISIS-inspired in this country have tended to be the work of what law enforcement officials call “classic injustice collectors.”

These are people who have been nursing various resentments for years, who, in the heat of the moment, appear to reinvent themselves as ISIS followers. Doing so, officials say, not only gives them a greater sense of purpose, but it also seems to guarantee a great deal of publicity.

McCants says it would make sense to determine if a suspect actually had some sort of sustained interest in a particular group before deciding an attack was inspired. “If you have individuals who have no sustained interest in the group and have no organizational ties,” he said, “it seems like their interest in ISIS is much more opportunistic than it is ideological.”

Clint Watts, a Fox Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, has been tracking the city’s police shooting case. He says it is very possible that the saturation coverage of ISIS, rather than the ideology of the group itself, motivated Archer to claim he’d opened fire on Officer Jesse Hartnett for the Islamic State.

“I think it was mostly what would be described as a headline-inspired terrorist attack,” said Watts.

Archer’s mother told police he had mental problems and recently had been hearing voices. Archer has a long criminal history. Those kinds of facts shouldn’t be lightly dismissed — they might actually provide an explanation.

“Someone who has deep psychological issues, some sort of problems in their local environment, picks up a weapon, and conducts an attack and then attributes it to a group like ISIS and before that al-Qaida,” says Watts. “The connections to the actual terrorist group are nonexistent, so that’s why, so far in this case, I’d say it is more inspired by current events than a particular ideology.”

Source: What Does It Mean If An Attack Is ‘ISIS-Inspired’? : NPR

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Trudeau plans repeal of Tory union, citizenship laws as Parliament returns

2016/01/26 1 Comment

These sources suggest a simple full repeal of C-24 rather than a more surgical approach on C-24. Broader than platform and mandate letter commitments:

So the economy will be the priority. But government sources suggest it won’t be the sole preoccupation in the first two weeks as the new government looks to put a positive stamp on these early days in power.

Among the measures expected to be dealt with through new legislation:

  • Repealing the Conservative’s Bill C-24, which allows the government to strip Canadian citizenship from dual citizens who are convicted of terrorism-related offences.

  • Repealing two other Conservative laws that the Liberals argue weaken the rights of trade unions. They are Bill C-377, which requires unions to disclose how they spend members’ dues, as well as Bill C-525, which makes it harder for unions to organize in federally-regulated workplaces.

  • Introducing parliamentary oversight for Canada’s national security agencies, though the commitment to repeal parts of the previous government’s anti-terrorism law, Bill C-51, is expected to come later.

Source: Trudeau plans repeal of Tory union, citizenship laws as Parliament returns – Politics – CBC News

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Can America’s political discourse get any cruder? Neil Macdonald

2016/01/26 Leave a comment

Interesting if uncomfortable parallel Neil Macdonald makes between the religious extremists in the Iranian revolution and the US evangelicals:

In fact, Palin’s speech reminded me of another one I attended, years ago, in Tehran during my time as CBC’s Middle East correspondent.

Mohammed Khatami, the reformer, had been elected president of Iran, and you could taste the craving for change in the city’s mountain air.

On a whim, I decided to attend a Friday sermon by Ayatollah Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, probably the most hardline cleric in the theocracy.

He scorned the reformers and called down divine judgment on them, and exhorted the crowd to go and impose the will of the people.

It was a speech filled with hatred and religious bigotry and nativism, and the crowd absorbed it with the same sort of ecstasy U.S. conservatives evidently experience at Republican rallies nowadays.

I spoke to several people as they exited the sermon; most were rural, uneducated, and were bused in for the event. In cosmopolitan Tehran, Yazdi wouldn’t likely have been able to fill a big classroom, let alone pack in thousands of panting zealots.

‘You’re fired’

Sarah Palin, likewise, feels most comfortable outside America’s big cities, talking to the white evangelical Christians she calls “real Americans,” as opposed to the ethnic stew of the more permissive, homosexual-tolerating, non-God-fearing souls who populate the coastal population centres.

…Watching Palin and Trump, it was impossible not to wonder, once again, how America, a country that has achieved such excellence, and has so often shown the world a better way, descended into a political discourse that demonizes enlightened thought and glamorizes mean-spirited, lowbrow crudeness.

And something else occurred, a notion I’ve always shied away from because I find jingoism distasteful: None of this stuff would go anywhere in Canada. It would draw snickers and derision, not cheers.

The only reason I can cite for this difference in national attitudes is religion. Not the quiet, old-line religiosity whose adherents believe worship is a private matter, best practised in church.

I’m referring to the messianic, aggressive religion of certain evangelical Christian sects, which believe that even other streams of Christianity, never mind other faiths, are false, and that their job is not just to spread the word of God but to impose it, and that the best way to do that is to run the government.

That sort of religion happily ignores inconvenient facts and contradictions, and has always been ripe for the con job pulled by the Republican elite: promise to end atheistic permissiveness, then get into office and implement an economic agenda most friendly to Manhattan billionaires like Trump and multi-millionaires like Palin. (She recently put her 8,000 square-foot Arizona compound up for sale for $2.5 million.)

To be fair, this loopy form of religio-political fantasy is particular to the Republicans, and lots of religious Americans find it offensive to rational thought.

But it should not be dismissed, as clownish as its heroes can seem.

Think about Iran: Yazdi and his fellow hardliners triumphed. The reformers were shut down and jailed. The urban elites were cowed. It can happen.

Source: Can America’s political discourse get any cruder? – World – CBC News

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Dozens of nations discriminate against women in citizenship laws – study

2016/01/26 Leave a comment

Good overview and not surprising that most of these countries are in Africa and the Mid-East:

More than a quarter of the world’s nations have sexist laws on nationality, such as stripping women of citizenship if they marry a foreigner, that can deprive women of access to jobs, education and other benefits available to men, a new study says.

The discriminatory laws range from forcing women to give up their acquired citizenship if they are divorced or widowed or denying children the citizenship of their mother, said the report released on Monday by Equality Now, an international human rights organization.

Not having legal citizenship can mean being unable to obtain a passport or work permit, being unable to attend public schools or living under threat of deportation, the report said.

It also can leave women stuck in abusive marriages or unable to win custody of their children, it added.

The report found 53 countries with discriminatory nationality laws, 20 of them in sub-Saharan Africa and 16 in the Middle East and North Africa.

“Sex discrimination persists in nationality and citizenship laws in over 50 countries around the world, continuing to trap women and their families in a web of sexist nationality laws,” the report said.

“Too many governments have simply decided that a woman should have fewer rights than a man to pass on her citizenship to her children or her foreign spouse, or to acquire, change or keep her nationality,” it said.

For example, women cannot pass their citizenship to adopted children the way men can in the Bahamas, Barbados and Mauritius, it said.

Foreign women who take on their spouse’s nationality lose it if their marriage ends in Bahrain, Togo, Tunisia and Yemen, it said.

The report cited recent progress in several countries, including Senegal and Suriname, where laws were changed to give women the same rights as men to transfer their nationality to their husband and children, and Vanuatu, where married women won the right to pass their nationality to a foreign spouse on the same terms as married men.

Source: Dozens of nations discriminate against women in citizenship laws – study

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Top 100 Most Powerful and Influential People in Canadian Government and Politics, 2016

2016/01/26 Leave a comment

From The Hill Times, the diversity highlights of their Top 100:

The Top 100 list is a reflection of power and influence today. Following the election and with a change in government, it’s quite a different list from the previous eight. There are 58 new names. Thirty on the list are women, including 10 among the Top 25 [30 percent]. That’s six more than last year, primarily because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed women to powerful positions within cabinet. There are also six visible minorities on the list [six percent], double from last year, and two indigenous people.

Source: P AND I WINTER2016 | hilltimes.com

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