Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[Acajack]

Our colour-blind, nationality-blind and ethnicity-blind immigration policy, given global demographics and migratory trends, seems inevitably destined to make Canada a lot more South Asian, especially certain parts of the country though I think almost everywhere will see the effects to some degree.

I don't think any shift in policy, even subtle, that could be seen as actively tilting the balance away from Indians would be socio-politically palatable and I don't see that changing either.

Just about the only thing i could see would be a dramatic decrease in immigration in general. A bit more possible but still unlikely.

What is interesting is how Canada for decades had an immigration program that seemed to really balance the origins of newcomers from all over the world. It was one of the things that made it extremely successful. But perhaps a large part of it was just based on luck and global phenomena outside of Canada.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

The Berlin or, maybe Montreal, situation where the university-educated hipster barrista only serves you in a foreign language (English) doesn't exist in English Canada.

I'd turn that around to "The Montréal or, maybe Berlin, situation..."

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Following up on what theman23 said, close to 20% of all humans are Indian, and 25% are South Asian (which many Canadians on the streets would all lump in as "Indian").

Our government most definitely isn't conspiring to make Canada more Indian and our federal immigration department isn't predominantly Indian nor is any government department for that matter.

That said the government doesn't care if the country becomes more and more Indian. Or more and more Polynesian or more and more Zulu.

100% Because of fear of racism we have to pretend people are all the same. As if a doctor educated in India is the same as one in the US or UK. Not even including the cultural issues. I guess it's only racists talking about this publicly so we have to ignore it.

I mean in general Indians are probably one of the easiest groups to integrate in Canada in terms of low skilled workers arriving and here just to work.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by 905er

Why must almost all our immigrants currently come from just one country? Can anyone enlighten me on why?

Maybe Modi and his fellow Hindu nationalists hope to transform Canada into an Indian colony in the New World. Give it 50+ years, and it's not altogether impossible that Canada could be a predominantly Indian country, the way the US are predominently Anglo-Saxon. India has 1.4 billion inhabitants, and Canada just 35 million, a mere subdistrict in India.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Hecate

Must be how the indigenous people felt 200 years ago.

More like 350 years ago in Eastern Canada.

Originally Posted by Hecate

It’s only a matter of time before there’s a large enough presence of a particular demographic that they can start making policy changes at the national level.

Yup. See Fiji for instance, where the Indians became the majority of the population due to British policy of importing large quantities of Indian laborers. The native Fijians became a minority in their own country. It was only reversed after independence due to a rather harsh dictatorship by the native Fijians who managed to force many Indians to leave Fiji.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by theman23

If you've travelled the world recently, you'll probably notice that there's been a seemingly drastic uptick of Indian immigrant even in countries where you typically don't see them - Japan, Korea, etc.

Not in France, still very few Indian immigrants (although the guys who came to repaint my apartment last week were from Punjab, which kind of surprised me because you don't see that many Punjabis here).

French-speaking Punjabis by the way (at least the boss of the team). It's possible.

[MolsonExport]

Remember the deluge of Irish, then Jews, then Italians, around the turn of the 1900s? And remember the 'Yellow Peril' (largely kept out by a head tax, until repealed in the 1960s)? All of these were supposed to destroy the social fabric of Canada. Instead, they made many contributions to it.

Why should it be any different today with the new arrivals from India, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America? Most are coming to Canada for opportunity, not to start some "Mini-Iran" or "spread some f*cking disease" (cue to the racist "One in a Million" song by Guns n' Roses).

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Why should it be any different today with the new arrivals from India, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America?

French saying of the day: Tant va la cruche à l'eau qu'à la fin elle se casse.

What happened in the 19th century or early 20th century won't necessarily happen in the 21st century. The Western white world is not on the ascendancy anymore, and its birth rate is very low. It is in relative decline in the world. As for Canada, just like the US or Europe, its ability to integrate newcomers is not what it used to be (because of much larger numbers of newcomers, much more different and alien backgrounds of the newcomers, the cultural decline of the West, smartphones and the internet that keep immigrants in hourly contact with their countries of origin, etc).

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Remember the deluge of Irish, then Jews, then Italians, around the turn of the 1900s? And remember the 'Yellow Peril' (largely kept out by a head tax, until repealed in the 1960s)? All of these were supposed to destroy the social fabric of Canada. Instead, they made many contributions to it.

Why should it be any different today with the new arrivals from India, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America? Most are coming to Canada for opportunity, not to start some "Mini-Iran" or "spread some f*cking disease" (cue to the racist "One in a Million" song by Guns n' Roses).

But, but, but, this time it's different. It's probaby something that Justin has done to make it different.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

French saying of the day: Tant va la cruche à l'eau qu'à la fin elle se casse.

What happened in the 19th century or early 20th century won't necessarily happen in the 21st century. The Western white world is not on the ascendancy anymore, and its birth rate is very low. It is in relative decline in the world. As for Canada, just like the US or Europe, its ability to integrate newcomers is not what it used to be (because of much larger numbers of newcomers, much more different and alien backgrounds of the newcomers, the cultural decline of the West, smartphones and the internet that keep immigrants in hourly contact with their countries of origin, etc).

Sorry, but that sounds like soapbox, rabble-rousing pseudo logic, which is not borne out of empirical research, but rather, out of an a priori conviction.

The Western world is just not so very white anymore. That fact lies at the root of most people's objections to widespread immigration from the four corners of the world. Take a look at third-generation Canadians, whose brown grandparents hailed from distant places: their values have largely converged to that of mainstream society, and their ethnic out-marriage rates have skyrocketed, just like their Irish, Jewish, Italian, Ukrainian, etc. counterparts of a century ago.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

In the absence of drastically increasing the birthrate (something no large Western country has been able to achieve, despite numerous strategies, mostly of the financial sort, that have been implemented), immigrants from high-growth places are needed to avoid the impending fate of Japan, Italy, Korea, China, Bulgaria, Hungary (and soon, add almost all of South America to this list): places with rapidly-declining populations and in the near future, economic stagnation and a loss of global heft, both economically and politically.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Sorry, but that sounds like soapbox, rabble-rousing pseudo logic, which is not borne out of empirical research, but rather, out of an a priori conviction.

The Western world is just not so very white anymore. That fact lies at the root of most people's objections to widespread immigration from the four corners of the world. Take a look at third-generation Canadians, whose brown grandparents hailed from distant places: their values have largely converged to that of mainstream society, and their ethnic out-marriage rates have skyrocketed, just like their Irish, Jewish, Italian, Ukrainian, etc. counterparts of a century ago.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

In the absence of drastically increasing the birthrate (something no large Western country has been able to achieve, despite numerous strategies, mostly of the financial sort, that have been implemented), immigrants from high-growth places are needed to avoid the impending fate of Japan, Italy, Korea, China, Bulgaria, Hungary (and soon, add almost all of South America to this list): places with rapidly-declining populations and in the near future, economic stagnation and a loss of global heft, both economically and politically.

I agree mostly worry about integration is probably overblown. I'd dispute Hungary or Japan or Korea are anything like hellscapes. The last two have high incomes, relatively affordable real estate, social cohesion and safety and sure lack heft. Seems like a good trade-off.

[MolsonExport]

not at all are they hellscapes. Japan, for instance, is a wonderful place. Korea too. I am sure Hungary is a nice place to visit, aside from that awful Orban and what he represents.

But Japan is in sharp decline, demographically and economically. That is evident to anyone who steps out of Tokyo and Osaka. They haven't the stomach to tolerate much larger rates of immigration, and many have tacitly accepted Japan's inexorable diminution on the world stage. Korea is where Japan was in the early 1990s. China is probably peaking.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

I agree mostly worry about integration is probably overblown. I'd dispute Hungary or Japan or Korea are anything like hellscapes. The last two have high incomes, relatively affordable real estate, social cohesion and safety and sure lack heft. Seems like a good trade-off.

It works great until the worker/dependent ratio is out of balance.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

100% Because of fear of racism we have to pretend people are all the same. As if a doctor educated in India is the same as one in the US or UK. Not even including the cultural issues. I guess it's only racists talking about this publicly so we have to ignore it.

Beggars can't be choosers.

Canada isn't the first choice for most actually skilled immigrants. And there's only a handful of countries with actually skilled surplus population to export. This isn't even China these days. That's why the Chinese wave has receded and the South Asian wave has surged. It's also why the government has resorted to sham immigration policies to get the growth they want.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

It works great until the worker/dependent ratio is out of balance.

For how long will we abide by this? Sweden, for instance, has a fertility rate of 1.67. It also has 10.5 million people, which is more than it has ever had before.

Could these things be related? Or is it axiomatic that where it once had 8 million, it must later have 10? And if it now has 10, it must soon have 12. Up to 50. Up to 100. A Sweden the size of Congo at some point.

The levels of immigration needed to mimic fertility in our dry-wombed democracies are becoming politically untenable. But the tax schemes of the Orbans and the Putins do not move the needle.

It is starting to look like it will be difficult to achieve a Sweden of even 15 million, never mind the 100-million-person MegaSweden required by theory over time.

Something will need to change and the man who can package it neatly for sale is the man of this century.

[Acajack]

Who knows if people arriving in Canada will integrate as seamlessly into Canadian society as those who came before them did.

It's entirely possible but then again there are no guarantees and every era is unique.

Some of today's influencing factors that were not nearly as present in the old days:

- much greater numbers of certain specific ethnocultural groups and therefore critical mass in many more metro areas and regions of the country

- modern communications technology that allows people and their descendants born in Canada to remain closely in touch with relatives and friends as well as culture and news from the old country

- the democratization of air travel allowing for frequent family trips (often annual in some cases) back to the old country over the summer holidays

- Canada's extremely soft approach to integration and more generally its strong borderline dogmatic messaging on multiculturalism

[Truenorth00]

I'm not sure that immigration policy (how many we take in and from where) has to be tied to integration policy. It is actually possible to integrate large numbers. That's more a question of training, education, cultural norms, etc. Admittedly, things that Canada sucks at.

[Acajack]

Another question is whether Canadians back then were less likely to move out of areas where large numbers of immigrants were arriving, "leaving them the space", so to speak.

I know that this is now happening in Brampton and some other places, where for example people generally not of South Asian origin are leaving in droves and their population is dropping rapidly.

My guess is this wasn't so much the case before. For example, the St-Léonard district in eastern Montreal has been known for decades for its Italian population, but Québécois French Canadians never really left the area and even today I believe they still may be the largest group in St-Léonard, slightly more numerous than Italians there.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Looks like QS is in full French election campaigning mode:

https://x.com/RubaGhazalQS/status/1805646049744195607

I could be wrong, but I think that's wasting their time.

Most expats, whether in Canada, the US or elsewhere are more likely to vote for what appears the most business-friendly to them, that is the centrists.

The political agendas of the far right and the left-wing coalition are scaring the business community.
Not only in France, but also in the EU as a whole.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I'm not sure that immigration policy (how many we take in and from where) has to be tied to integration policy. It is actually possible to integrate large numbers. That's more a question of training, education, cultural norms, etc. Admittedly, things that Canada sucks at.

I think that a more telling sign is that even the countries that historically were really good at integration and even assimilation of newcomers (like France and Britain) are now struggling rather badly and unable to keep up the pace.

Raise your hand if you didn't until fairly late in your life that Freddie Mercury was of Persian and Indian origin, and not some random English guy. My hand is raised.