Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

The City of Mississauga's report indicated that as of Nov 2019, GDP per capita was CAD $77,000, which in today's FX would be around US $57,000. This is charitable, as the CAD right now is lower than its 2019 FX rate. As you probably know, the CAD is a much more volatile currency, and isn't as stable as the EUR.

https://investmississauga.ca/wp-content/...Strategy-2020-25-Strategic-Framework.pdf



If you want to compare apples to apples, then you would compare Peel Region with Seine Saint Denis. Peel Region has a population of around 1.5M. and its GDP was around CAD $105B in 2023.



Again, Mississauga and Peel region serves a similar role to the Canadian economy. In Toronto, YYZ Pearson Airport in Mississauga is Canada's primary hub airport. There is no competing Orly or Beauvais sized airport in the GTA at the moment, just boutique ones on Toronto island and Hamilton. Peel region also has the Canadian headquarters of a disproportionate share of Fortune 500 companies, and the airport employment zone is the 2nd largest employment hub in Canada. But that's to be expected for a suburb of the country's largest metropolis. Regardless of this, it doesn't forestall the ethnic ghettoization issues that Acajack and I are discussing about.




As you pretend to be familiar with North America, you should know that the car is king on this side of the pond. Mississauga and Peel Region has an extensive highway network that Parisiens could never dream of, and its stretch of Highway 401 by YYZ airport has 18 lanes which makes it one of North America's busiest and widest highways, just behind the mega expressways in Texas. The province is also continuing development of the Bradford Bypass as well through Brampton, and is continuing to add lanes on the Mississauga stretch of Highway 401 as well as expanding the collector/express system.

Of course the majority of Torontonians these days abhor the lack of public transit to Peel, and is hoping the GO RER expansion run by Deutsche Bahn and Alstom will fix the transit desert there.

I appreciate all the research you guys have done on stats but I think the debate about Seine-St-Denis vs. Mississauga (or Peel region) is rather sterile.

There isn't really any perfect comparable for Seine-St-Denis in Canada but the western GTA is probably what comes closest.

Both have a significant economic base and are huge immigration magnets.

Seine-St-Denis for all its economic heft is seen as the poster child for integration and vivre ensemble problems in France. It's got higher than national average stats on unemployment, poverty, infant mortality, etc. And of course crime. I think that close to half of the top 20 most crime-ridden communes (municipalities) are in Seine-St-Denis. And it's only 1 out of a 100 départements. So there are lots of problems there.

Mississauga and Peel region aren't really there yet though there are growing issues with crime and socio-economic problems there that if not addressed could easily develop into a situation similar to what one sees in the more troubled parts of Seine-St-Denis.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

The City of Mississauga's report indicated that as of Nov 2019, GDP per capita was CAD $77,000, which in today's FX would be around US $57,000. This is charitable, as the CAD right now is lower than its 2019 FX rate. As you probably know, the CAD is a much more volatile currency, and isn't as stable as the EUR.

https://investmississauga.ca/wp-content/...Strategy-2020-25-Strategic-Framework.pdf

They can report whatever they want, but they are not a statistical office and cannot calculate a municipal GDP (even for Statcan it would be quite nightmarish to calculate municipal GDPs). Moreover, they talk of "economic output" in their PDF, not "GDP". In other words, it's just a wild guesstimate.

The figures I gave for Seine-Saint-Denis, on the other hand, are official figures calculated by INSEE and Eurostat, and they refer strictly to GDP, not a vague "economic output".

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I appreciate all the research you guys have done on stats but I think the debate about Seine-St-Denis vs. Mississauga (or Peel region) is rather sterile.

There isn't really any perfect comparable for Seine-St-Denis in Canada but the western GTA is probably what comes closest.

Both have a significant economic base and are huge immigration magnets.

Seine-St-Denis for all its economic heft is seen as the poster child for integration and vivre ensemble problems in France. It's got higher than national average stats on unemployment, poverty, infant mortality, etc. And of course crime. I think that close to half of the top 20 most crime-ridden communes (municipalities) are in Seine-St-Denis. And it's only 1 out of a 100 départements. So there are lots of problems there.

Mississauga and Peel region aren't really there yet though there are growing issues with crime and socio-economic problems there that if not addressed could easily develop into a situation similar to what one sees in the more troubled parts of Seine-St-Denis.

Mississauga is different from Brampton. Mississauga is generally a microcosm of Toronto next door, containing a range of incomes and social classes, and a very diverse assortment of ethnic groups. It has a "city centre" around Square One that is growing quite rapidly and caters to middle class professionals.

Brampton has more issues, but it's still primarily a middle class suburb. Its median household income is still higher than Toronto proper. Even if we're going to resort to anecdotes rather than data, your stereotypical Brampton Punjabi household is multi-generational and lives within a large single family home that they own (often outright) and they pool their incomes together. If a foreign student from India living in poverty rents a basement in Brampton, chances are that the landlord that they pay their rent to is also brown.

This is very different from the lives of immigrants living in the grands ensembles.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Mississauga is different from Brampton. Mississauga is generally a microcosm of Toronto next door, containing a range of incomes and social classes, and a very diverse assortment of ethnic groups. It has a "city centre" around Square One that is growing quite rapidly and caters to middle class professionals.

Brampton has more issues, but it's still primarily a middle class suburb. Its median household income is still higher than Toronto proper. Even if we're going to resort to anecdotes rather than data, your stereotypical Brampton Punjabi household is multi-generational and lives within a large single family home that they own (often outright) and they pool their incomes together. If a foreign student from India living in poverty rents a basement in Brampton, chances are that the landlord that they pay their rent to is also brown.

This is very different from the lives of immigrants living in the grands ensembles.

These are good points. There might be other parts of the GTA that might eventually become more similar to the French banlieues, such as all of those aging towers in the park areas. But they're more concentrated on the outer fringes of the city proper of Toronto, and spread out among other forms of urban typology. Not as concentrated as they are in larger tracts of the Paris suburbs.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

If a foreign student from India living in poverty rents a basement in Brampton, chances are that the landlord that they pay their rent to is also brown.

This is very different from the lives of immigrants living in the grands ensembles.

I'd imagine if you have 8-16 unrelated Punjabi students living together in one basement that's ill-equipped to hold so many humans, the conditions would probably be even more squalid than in the grands ensembles.

My concern would be if these inhumane living conditions persist and turn into a permanent fixture of Brampton's long term housing stock, if the federal government continues to manipulate immigration targets to satisfy slumlords. It would make the 416's Commieblocks look benign in comparison.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

I'd imagine if you have 8-16 unrelated Punjabi students living together in one basement that's ill-equipped to hold so many humans, the conditions would probably be even more squalid than in the grands ensembles.

The point is that the exploitation is happening within their community. The person at the top of the pyramid who's getting their money and treats them like garbage has the same skin colour and speaks the same language.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

The point is that the exploitation is happening within their community. The person at the top of the pyramid who's getting their money and treats them like garbage has the same skin colour and speaks the same language.

Let's not forget the public colleges like Sheridan/Conestoga/Seneca, and the many oligopolies that benefit from this exploitation as well. Many of these public colleges and oligopolies aren't run by Punjabis. Those aggrieved won't think they're only being abused by their own community, and will also take their anger out at Canadian society at large.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Let's not forget the public colleges like Sheridan/Conestoga/Seneca, and the many oligopolies that benefit from this exploitation as well. Many of these public colleges and oligopolies aren't run by Punjabis. Those aggrieved won't think they're only being abused by their own community, and will also take their anger out at Canadian society at large.

Rising up against corporations is only something that educated, middle class people who are afraid of jail do, so it usually manifests as a very polite, non-violent form of backlash like boycotts or picketing, but dispersing when the cops tell you to disperse. Maybe the most brazen 1% will go to the annual general meeting and yell obscenities at the CEO.

Ethnic or sectarian violence directed against a scapegoated group, on the other hand, is a lot more raw but, like I said, who will exploited Indian students (who are themselves middle class in India) direct their anger to?

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Ethnic or sectarian violence directed against a scapegoated group, on the other hand, is a lot more raw but, like I said, who will exploited Indian students (who are themselves middle class in India) direct their anger to?

My guess would be public institutions, with the colleges who issued them degrees that's as good as toilet paper being the first targets.

Indian students clashing with local Canadians could be a flashpoint (UK style riots isn't out of the question anymore), given how terrible the employment situation is in Toronto at the moment (compounded by the unprecedented rent and COL crisis), and it's getting worse every month. Toronto's unemployment rate is already at 8%, which far surpasses any of its peers in North America.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

If you want to compare apples to apples, then you would compare Peel Region with Seine Saint Denis. Peel Region has a population of around 1.5M. and its GDP was around CAD $105B in 2023.

So now you're comparing a territory of 236 km² (Seine-Saint-Denis) with a territory of 1,247 km² (Regional Municipality of Peel)?

I was just trying to show you the incredible concentration of wealth there is in the relatively small territory of Seine-Saint-Denis, a fact that is often overlooked in the gross misrepresentations of this territory.

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Mississauga and Peel Region has an extensive highway network that Parisiens could never dream of

I very much doubt that. Again, wrong impressions about the place.

Seine-Saint-Denis has a very dense network of freeways/expressways.

That's the various motorways/freeways/expressways crossing Seine-Saint-Denis (a territory again of only 236 km²). You're not going to find a denser network in Europe. Even for a place like LA it would be quite dense (the only difference being that freeways in LA have 10 to 12 lanes, whereas in Seine-Saint-Denis they have more like 6 lanes).



In terms of density (population, subways, freeways, GDP, venues, etc), Seine-Saint-Denis is unlike anything you guys have in Canada. The only equivalent in North America would be the Bronx or Brooklyn in NYC. Seine-Saint-Denis is a sort of mix of Brooklyn and the Bronx.

So, to go back to the original point: would anyone here be saying "if we don't pay attention to our immigration, we're going to end up like the Bronx "? Probably not, because you guys are more aware of NYC, and less into clichés regarding its boroughs. (whereas here in Europe "the Bronx" is a byword for decrepit and violent neighborhood, which is the cliché you seem to have regarding Seine-Saint-Denis)

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

So, to go back to the original point: would anyone here be saying "if we don't pay attention to our immigration, we're going to end up like the Bronx "? Probably not, because you guys are more aware of NYC, and less into clichés regarding its boroughs. (whereas here in Europe "the Bronx" is a byword for decrepit and violent neighborhood, which is the cliché you seem to have regarding Seine-Saint-Denis)

I'm going to the skip the rest, since you seem to take offence to everything literally and as Acajack mentioned it's never going to be a perfect comparison.

But saying the situation is going to be Seine-Saint-Denis instead of the Bronx is actually a complement. Like Paris or Seine-Saint-Denis, you won't see large scale American style abandonment or segregation in Canadian cities. Brampton, Mississauga, Montreal Nord won't turn into south side Chicago, Detroit nor the Bronx. Yes the region will face significant poverty, societal, crime and integration problems, but the banlieue will still thrive regardless, how imperfect it may be.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

My guess would be public institutions, with the colleges who issued them degrees that's as good as toilet paper being the first targets.

Indian students clashing with local Canadians could be a flashpoint (UK style riots isn't out of the question anymore), given how terrible the employment situation is in Toronto at the moment (compounded by the unprecedented rent and COL crisis), and it's getting worse every month. Toronto's unemployment rate is already at 8%, which far surpasses any of its peers in North America.

If Indian students started a riot and smashed the computer labs of Conestoga college, I think that most Canadians would either not know/care or be secretly supportive. I don't think anyone sides with the leadership of these colleges. These aren't cherished public institutions like libraries or national parks.

Indian students clashing with local Canadians is a bit more plausible, but it would be started by the local Canadians, and it takes a lot for people to go from being keyboard warriors to actually throwing rocks. As Jagmeet Singh's encounter on Parliament Hill showed a few weeks ago, most of the types who agitate online fold faster than lawn chairs in real life.

There's also the issue that many of the people who compete with Indian students for low-skilled jobs are not an organized group - they come from all sorts of different backgrounds - and typically come from demographics that are not prone to violence. Historically, jobs like Tim Hortons server or retail skew female or older.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Seine-St-Denis for all its economic heft is seen as the poster child for integration and vivre ensemble problems in France. It's got higher than national average stats on unemployment, poverty, infant mortality, etc. And of course crime. I think that close to half of the top 20 most crime-ridden communes (municipalities) are in Seine-St-Denis. And it's only 1 out of a 100 départements. So there are lots of problems there.

It's a little bit like saying that this or that ward of Tokyo have the "highest crime rates in Japan". It's all very relative isn't it? Crime rates in Europe are low. So high crime rates in France would not be very high crime rates in the US. I certainly feel safer walking in the streets of Seine-Saint-Denis than in many neighborhoods of the US (ghettos of Chicago, LA, most of Baltimore, etc).

Also, as far as I know, crime statistics in France are always published at the department level, never at the municipality level, so I don't know where that "top 20 most crime-ridden communes" info comes from. Many police areas in France are manned by the gendarmerie who territorial remit is not based on the borders of communes, so it would be very complicated to calculate crime rates at the commune level.

The problem with violence in France anyway is more petty violence (insults, being stolen, beaten up, these sorts of things). Gun violence is much more rare than in the US or the Americas more generally, and most of the gun violence here takes place between rival drug networks, so you and I are not really concerned by that violence.

I once witnessed a shooting in the US (in the Japantown of San Francisco one Saturday night). Never saw any shooting in France. On the other hand I would avoid certain areas of Seine-Saint-Denis at night (daytime is fine), and not just Seine-Saint-Denis in fact, not because of the risk of being shot, but because of troublemakers, bad guys, guys asking you money and then stealing form you, and now all the drug traffic going on because of France's stupid prohibition of cannabis.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

If Indian students started a riot and smashed the computer labs of Conestoga college, I think that most Canadians would either not know/care or be secretly supportive. I don't think anyone sides with the leadership of these colleges. These aren't cherished public institutions like libraries or national parks.

TBH, I'm not sure whether Canadians can tolerate disorder since it rarely happens. Likely their next target will be politicians.

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Indian students clashing with local Canadians is a bit more plausible, but it would be started by the local Canadians, and it takes a lot for people to go from being keyboard warriors to actually throwing rocks. As Jagmeet Singh's encounter on Parliament Hill showed a few weeks ago, most of the types who agitate online fold faster than lawn chairs in real life.

There's also the issue that many of the people who compete with Indian students for low-skilled jobs are not an organized group - they come from all sorts of different backgrounds - and typically come from demographics that are not prone to violence. Historically, jobs like Tim Hortons server or retail skew female or older.

I would agree for the most part, but at the same time I think social media does make the reach and calculus unpredictable, and makes the situation much more combustible. If Canadians suddenly had to confront the news of a local child being murdered and raped by a migrant or international student, could it suddenly ignite hidden animal spirits?

[hipster duck]

I guess we'll just agree to disagree. I think the scenario of a race riot in Brampton involving Indian foreign students is extremely unlikely.

If it came from anywhere, it might start with a group that is now entering the second generation, born in Canada that still finds itself at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, like Somalis, but they're much smaller and their problems predate Trudeau's immigration scheme.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

This is very different from the lives of immigrants living in the grands ensembles.

The so-called "grands ensembles" are only a minority part of Seine-Saint-Denis. If I'm very generous I'll say they make up 1/3 of Seine-Saint-Denis, but certainly not more.

The large majority of Seine-Saint-Denis looks like this, i.e. middle to lower-middle-class detached houses, not of the most pretty type, inhabited by people from all across the world (in the pictures here that I took during an urban trek of Seine-Saint-Denis with another forumer we saw Portugese flags hanging from various houses, and we also saw some Sri Lankans, of whom many live in Seine-Saint-Denis... our Sri Lankans are mostly Tamil, and a lot of them are Christian refugees in fact).







Some streets are nicer. For example that one, where most of the names on the mailboxes were Portuguese (this is in the municipality of Aulnay-sous-Bois if I remember correctly, a municipality known for its infamous "grands ensembles", when in fact more than 2/3 of it is made up of detached houses):



Some areas of Seine-Saint-Denis even have these sorts of things, which you would expect in wealthy suburbs and not in Seine-Saint-Denis:



Oh, and we also spotted this in the middle of a residential area of Seine-Saint-Denis:



So yes, from time to time you see some ugly "grands ensembles" on the horizon, but by and large this is not what predominates (except in some specific parts of Seine-Saint-Denis):



You also see lots of old villages engulfed by Parisian urban expansion:





You also see lots of urban regeneration going on here and there. This is not the sort of things that make headlines in national media, because these are micro-projects here and there, but they exist and they are numerous.





Here we discovered the completely transformed and redesigned center of the Communist municipality of Le Blanc-Mesnil (a former 'Red Belt' stronghold of the Communist Party), and we found it really great (the pictures are a bit less nice that how it looks in reality).

That's the new plaza in front of the town hall of Blanc-Mesnil:





So, Seine-Saint-Denis. Not exactly what people have in mind when they think of the place I suppose. And we didn't even explore the wealthiest parts of Seine-Saint-Denis. This urban trek was after the terror attacks in central Paris, and we followed in the steps of the terrorists, wishing to explore the areas where they were born and where they grew up. I would say it's the average Seine-Saint-Denis. Not the poorest parts, not the wealthiest parts either.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Acajack

These are good points. There might be other parts of the GTA that might eventually become more similar to the French banlieues, such as all of those aging towers in the park areas. But they're more concentrated on the outer fringes of the city proper of Toronto, and spread out among other forms of urban typology. Not as concentrated as they are in larger tracts of the Paris suburbs.

Scarborough is at risk of this, I would say.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Scarborough is at risk of this, I would say.

Jane and Finch (North York).

Montreal-Nord.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

My guess would be public institutions, with the colleges who issued them degrees that's as good as toilet paper being the first targets.

Indian students clashing with local Canadians could be a flashpoint (UK style riots isn't out of the question anymore), given how terrible the employment situation is in Toronto at the moment (compounded by the unprecedented rent and COL crisis), and it's getting worse every month. Toronto's unemployment rate is already at 8%, which far surpasses any of its peers in North America.

As I posted upthread, we also have the issue that Anglo-Canadians are very squeamish when it comes to discussing these sorts of things, which increases the risk that tensions build up under the radar and suddenly burst into some UK-like situation.

We saw an example of this with the Freedom Convoy. Severe public discontent about covid restrictions was mostly suppressed by a societal aversion to acknowledging its existence, until suddenly it wasn't.

[mousquet]

Renard, don't you know Brisavoine is the most obstinate and ruthless debater on the entire internet?
You'll never beat him at it. Even when he's wrong.

That being said, he's right in this case. Seine-Saint-Denis in particular and Paris's so called banlieues as a whole are not nearly as terrible as depicted by the foreign or even domestic media.
They only talk about them in case of riots that occur from time to time, hence the unfortunate stereotypes.

The French welfare state poured a lot of money in urban redevelopment over the rough neighborhoods over the past couple of decades.
I'm not quite sure the massive expense produces satisfying results efficiently, because the urban environment may not actually be the main problem.
Failing education in these suburbs is certainly the most crucial issue to address.

Nevertheless, they gradually gentrify by some kind of natural process, I suppose.
Traditionally wealthy areas are not large enough to host the entire population growing better off, so gentrification has to find room elsewhere.
Namely in suburbs like Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine for instance, that's quite decent to live and raise your kids today, even though it's located in Seine-Saint-Denis.