Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Or the capitals of small countries with high GDP per capita and a somewhat disproportionate number of large global companies.

To be more pointed: if you want to be Sweden, you need your Volvo, your Ericsson, your Saab, your Scania, your H&M, your Ikea, your Electrolux, your Spotify and so on.

Quebec isn't necessarily a slouch but it's not an outperformer, either. It has 3x the land of Sweden but it just doesn't have the companies. In some ways, it doesn't really have the high-end as a social, cultural and economic layer (there are historical reasons for this).

Stockholm is a wealthier city than Montreal, and in many ways -- and this hurts, because it can be a very annoying place -- a more significant one.

Montreal is better, but... it's poor. It's been poor for a while.

And it matters more than those of us who like to go to bat for it often admit.

I am pretty sure that both Stockholm and Montreal generated substantial amounts of wealth over the past century or two. The main difference is that the people who generated that historical wealth (or perhaps their descendants) are by and large no longer in Montreal - whereas in Stockholm they are mostly all still there.

The opportunity to share in the wealth was also historically spread much more broadly across the wider population of the city in Stockholm as opposed to Montreal.

I have mentioned before on this thread that as a francophone with roots in this country going back to the early 1600s I basically have no one in my entourage who has "old money". I mean, in my widest personal entourage. I know there is a handful of old rich francophone families that do exist but they are extremely tiny in number for a society of millions of people.

A few years ago my wife had a friend and colleague who was from an old Montreal anglo family. She had moved to Ottawa and lived in a modern suburban house, but the inside was full of stuff that had obviously been gathered all over the British Empire during the previous 200 years like furniture, statues, tapestries, etc. You could have filmed "A Night the Museum" there!

I had never in my life seen anything like that.

Just using this as a metaphorical example but a lot of that type of stuff used to be in Montreal but is now in Toronto or the US.

In Sweden it's all still in Stockholm, I would gather.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Norway isn't a good comparable for anyone who doesn't have large accessible oil reserves immediately adjacent to some of the largest markets in the world. Lithium and renewable energy are not going to build Quebec a sovereign wealth fund.

If it's not oil/gas, then the benefits from natural resources are typically felt in more subtle ways like additional blue-collar employment opportunities, some head office jobs, and spin-off benefits for financial services from publicly listed extraction companies. Think the difference between how mining benefits Toronto's economy vs. how the oil sands benefits Alberta's.

Petroleum is the contemporary golden goose and as a result Norway may end up being "set for life" but I think that overall in terms of natural resources Quebec might have a more diversified array of stuff.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by someone123

Canada has its banana republic lite economy with oligopolies and orientation toward real estate. But then on the other hand Canada is a good location for high skill branch offices for American companies (e.g. Google development office in K-W) due to low wages and time zone. For those jobs you need English.

If I had to guess, that's where the most incremental economic opportunity will be lost for Quebec if there is continued perceived (real or otherwise) hostility to English-speaking business.

Canada is able to operate in this economic grey zone of being basically America but with independent immigration control. We saw this play out on a large-scale under the Trump Administration as H1b visas were drastically reduced. The number of new tech offices and jobs created in Vancouver was quite extraordinary for example. You basically get the proximity to Seattle and the PNW tech hub, but with readily accessible global talent in addition to growing local talent across Canada's universities. If the U.S. reduces immigration targets by 20%, and Canada increases by 20%, someone looking to open a new office may find it much easier to fill north of the border.

Quebec will always have a harder time taking advantage of this "immigration arbitrage" opportunity. Things like Bill 96 may rightly or wrongly increase the perceived risk of choosing Montreal as a secondary or tertiary location. Again though, I think it's up to Quebec to decide if housing an office of foreign workers and English-only speakers is truly a benefit to them under whatever criteria they use for societal success.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Petroleum is the contemporary golden goose and as a result Norway may end up being "set for life" but I think that overall in terms of natural resources Quebec might have a more diversified array of stuff.

It's just the other stuff doesn't funnel money directly into government coffers the way oil royalties do. Still great industries to have obviously, but again, it's why no other province has resource wealth funds like Alberta does despite plenty of extraction opportunities across the country.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Just using this as a metaphorical example but a lot of that type of stuff used to be in Montreal but is now in Toronto or the US.

Gee, I wonder why????

Do you think it was because the proprietors of said wealth were told by activist politicians that "we don't want your kind here".....................

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Gee, I wonder why????

Do you think it was because the proprietors of said wealth were told by activist politicians that "we don't want your kind here".....................

Part of the point is, why was none of the wealth ever in the hands of the kind they did want there? If the pie shrunk, but your people got a larger part of the new pie, did you lose out?

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by vanatox

Montreal's (and Quebec's) economy has undergone tremendous changes over the last decade. Quebec has one of the highest growth rate of GDP in Canada.

Montreal has a well diversified economy and has been on fire for a number of years now, all neighborhoods are gentrifying at an incredible pace, economy is super strong. New sectors of the economy are growing fast. One of the strongest economy in the country, with among the highest increases in wages. Not only wages are increasing due to the hot economy, but labor shortage is also driving increases in productivity.

Montreal as a relatively poor and declining place is history. Old dilapidated factories that used to house parties have now been fully renovated and filed with start-ups workers.

Yes, I see what you mean.

I left 10 years ago, and don't pretend to have my finger on the ground in Montreal or Canada. I don't vote there anymore, for instance, even though I can. Because I'm not part of what's going on.

But when I left, the city was already spooling up and its construction boom had begun. It was hardly the tattered city of the mid-1990s anymore. It looked different, felt different and had a very different directionality. I sense that has continued.

That said, shifts in things like metropolitan GDP, and particularly relative GDP, take a long time to occur and are not moved significantly by even years of improved sentiment.

Of course my 1997 dream-walks down an empty Ann St. are lost in a buzz of life and new property now. They were by 2012, by 2005 even. Montreal has long since recovered from that phase.

But the world has not stood still during this time, either. Toronto is massively larger. San Francisco and Washington, DC, are incomparably wealthier. A lot of cities have startups occupying what were once industrial buildings. Some of them are known and used around the world.

Little Stockholm, with the metro population of 2.4 million that Montreal had when it hosted Expo, had a 2019 GDP of CAD 197bn vs. Montreal's 2021 forecast of CAD 188bn (at 4.5 million people).

Montreal is moving in the right direction but it has not become a powerhouse. And though I really did leave a decade ago, move to Europe and become rather old, my noticing this is not a fragment of some lost '90s dreaming.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Just using this as a metaphorical example but a lot of that type of stuff used to be in Montreal but is now in Toronto or the US.

In Sweden it's all still in Stockholm, I would gather.

Yes, this is what I was alluding to when I mentioned historical reasons. Montreal is in this social sense a very new city, younger than even some sunbelters. And I think Quebec Inc. has done very well. But it's not yet where it wants to be, or where it needs to be if... you know...

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Quebec might have a more diversified array of stuff.

Quebec has one of the greatest territories in the world.

[kool maudit]

I don't use these Scandinavian comparisons to shower praise on my new home, either. What's theirs is theirs. I came here late, am only a guest, and have no patriotism or feeling of identity connected to any of their successes. If I live here for until the end of my days, I won't ever feel Swedish, and that's fine. I don't need that from them.

But they did show me something that comes to mind when we talk about Quebec, whatever its ultimate destiny.

Countries or country-like regions of less than 10 million people can be very dynamic, self-contained worlds of their own. They can have wealthy, advanced cities and impressive internal economies. They need not be rump-states or hermit kingdoms, even if they insist on certain particularities.

Even little sandbar-nations with one Calgary-sized city can outperform Canada itself on GDP per capita.



It's just something to think about.

[vanatox]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Little Stockholm, with the metro population of 2.4 million that Montreal had when it hosted Expo, had a 2019 GDP of CAD 197bn vs. Montreal's 2021 forecast of CAD 188bn (at 4.5 million people).

Montreal is moving in the right direction but it has not become a powerhouse. And though I really did leave a decade ago, move to Europe and become rather old, my noticing this is not a fragment of some lost '90s dreaming.

Well this is not unique to Montreal though.. most major Canadian cities do not fare as good as Stockholm GDP-wise when taking into account population. Even Toronto.

Montreal might not be a super international powerhouse but it is a relevant, increasingly successful global city.

[ToxiK]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Gee, I wonder why????

Do you think it was because the proprietors of said wealth were told by activist politicians that "we don't want your kind here".....................

When a resource is tapped out, people profiting for that resource tend to leave (taking their fortune with them). For a very long time, Québécois were cheap labour that the Anglophone business leaders were more than happy to hire. The resource being tapped here was submission, when it ran out many people tapping that resource didn't find it worthy to stay in Québec.

When there is no more oil in Alberta, I am pretty sure the oil companies will leave too.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by ToxiK

When a resource is tapped out, people profiting for that resource tend to leave (taking their fortune with them). For a very long time, Québécois were cheap labour that the Anglophone business leaders were more than happy to hire. The resource being tapped here was submission, when it ran out many people tapping that resource didn't find it worthy to stay in Québec.

True to a point, but this narrative fits in too easily with the Quebecois trope of the evil anglo robber-barons and greedy capitalists raping and pillaging the humble Habitant peasants.

Now, I'm sure these people existed, jus as I'm sure that there was likely a fat female store clerk at the downtown Montreal Eaton's who may have told a shocked Quebecois patron to "speak white." These events unfortunately occur, and probably more often than I would like to admit.

It should be noted however that not all anglo Quebecers are rich Westmount bankers, merchants and industrialists. This characterization is just too convenient for la cause. Many of the anglo Quebecers that I came to know (from visiting with my Quebec relatives) were rural farmers and shopkeepers, not too different than their habitant neighbours. These are the people I am most concerned with. Many of their communities were originally English speaking, before their Quebecois neighbours moved in. These people have watched their communities wither away and die as their elders succumb to illness, and their children move to Ontario. These people were not oppressors, but simple rural folk who had a vision of a prosperous community they wanted to create, only to see their hopes dashed by rampant Quebec nationalism, leading to increasing restrictions on where and when they can use their language.

It is very sad to see rural anglophone enclaves in Quebec disappear, while their francophone counterparts continue to thrive in northern and eastern Ontario, and northern and eastern NB. Governments in these two provinces are increasingly accommodating to their linguistic minorities, while the reverse is true in Quebec.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Again though, I think it's up to Quebec to decide if housing an office of foreign workers and English-only speakers is truly a benefit to them under whatever criteria they use for societal success.

For some reason, this, despite being an extraordinarily obvious no brainer, is not automatically understood by Anglo-Canadians -- to the point that I almost feel like congratulating you for your insight

[lio45]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

It's just the other stuff doesn't funnel money directly into government coffers the way oil royalties do. Still great industries to have obviously, but again, it's why no other province has resource wealth funds like Alberta does despite plenty of extraction opportunities across the country.

Sure, but I think the example stands: a country that doesn't need to speak any English and has no global conglomerates' HQs and is not a tax haven can have a small population and a welfare state, if it's got enough resource wealth per capita.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I don't use these Scandinavian comparisons to shower praise on my new home, either. What's theirs is theirs. I came here late, am only a guest, and have no patriotism or feeling of identity connected to any of their successes. If I live here for until the end of my days, I won't ever feel Swedish, and that's fine. I don't need that from them.

But they did show me something that comes to mind when we talk about Quebec, whatever its ultimate destiny.

Countries or country-like regions of less than 10 million people can be very dynamic, self-contained worlds of their own. They can have wealthy, advanced cities and impressive internal economies. They need not be rump-states or hermit kingdoms, even if they insist on certain particularities.

It amuses me that you had to move to Scandinavia to realize that

[kool maudit]

The "Westmount Rhodesian" bit was a heated description of a class circumstance, not an accusation of personal unkindness. And it didn't take into account people like the Irish of Goose Village, either, but it wasn't far off the truth.

The Square Mile was real, and toward the end of the 19th century, fewer than 50 men who lived there held 70% of Canada's wealth. They spoke English and were mainly Scots.

All cities have a public language. Call City Hall, the main library branch, the largest bank -- they're going to say words. And in Montreal, those words were English because of those families in the Square Mile, and despite the hundreds of thousands of francophones around them.

It doesn't matter if they were nice, or if the Eaton's lady was real, or even if the politicians who rose up on the resentment this created were sleazy. It was a deeply unstable circumstance and it looked a certain way in those decades that saw the European powers shed their colonies and self-rule become a buzzword in all sorts of places where the Union Jack had once flown.

You can be as open and self-effacing as the Swedes. Maybe it helps them be rich. For sure, if you stumble in Swedish they'll say "sorry" and switch to effortless English without the slightest twinge of any ill feeling. But if you call City Hall, they speak Swedish. When the government sends you a letter, it is in Swedish. When you get a utility bill, it is in Swedish. Because of course it is.

Whatever you can say about Quebec in the '60s and '70s, it is in French now. OK, the pasta menu thing was stupid, LOL, how petty... but it's in French. And there is no half-and-half with this sort of thing, and particularly not with English. There is no libertarian whatever, that just winds up with it being English. It has to be one or the other. And they got it to be theirs.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by lio45

It amuses me that you had to move to Scandinavia to realize that

North American gigantism dies hard.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by lio45

Sure, but I think the example stands: a country that doesn't need to speak any English and has no global conglomerates' HQs and is not a tax haven can have a small population and a welfare state, if it's got enough resource wealth per capita.

Of the top 35 countries by GDP per capita, which ones are resource-based economies but not oil reliant? Probably just Australia and Canada by my estimation. Just using the eye test, that's about where the cut-off point is for countries that can sustain what we would consider a modern Western welfare state.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

And there is no half-and-half with this sort of thing, and particularly not with English.

"Not with English in North America", most definitely agree, but when two languages are somewhat equal, there can be a tenable/durable half-and-half. It would not be strange to be offered one's choice of French or Dutch for one's Brussels utility bill and this situation can likely last "forever".

There is no libertarian whatever, that just winds up with it being English.

Exactly. Plenty of U.S. states do not have an official language; they don't need it. Quebec, on the other hand, has an official language. And "needs it".