Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

I think it's the type of immigrants that is a big sticking point. Fake students are giving the illegal immigrant vibe that soured Americans and Australians (before htey shut it down). Legally they have full rights to work up to the weekly limit but you can see how Canadians see it as exploiting a loophole. We pride outselves on being welcoming to immigratnts compared to Americans but historically one ship arriving with illegal migrants have caused panics when they happened. Roxham road is a slow trickle but is ramping up concern.

Personally I'm all for an all urban middle class educated Indian immigration program. I think we could even accept a large number. They have a nearlly unparrelled integration track-record. I'd suggest screening out Sikhs bent on bringing their issues here and Pakistan despite as somone said being lumped together by Canadians don't have quite the same record.

I'm no fan of the faux student group and I've spoken about that before. But I can't help but wonder if the outrage and backlash would be the same if the dominant group was European. Let's say if we got a large influx of Ukrainians or Poles or Italians, etc.

[mousquet]

Since Québec has been frequently charged with racism on here, we're seeing a strange phenomenon over here, with the rise of nationalism in polls.
Racist or xenophobic people are no longer scared to publicly state they are so.
They act shameless now, like they're "décomplexés".

See this girl dancing to an AI song explicitly suggesting to deport all Muslims from France.

• Video Link

Excuse us if you think the girl is sexy, eh. That's not my fault.
I'd never seen anything like this in our country.
Needless to say, this is scary.

Actually, the French intelligence is expecting troubles to follow the representative elections, while the Olympics is beginning in a month from now in Paris...

Hopefully, it doesn't go too messy, cause the entire world will be watching.

[Truenorth00]

^ Europeans being bigots is hardly a new phenomenon. The backlash we're seeing here is definitely new.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I'm no fan of the faux student group and I've spoken about that before. But I can't help but wonder if the outrage and backlash would be the same if the dominant group was European. Let's say if we got a large influx of Ukrainians or Poles or Italians, etc.

Absouletly. And as I said the values argument doesn't really hold as Ukrainians are probably as divergent. Fleeing from war certainly helps but doesn't apply to Gazans so colour at some point is the answer.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

^ Europeans being bigots is hardly a new phenomenon. The backlash we're seeing here is definitely new.

Well, what about Muslim bigotry, then? You can't always blame on the same side.
It takes everybody to be "inclusive". If some don't act by the rules, it goes derailed at some point.

Of course the local far right is guilty. But so are the crazy Muslims that want enforce their totalitarian tyranny on everybody, and the leftist freaks that support them just to get their votes and cause some mess all over society.

All extremists are stupid and evil anyway. And everybody knows. Period.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

immigrants from high-growth places are needed to avoid the impending fate of Japan

The "fate" of Japan doesn't seem so bad... I know many people who would love to live in a society as ordered, civil, polite, clean, aesthetic, etc as Japan. And the country is as affluent as ever. And the food excellent.

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

places with rapidly-declining populations and in the near future, economic stagnation and a loss of global heft, both economically and politically.

Ah! There we go. The real reason why some in the higher spheres of Anglo-Canada are pushing for high immigration: turning the country into a world power. Canada of 100 million people and all that jazz. This is something that both reeks of nationalism (in an old fashioned way) and delusion: as if a Canada of even 100 million would count for much in the world next to a US of 400 or 500 million...

It's ridiculous to sacrifice quality of life (Toronto at 20 million people in a Canada of 100 million? Montréal with 10 million mostly Anglophone immigrants and 3 million remaining Francophone natives?) just for the sake of poursuivre des rêves de grandeur un peu ridicules quand même...

Funnily I see the same delusion of grandeur in the UK and Australia: taking in as many immigrants as possible to make the country more important in the world. This time it's not a French saying that is useful but a French fable by La Fontaine: La Grenouille qui se veut faire aussi grosse que le bœuf. You should re-read it.

Une grenouille vit un Bœuf
Qui lui sembla de belle taille.
Elle qui n'était pas grosse en tout comme un œuf,
Envieuse s'étend, et s'enfle, et se travaille
Pour égaler l'animal en grosseur,
Disant : « Regardez bien, ma sœur,
Est-ce assez ? dites-moi : n'y suis-je point encore ?
— Nenni. — M'y voici donc ? — Point du tout. — M'y voilà ?
— Vous n'en approchez point. » La chétive pécore
S'enfla si bien qu'elle creva.

Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus sages :
Tout Bourgeois veut bâtir comme les grands Seigneurs,
Tout petit Prince a des Ambassadeurs,
Tout Marquis veut avoir des Pages.

Replace le bœuf with the USA and la grenouille with Canada, and there you go. Seems to be the mindset in some Conservative circles in Anglo-Canada.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by 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.

Indeed. Japan is being forced to plan things that many of us would consider nuts. We complain about the surplus of Uber drivers and Doordash delivery guys. The Japanese are planning a 500 km long automates conveyor to move goods because they are worried about a massive shortage of delivery personnel.

https://newatlas.com/transport/cargo...uto-logistics/

What we're seeing now is just the beginning. Who knows what the Japanese will have to resort to, with the demographic decline, to keep their quality of life.

Another example is South Korea. Their birth rate has national security implications. They are genuinely worried, they may not have enough conscripts and recruits to deter North Korea in the future.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by mousquet

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.

French citizens in Israel are voting predominantly for the French far-right, not for the centrists, as the results of the recent European elections showed.

As for French citizens in North Africa and West Africa, they vote predominantly for the far-left (also per the recent European election results).

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Again, those coming here are largely uninterested in creating "Mini Irans".

Mini-Somalias have been created in Sweden and various other European countries. Mini-Afghanistans are now starting to appear across Europe. These are some of the most closed-in immigrant communities, and with high criminal rates (ask the Swedes who used to be of the softy-left type before and who now vote for the far-right...).

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

The point stands: some people in this thread clearly want assimilation, not integration.

Québec vs ROC. What's new! You should be the last to be surprised.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by harls

The fact that this 'Québec' thread is in English is just all sorts of irony.

Sorry, continue.

I've bolded the French words for you. You think you write in English, but in fact half of it is French.

PS: The spelling discrepancy with today's French is just because you guys still use old French spelling from the Middle Ages (for example the word currently spelled "fait" in French was spelled "faict" until the 17th century, and -y was the standard ending in French until the 17th century, being replaced by -ie only in the 18th century).

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

To me integration is a rather simple definition. Learn the language, learn the culture, fit in. What they do in private life with culture or religion should largely be irrelevant unless it contravenes law or gross cultural norms (like say treatment of women).

Fair enough, but the one big elephant in the room here is... the Islamic veil. It's not just something people do in the privacy of their homes. It's a very in-you-face statement visible by everyone in the street.

And things are changing fast (hence the rise in far-right votes). 2 weeks ago I went to a university in Paris because I needed to check a thesis, and I was frankly shocked at the number of veiled women there! It was never like that before. To see such display of obscurantism in what should be a temple of science and reason is shocking. The rapid increase in veil wearing is also shocking. If it's not stopped, it will end up like North Africa where 95% of city women suddenly became veiled in a matter of just 15 years (1980-1995).

[dreambrother808]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

This is kind of a strawman. Nobody said there's anything wrong with having expectations. It's more suspicious when those expectations change....

What’s largely changed is the rate of immigration that coincides with a housing crisis and the inability to provide services to the general population. Reduce the rate to prior, more manageable levels and the situation relaxes to some degree.

Also, people are innately ethnocentric and comfort comes through familiarity. We can overcome that in ways but expecting a population to adapt easily to a massive influx of new immigrants is overly idealistic. Rather than shaming such reactions I think it’s better to meet people at least halfway and have some empathy for their concerns. Canadians aren’t virtuous endlessly tolerant creatures, they’re human and the backlash against this would happen in every single country on the planet.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It's also paradoxical that we have the same people saying that assimilation is horrible and unjust on the one hand, but also on the other hand are selling it as an inevitable end-game that's near-desirable.

Yeah, that's very ironic.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Fair enough, but the one big elephant in the room here is... the Islamic veil.

The veil is substantially a French obsession. I don't think Québec is nearly as obsessed about this as France. Especially given that Canada's recent immigrant mix is substantially more likely to have Hindus than Muslims.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

The "fate" of Japan doesn't seem so bad... I know many people who would love to live in a society as ordered, civil, polite, clean, aesthetic, etc as Japan. And the country is as affluent as ever. And the food excellent.


Ah! There we go. The real reason why some in the higher spheres of Anglo-Canada are pushing for high immigration: turning the country into a world power. Canada of 100 million people and all that jazz. This is something that both reeks of nationalism (in an old fashioned way) and delusion: as if a Canada of even 100 million would count for much in the world next to a US of 400 or 500 million...

It's ridiculous to sacrifice quality of life (Toronto at 20 million people in a Canada of 100 million? Montréal with 10 million mostly Anglophone immigrants and 3 million remaining Francophone natives?) just for the sake of poursuivre des rêves de grandeur un peu ridicules quand même...

Funnily I see the same delusion of grandeur in the UK and Australia: taking in as many immigrants as possible to make the country more important in the world. This time it's not a French saying that is useful but a French fable by La Fontaine: La Grenouille qui se veut faire aussi grosse que le bœuf. You should re-read it.


Replace le bœuf with the USA and la grenouille with Canada, and there you go. Seems to be the mindset in some Conservative circles in Anglo-Canada.

I did not say anything of the sort. I will not engage with you if you insist on bad faith arguments and complete misrepresentations and distortions of what others have said.

Furthermore it is ridiculous to imply that France is somehow immune to illusions of grandeur, compared to other countries and former colonial powers.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

even if Sweden or the Netherlands are still overall more open while France or Serbia are less so.

Lol. That's how they like to think of themselves! Which is itself rather nationalist (we're superior to those Latin southerners...). But I can tell you that seen from here, Sweden looks more provincial and bigoted than our large cities. So, it's just a question of perspective...

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Furthermore it is ridiculous to imply that France is somehow immune to illusions of grandeur, compared to other countries and former colonial powers.

Reminds me of Russian propaganda where only the West has supposedly committed the sins of colonialism.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

For the record I don't think you give a shit about skin colour. But I do wonder if your view of "integration" is simply that my kid learn nothing about where they come from. Where's that line between integration and assimilation?

No. Assimilation means: your kids speak with the same accent as "natives" who have lived here for centuries. They share the same references (cartoons, games, jokes, etc), speak the same slang, understand and share the same historical and cultural basics of the country. They also importantly dress like the natives. And it's even better if they have the same given names (prénoms) as the natives (the Chinese, for example, keep one Chinese name that they use between themselves, but adopt a Western name to be used with other people in the Western society where they live). Armenian immigrants who arrived in France in the 1920s gave their children given names like André or Pierre, for instance. That helps tremendously for integration.

If you do all these things, and are law abiding, etc, I can tell you 95%+ of people here will simply not care at all about your skin color or where you ancestors came from. You're just "part of the family".

On the other hand, if your parents called you Latifa (despite being 3rd generation immigrants), you wear a veil, you speak with a pronounced banlieue accent, you refuse to drink any alcohol, you watch more Middle Eastern cable television than local television, you're complicated about any social gathering, refuse to be seated next to men, you're virulent about Gaza and bore everyone with Palestine, you made a point never to sing the national anthem at yearly ceremonies in high school, you don't give a damn about the history of the country, you perhaps even share videos of banlieue kids burning the national flag, etc, then yes, life is going to be a bit complicated for you... and you're probably going to say that people are racist (puh-lease!).

[Truenorth00]

^ I'd like an answer from a Quebecer. Not from a Frenchman who lives thousands of kilometres away, who thinks his obsession about Muslims translates to Canada.