The Caquists and the Liberals have in common to have dropped their commitment to interculturalism. They are thus breaking their promise to formalize the pluralist model of welcoming newcomers and living together that characterizes Quebec.
When he was in opposition in 2015, François Legault had proposed “to adopt a law on interculturalism” in order to “define the relations between the majority and the minorities”. It became an open secret that once he was in power, a draft bill was drawn up at the request of Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette, then shelved shortly after.
Among the Liberals, Dominique Anglade announced during the previous leadership race that “a direct proposal concerning a bill on interculturalism” would be integrated into his party’s platform. Made public last June, the latter does not mention this idea once.
This inaction has harmful effects on the integration of our new fellow citizens and the identification of everyone in Quebec. The absence of a clear commitment in favor of pluralism contributes to the development of a conservative nationalism, which threatens social cohesion and reinforces the condemnation by a decolonial left of the very idea of nation, which would be intrinsically xenophobic and retrograde.
By dint of being repeated on both sides, the opposition between “openness to diversity” and “belonging to the Quebec nation” is on the point of becoming a commonplace. It is however paradoxical that the self-proclaimed partisans of openness, especially in Montreal, make themselves, in spite of themselves, the accomplices of another equally national project: that of Canada.
In the absence of a comprehensive Quebec framework for integration and living together, the Canadian model, formalized in 1971, exerts a significant influence in Montreal. In the book The metropolis against the nation?I argue that the City’s immigrant integration policy can only be understood from the competition between multiculturalism and interculturalism.
For the past ten years, the City, under the impetus of its political authorities, has circumvented the approach tacitly promoted by the State of Quebec to embrace the project of Canadian national construction. Evidenced by the ambiguity of Montreal on English-French bilingualism. The presentation of speeches only in English by Mayor Valérie Plante in 2018 illustrates the incongruence between the practices of the metropolis and the idea of French unilingualism in the Quebec public space, which is central to interculturalism.
In the name of inclusion, the City also favors a certain cultural relativism. In its publications intended for newcomers, the history of Montreal is thus summed up in the arrival of successive and undifferentiated waves of immigration. The political relations between the “two founding peoples” are passed over in silence, and membership of the Quebec nation is never explicitly affirmed.
In the minds of many elected officials, Montreal is a cosmopolitan metropolis with no national roots. This explains why the City promotes integration into the “Montréal host society” in its policies, without ever referring to our linguistic and minority context. Balarama Holness said aloud what everyone was quietly thinking when he affirmed that “Quebec is a distinct society in Canada and [que] Montreal is a distinct metropolis in Quebec.”
In light of the political vacuum that has been maintained, what would encourage the City to do otherwise?
Quebec deflates
A social and political consensus exists on what living together and the integration of newcomers into the Quebec context represents and makes possible. This is why the parties sitting in the National Assembly have all already shown themselves in favor of the formalization of interculturalism.
The wanderings of our political class in this matter are inexplicable, given that Canadian multiculturalism remains unacceptable for Quebec. Following his predecessors since Robert Bourassa in 1971, François Legault noted again in August 2021 that “Quebec cannot operate in a regime of multiculturalism like the rest of Canada”.
Let’s hope that half a century of dithering will be enough and that the next government will finally fill this void. It is time to adopt clear and cross-cutting orientations that would affirm the pluralistic nature of integration and living together in Quebec. This election is an opportunity for the various political parties to remedy their broken promises on the issue of interculturalism. The future of this French-speaking nation in North America depends on it.
In the meantime, nothing in Quebec competes with the policy of Canadian multiculturalism. In the metropolis as everywhere else, it is discreetly at work.