Given the favorable economic situation it enjoys, the Parti Québécois (PQ) will now have to face a particularly sensitive issue: that of public policies on immigration, the development of ethnocultural diversity and citizenship. Because if some today want a recycling of the old policy of cultural convergence, or even interculturalism, the perspective of citizenship seems to me the most unifying to defend.
Cultural convergence or interculturalism
In 1978, Camille Laurin, Guy Rocher, Fernand Dumont and Jacques-Yvan Morin proposed an integration policy focused on the notion of cultural convergence. In So many ways to be Quebecois. Action plan for cultural communities (1981), Minister Gérald Godin argued that the French-speaking culture of the Quebec nation constituted the focal point of convergence of other cultures. A policy which, he wrote, is based on the fact that “our frame of reference is Quebec”, which “has led the two governments which have succeeded one another in Quebec since 1971 to radically oppose, and with remarkable consistency, to the federal policy of multiculturalism”, and not to the idea of pluralism. However, this policy was innovative in terms of “intercultural dialogue”.
Returning to power in 2003, successive governments of the Liberal Party will strengthen interculturalism. Associated with a “moral contract” between majority and minorities, inseparable from the federal framework, we will first qualify Quebec as a distinct society and finally as a nation. At the federal level, political philosopher Will Kymlicka would even argue that “citizens could be intercultural”, but that the State must promote multiculturalism.
At the heart of these cultural considerations of recent times, it seems to me that a reductive bias, of a culturalist nature, underlies the perspective of convergence. It literally institutionalizes “cultural communities” within the State and in the public space. The perverse effects were considerable. Because this categorization underlies an assignment ad vitam aeternam to a collective and more or less fixed identity, regardless of the generations.
Not to mention that this culturalism has favored the perception of monolithic communities, regardless of their internal diversity, complexity and conflict. Other critics wanted to target the underlying neo-assimilationist and nationalist discourse at the time.
Interculturalism suffers from the depoliticization of the national question. Thus, the conceptualization of the Quebec nation in the report of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission presented to a liberal government “first brings together all the citizens of Quebec in the Quebec nation, and subsequently redistributes them into a multiplicity of ethnic groups clearly differentiated” (Gilles Bourque). In the same vein, Guy Rocher criticized the Commission for having presented a French-speaking majority sometimes as a worried minority within the Canadian federation, sometimes as a faltering majority, unsure of itself, on the territory of Quebec.
Citizenship
Interpreted differently depending on the society, citizenship is, in Canada and Quebec, a typical example of a field of historical struggle. During the 1990s, the federal government spared no effort to forge and promote Canadian citizenship. These injunctions aimed, among other things, to counter the nationalist demands of the Quebec people and the First Nations.
Now, a new vision of Quebec citizenship is emerging within the independence movement, before and after the 1995 referendum. The Bloc Québécois is creating a project on citizenship. The Ministry of Citizen Relations and Immigration organizes a National Forum on Citizenship and Integration (2000). Citizenship is defined as follows: “1) anchored in the original historical experience of the Quebec people; 2) resulting from political struggles, battles and social debates for the conquest of rights and freedoms; 3) enriched with diversified contributions”. A qualitative leap occurs: we are on the political and civic ground.
Here again, the PQ’s public policy was vilified. The reference to “Quebec citizenship” went against the multiplicity of identities in a so-called postnational citizenship, it was claimed. A surprising point of view as the federal government led the charge on its side. Once again, this policy was criticized as aiming at the self-determination of Quebec.
Today
The PQ is facing a major orientation issue. Especially since he is accused of racism and of not taking into account the issues of immigration and demographic minorities. The PQ is grappling with these issues.
The orientation of citizenship appears to be the most valid for an independence party. Because citizenship aims at participation in the regulation of the city — res publica — and makes it possible to better tackle social inequities and discrimination. It concerns complex, even conflictual, political and cultural dialogue, the criticism of cultural relativism and the legitimacy of the fundamental values of a democratic society (Seyla Benhabib) and the deracialization of citizens. Finally, if citizenship refers to belonging to a nation-state, this in no way excludes the preservation of the citizenships of countries of origin (in fact, they are the ones who decide) nor transnational practices of solidarity.
On these axes, the PQ will inevitably be suspected of downplaying ethnocultural diversity and the anti-racist fight. We will deny the relevance of such an approach, in the name of theories of “whiteness” and decoloniality according to which the nation would be made up solely of the descendants of New France, whom some qualify as new “white settlers” in addition.
In conclusion, I strongly hope that reflection and public debate will begin on these major issues for the future of Quebec.