Have you noticed that in France, they “get in” a car, like in a horse-drawn carriage or on a train, whereas in Quebec they “get in” there, like in, well, a boat? The Québécois dialect is thus full of maritime expressions – the rigging of ships has ensured that everything in our country is well or badly “rigged”, including males and females. Much more than the cousins of France, we take to the open sea, because we have the wind in our sails at the slightest opportunity. When we navigate in troubled waters, our captain must grab the helm since we are all in the same boat. It is sometimes necessary to drop anchor to avoid economic, political or cultural shipwreck.
The symbol of Quebec City is a majestic boat. Is the city just waiting for a good breeze and a favorable tide to cast off? Where would she head? Against winter, probably, as Charlebois advised Jacques Cartier (the explorer, not the bridge).
If I approach the subject (“address”, do you understand it?), it is because we have used a lot of maritime metaphors to talk about immigration in recent times. The Canadian project of reaching 100 million inhabitants by the end of the century would cause, so to speak, a flood, a rise in water levels, a demographic wave, a linguistic tsunami such that Quebec and its difference would be engulfed.
The use of terms relating to water in our political discourse is old. In an election speech in 1970, René Lévesque thus distinguished the role of the two immigration departments: that of Ottawa, “for which we pay” and which has the right to “continue to drown us”, and that of Quebec, created “to record the drowning” and only manages it.
If he said that today, he would be accused of promoting the theory of the “great replacement”, of inciting hatred and of relaying far-right themes. Fear not: that’s exactly what his detractors said of him at the time, minus the “great replacement” and plus the accusations of Nazism.
However, he was not the only one to use watery images to evoke the destiny of French speakers. Much has been remembered from Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s speech to the American Congress in 1977 when he described the possible independence of Quebec as “a crime against the history of humanity”. It was memorable, indeed. But in this same speech, he also pledged to offer “French-speaking Canadians” “their strongest guarantee against submersion in North America populated by 220 million English speakers.” The submersion. You too, Pierre Elliott?
Having a calculator, I amused myself by predicting what would result from a simple extension, between now and 2100, of the recent increase in the Canadian population. Answer: 100 million inhabitants. A scenario that is not unlikely, according to several demographers consulted by The duty. I’” initiative of the century » just knocks down an open door. If we instead followed the Trudeauist objective of adding half a million immigrants per year, we would reach 85 million. But since last year one million newcomers joined us, the prolongation of this contribution would give, at the turn of the century, 115 million Canadians.
If I were Canadian — I mean at heart — I would be delighted. Especially since Andrew Coyne, of Globe and Mail, pointed out that, according to the population projections of the UN, a Canada of 100 million inhabitants in 2100 would be equivalent to the population of Russia and a quarter of the population of the United States (rather than a ninth). It would also exceed Japan (74 million), the United Kingdom (70 million), Germany (69 million), France (61 million) and Italy (37 million). Canada would be the second country of the G7 in number of inhabitants and, why not, the second in terms of power and influence. This, writes Coyne, “has the potential to be completely transformational.” Talented and ambitious Canadians, he adds, “would no longer have to leave Canada in search of glory: the glory would be here. Our country would be the kind of place where the best and the brightest come from rather than where they come from”.
Frankly, it’s dreamy. In English, of course. Because it is now accepted that, despite the assurances given by Trudeau to the Americans in 1977, the submersion of Francophones has continued, west of Quebec, at a rate of 50% assimilation per generation (10% in Acadie ). It is also accepted that, even with what Coyne describes as “50 years of linguistic insanity” in Quebec, French is still in troubled waters, the Anglo-American tide never ebbing.
If we were to launch a ” initiative of the century » Quebecer, her compass would not aim for large numbers, but for great originality. Not an isolated French-speaking island in America, but a large port flying the flag of the French language and open to trade. To those who claim that our oceanic metaphors are exaggerated, make too many waves and splash sailors who have nothing to do with it, to those whose maritime cries reach the window and tear out their ears, I answer that our ship simply cannot accommodate all the sailors in the world. We must choose wisely those who can best moor at our quays.
Diversity is a treasure to be explored and each ship that lands on our shores brings new riches, but the wise regulation of the flow of immigration is an indispensable lifeline.
Father, columnist and author, Jean-François Lisée led the PQ from 2016 to 2018. | [email protected] / blog: jflisee.org