The documents that define Quebec’s immigration and integration policies have been accumulating in the archives of the department responsible for ages. These archives are a gold mine. Not to mention the work carried out by the former Council for Intercultural Relations, abolished by the Liberals.
However, to hear the speeches of the representatives of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), one has the impression that the “political capital” accumulated over decades is stagnating on the ministerial shelves and that nothing has been learned, or that we forgot everything. The same is also true of another area, namely the accumulated reflection on the fight against racism. Whether it is the promotion of the type of nationalism to be defended since the beginning of the Quiet Revolution, immigration and integration policies drawn up on the basis of multifactorial and not just economistic data, or even the challenges posed by federal powers in these areas, we are currently facing an abysmal void.
And we confine ourselves to discussing thresholds that are difficult to set anywhere in the world as there is no absolute mathematical answer to this question. Even if the thing is to be considered, too many political, cultural and social factors are at play for it to be given any real validity.
However, listening to the Prime Minister’s speech delivered at the CAQ convention on May 28, this impression of lack of a global vision of the immigration problem was further strengthened. There are a few reasons to consider.
First, we will not save the Quebec nation by attacking the repatriated management of family reunification alone, the proportion being very low compared to other immigration categories. Remember that, while Quebec has control over the volume and selection of independent immigration and refugees, it must rely on the federal government in matters of admission, inadmissibility, asylum applications, family reunification, temporary immigration and citizenship, not forgetting the issue of borders.
However, what counts at the moment are the uncontrolled entry of asylum seekers and especially temporary work permits. Many analysts have shown that, in the latter case, temporary workers who have acquired the right of permanent residence can easily send their children to English schools and thus escape Law 101.
Then, Prime Minister François Legault and Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette defend a certain vision of social cohesion centered on “cultural convergence”. However, if there is a concept which dates from the 1970s and which has been criticized from all sides, in particular by the usual amateurs of Quebec bashing, that’s the one. Legitimate in its time, it bore witness to the beginnings of Quebec’s assertiveness in matters of international immigration. But we cannot imagine today France, Germany or the United States trying to encourage immigration by promoting “cultural convergence”.
From an anthropological point of view, it is difficult to bet your cards on this delicate terrain, when we know very well that it is not “naturally” that we converge towards the values of each other, the conflictuality part of democracy. Too many speeches on the necessities of intercultural dialogue have reminded us of this, not to mention the real conflicts of values underlying the current debates on the Law of State secularism (Law 21) or on the Law on the language official and common Quebec, French (Law 96).
On all these complex aspects, mentioned above, the federal government will refuse to give up anything. To claim that repatriating powers in family reunification would remedy the possible “Louisianization of Quebec” is a mere figure of speech, and is very clumsy. The federal government has several advantages. He will refuse to allow current immigration powers to slip away from him. The federal government has a policy of multiculturalism that all the governments of Quebec have rejected in the past, but which many still claim today, including in Quebec.
And the federal government grants citizenship with panache and oath of allegiance to Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada. However, beyond the simple passport, Quebec will never be able to promote citizenship in the broad sense of the term (equality of rights and duties, political participation in public affairs, sense of belonging), in an unambiguous and winning way, bound as a province within the Canadian federation.
Especially since the nationalism of the CAQ unfortunately approaches a nationalism of survival, and not the only type of political nationalism defended by the Irish, the Scots or the Catalans, i.e. those who aspire to their independence, with the support of a majority of citizens of various origins and backgrounds. This was the case with us around the period of the 1995 referendum and what will probably come back one day.