The discourse of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) on immigrants uses alarmist vocabulary and false statements, which make it unfavorable to the integration of newcomers to Quebec. Indeed, his speech attributes to the immigrant population repellent stigmas to the process that makes the foreigner an integral part of the host society. First, let’s dissect the discourse and then present the challenge facing Quebec in terms of integrating immigrants.
CAQ leader Francois Legault said last summer that immigration would be a factor in the “Louisianization” of Quebec. However, history does not allow such a hypothesis to be made. Indeed, French Louisiana, a vast territory in North America, was part of New France between the 17e and XVIIIe centuries. Its “Louisianization” was achieved not by immigrants, but from within, by exchanges of territories between French, Spanish and English colonizers. Ruined by the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), the French monarchy ceded a large part of Louisiana to the Spaniards, then, in the early 1800s, the first consul Napoleon Bonaparte definitively ceded the part that remained French to the United States.
According to other remarks made by the head of the CAQ, immigration would lead “Quebec society to suicide”. However, the history of the French Canadian people, then Quebecois, is made up of struggle, resistance, resilience, solidarity and its ability to remain itself by assimilating many influences from within and from abroad. ‘outside. What makes Quebec vital, writes Fernand Dumont in Common reasons“holds to a closer proximity with the real existence of people here at the same time as a greater openness to external quests”.
Elsewhere, Mr. Legault makes a link between immigration and violence. This statement must be put into perspective if we consider the data on crime in Quebec from the Institut de la statistique du Québec (2021) and those from the General Social Security Survey of Statistics Canada (2014). When we consider the types of violence (sexual assault, robbery, assault, etc.) committed or suffered by the immigrant population and the non-immigrant population, the incidence rates are sometimes similar and sometimes different. A direct link cannot therefore be made between immigration and violence.
As for Jean Boulet, outgoing Minister of Immigration, he declared during the recent election campaign that “80% of immigrants go to Montreal, do not work, do not speak French or do not adhere to the values of Quebec society. Such an assertion does not tally with reality, as demonstrated by The duty. It is probably common sense or prejudice.
All in all, the discourse of the CAQ is only the stigmatization of immigrants. This can produce within the population a negative social representation of the immigrant and then ultimately compromise otherness. However, in a multi-ethnic society, the human relationship is fundamentally based on otherness, that is to say on the relationship with the foreigner. When the political discourses within this society tend to encourage the search for similarities with the foreigner, the latter is included in society, and his integration is effective. Conversely, when the discourse seeks above all differences, the foreigner risks being excluded from the host society. This is the posture that the CAQ adopted during the election campaign.
Quebec is a land of welcome for immigrants who come from all over the world. A French-speaking country in an English-speaking ocean, Quebec has a great challenge: to be a society that retains its national identity (through its language and culture) while being a society that is becoming increasingly multicultural. I believe that Quebec is capable of developing and building an integration model from the perspective of what it is, of its particular social project, by including foreigners who arrive and who also become new citizens. In the prevailing discourses on immigration elsewhere in the world, the specificity of Quebec is to be a society that is rather receptive to inclusive discourse.