Does Quebec need pride? To hear many of them, that’s what you might think. However, the fact of repeating this kind of incantation represents a little, to pride, what nudity is to eroticism. Quebec perhaps needs less to be told to be proud than to become aware of what it really is.
Quebec is the story of a French-speaking people, settled around the St. Lawrence, having cohabited with Indigenous people. Quebec is an imperfect adventure that certainly deserves to be not idealized, but valued. Quebec is the heritage of a French republicanism having rubbed shoulders with Anglo-Saxon liberalism and endowed with the entrepreneurial spirit of America. In short, Quebec is the result of a combination specific to us.
French universalism
The patriot movement well represented French universalism. First by its affront against British imperialism, but also by the public assemblies which gave birth to the Declaration of Independence of Lower Canada, demanding freedom in several forms, including equal rights for all, Aboriginal people included. This struggle against empires continued, making us Canada’s greatest spoilsport through our systematic opposition to the imperial wars of Great Britain, then the United States.
Today, it is largely the legacy of this universalism which pushes Quebec youth to oppose global conflicts and to call themselves “citizens of the world”.
The specificity of Quebec appears even more concretely in our daily lives. The reason some say we are North America’s “family paradise” is a combination of policies, including the most generous parental leave and the most accessible child care. This contributes to the fight against poverty and ensures that women here have, behind Sweden, the second highest employment rate in the world.
Mothers here also see themselves more as women than as mothers, which is the opposite in English Canada, according to the Léger firm. Parental leave allows fathers to be more involved in the family. Almost all take paternity leave, compared to around a quarter in the rest of Canada. They are almost four times less likely to see themselves as providers for their family than their Canadian counterparts.
It is also in Quebec that we find the largest proportions of people who attribute responsibility to humanity with regard to climate change and who are ready to make sacrifices to face it. This is illustrated in our actions such as the ban on hydrocarbon projects which accompanies the nationalization of hydroelectricity, ensuring that Quebec is, by far, the province that produces the least GHG per capita in Canada. The fact that Montreal was host, in 2019, to one of the largest climate demonstrations in the world also attests to the importance given to the climate here.
Several reasons suggest that Quebecers are also distinguished by their tolerance. Indigenous languages are the best preserved. The rate of hate crimes is half as high here as in Ontario and well below the Canadian average. New arrivals benefit here from a better employment rate and better integration.
Our civil society is absolutely unique, comprising the largest number of cooperatives in Canada, and it is the one where a particularly important political role is given to unions and the community sector. The latter constitutes a real network of mutual aid, defense of social rights and social transformation. Our diverse civil society represents a real political counterweight which largely explains why Quebec is regularly considered the least unequal society in North America.
These checks and balances go hand in hand with the fact that we have delegated, since the Quiet Revolution, important responsibilities to our State. Among other things, because we attribute a national meaning to community, solidarity and civic involvement. The State is thus investing more in supporting individual initiatives, in the fight against inequalities and the preservation of our culture.
Some of our specificities
Many might be tempted to deplore some of our specificities. Others could also have been mentioned here: we experience more loneliness, have more drownings and consume more water, for example. There would, however, be a curious aspect to claiming a form of perfection. Our nation is neither worse nor better than others. It simply represents who we are.
She deserves, like all others, to aspire to greatness and freedom. In this era of disillusionment and new conformisms, there is no shortage of work ahead of us. But on our national day, we can show gratitude and recognize what we have accomplished and what we have become. This simple fact, after the trials we have gone through, seems to me to be a source of pride in itself. In a world that is becoming more uniform and changing, the absolutely unique legacy we have inherited remains fragile. Let’s take care of it, let’s be worthy of it and, above all, let’s celebrate it. Happy Midsummer!