Imagine a Minister of Education who does not know the difference between a primary and secondary school. A Minister of Transport confusing an airport and a highway.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
It’s too big ?
In this government, you can be immigration minister and not know the most basic facts about immigrants.
François Legault and everyone around him jumped to the ceiling when he heard Jean Boulet say that 80% of immigrants are in Montreal and “do not work, do not speak French or do not adhere to the values of Quebec society”. The minister has “disqualified himself”, said François Legault to Noon Info.
He jumped to the ceiling first because it’s false, arch-false. Immigrants have roughly the same employment rate as Quebecers born here. And the vast majority speak French.
What is the minister basing himself on to say that they “do not adhere to the values of Quebec society”? They have to pass a test though… If they came here, it’s usually because they voted with their feet to join this society. The history of immigration to Quebec is largely a success story, whatever one may say.
PHOTO ERICK LABBÉ, LE SOLEIL ARCHIVES
Jean Boulet, Minister of Immigration
But no, the Minister of Immigration himself conveys false information and reinforces prejudices. He oozes from all this a profound ignorance, a deaf fear of the stranger.
It would already not be acceptable as a candidate to dive so happily into the pool of prejudice and false information.
But when you’re a minister, and minister of immigration, it’s unforgivable. Especially since this government insists on the reception capacity, on the difficulty of integrating, on the threat which weighs on French.
So, are their policies (quotas, six-month language learning, etc.) based on data, or on anti-immigration chronicles of the Montreal Journal ?
Jean Boulet is however not an idiot, far from it. He is undoubtedly one of the friendliest politicians in Quebec. He has been a competent Minister of Labor since his election. Himself a lawyer specializing in the field, he was “on his X”.
When it came to relieving Nadine Girault of Immigration last year, François Legault wanted to choose a reliable minister. Who better than Jean Boulet? A regional minister (Mauricie), to send a message of “regionalization” of immigration.
Why not ?
As the CAQ wants to tie immigration to economic needs, merge Labor and Immigration under the same minister, it was the logical plan.
But does the minister (the third in four years) have any knowledge of the immigrant reality in Montreal? And elsewhere ? Has he met any? Or is it a shapeless mass of “human capital” to be “integrated”?
We will try to blame a vision of “regions”, but I do not accept that. All you have to do is walk around a bit to see that people from all regions of Quebec want to welcome more immigrants. The strongest anti-immigrant rhetoric often comes from a few Montreal columnists who never have the slightest positive word to say about immigration, cultivate a hatred for Montreal, its diversity, and according to whom “there is no way to to serve in French in Montreal” – another lie taken for scientific truth because repeated quite often.
Don’t think that this “blunder” was premeditated. It’s been a week, in a debate on the local radio. And that does not suit François Legault at all.
Jean Boulet pitifully apologized, saying that these remarks did not reflect his “thought”.
What thought? He made statistical assertions from the height of his authority as Minister of Immigration. It had nothing to do with an opinion. If the Minister of Finance says that there is an unemployment rate of 25% in Quebec, he is not expressing his “thought”. He deceives people.
It’s as if repressed fears and prejudices come out into the open.
The day had started well for François Legault, at the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal.
Going to visit a chamber of commerce for him is a bit like going to a CEGEP for Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois: it puts you in a good mood.
François Legault was in his strong subject to talk about GDP and productivity in front of a receptive audience, with his economic ministers. Clear, convinced, confident, in a good mood.
He is criticized for not talking about education. He agree. But every time he wants to talk about the “historic” increase in teacher salaries, 4-year-old kindergarten or remedial education, the media ignores it. In press briefings, it’s always questions about immigration, or the third link. Third link, immigration. Immigration, third link.
True.
Yet it is he who says, like Wednesday, that an increase in immigration thresholds would be “a little suicidal” for the “Quebec nation”. And I’m not going back on everything else.
It was he who appointed Jean Boulet. One is forced to wonder how they talk about immigration among themselves, at the highest level, when the incumbent is so poorly informed. Is it just fake numbers and scare stories?
This subject is too important for the future of Quebec to be treated with such incompetence. If, as expected, the CAQ forms the next government, above all, let’s not “continue” this.