I hear many taking offense that the leader of the Parti Québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, denounced the possible erasure of the Quebec people in Canada – they are even more offended that it is said that Justin Trudeau’s policies aim for this erasure. Yet it is the simple truth.
Let’s first talk about the erasure in question.
Let us imagine that the demographic trend continues, that the historic French-speaking majority melts, to the point of becoming a minority, within a few decades, which would lead to a complete collapse of our capacities for cultural integration, and that the new communities resulting from the immigration overwhelmingly identify themselves first as Canadian, and only administratively as Quebecois.
Let’s imagine that French only remains the common language in certain, increasingly remote regions. Will we then have the right to say that the Quebec people, over the course of this migratory submersion, have experienced a historical and identity erasure?
And to the extent that this erasure will have been the combined result of federal immigration policy, of the fight waged since 1977 by Ottawa against Bill 101, of the war waged against Quebec identity policies, notably Bill 21, of the moral guilt always renewed by the Quebec nation, accused of falling into ethnic supremacism and racism, and of a federalism always tending to subjugate the Quebec state, could we say, without excess of language, that it is the regime Canadian who managed to erase, directly and indirectly, the Quebec people?
- Listen to the meeting Mathieu Bock-Côté and Richard Martineau via QUB :
The Canadian regime dreams of putting an end to the Quebec people to transform them into a Canadian population like the others, a population with a slightly different culture, certainly, but which would not represent itself as a nation in its own right. The whole meaning of the unitary modernization of the Canadian regime since 1982 is there.
Furthermore, I fail to understand the reasons for the indignation of some when we mention the simple possibility of the erasure of a people, as if this amounted to demonizing “the other”: if the Morocco was populated by a majority of French people, was it still Morocco, or an extension of France?
If the Baltic countries were populated by a majority of Russians, rather than their respective peoples, shouldn’t we say that they were politically and demographically erased?
If Senegal were populated by a majority of Danes, would we still be talking about Senegal, or a form of New Denmark?
Photo QMI Agency, Thierry Laforce
If Japan were populated by Chinese, would it still be Japan, or an extension of China?
A country cannot be indifferent to its population. A country is not just an arbitrary territory inhabited by an undifferentiated population, which we name by the name of the country, without this name meaning anything. Historical peoples exist. A nation is not just a legal entity but an existential reality.
Conversely, a people which loses its State can be divided into several countries: it does not disappear as a people for that reason: the history of Poland until its independence bears witness to this.
We come back to it: there is absolutely nothing scandalous in the PSPP declaration. Unless you consider that the reality is scandalous and that mentioning it is even more so.
That’s another question.