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TOP STORY
In what may yet prove to be a model for the rest of the country, Quebec is rolling out a comprehensive plan to kill Canadian multiculturalism in favour of “interculturalism.”
Bill 84, An Act respecting national integration, which was tabled Thursday, lays out an “integration model” under which immigrants to Quebec are expected to both learn French and adhere to a “common culture.”
“For the first time in our history, we’re going to define who we are and how we want to evolve as a nation,” said Jean-François Roberge, Quebec’s immigration minister, in a French-language web video promoting the bill that was posted on Monday.
“This model will let us build a society where the Francophone majority invites all Quebecers to adhere and contribute to the common culture of our nation,” he said.
In an English-language defence of the bill delivered at a press availability on Tuesday, Roberge said people coming to Quebec “must accept” its democratic values, such as the equality of men and women. “We don’t want ghettoes, we want one society.”
The bill’s text states that Quebecers are “expected to … collaborate in the welcoming of immigrants and foster their integration into the Québec nation.”
Conversely, immigrants are expected to “participate fully, in French, in Québec society” and “participate in the vitality of Québec culture by enriching it.”
Quebec’s forays into cultural protection are often conspicuously out of step with the rest of Canada. That’s most obviously been the case when it comes to another piece of CAQ legislation, Bill 21. Passed in 2019, it forbids Quebec government employees — including nurses and teachers — from wearing religious garb at work such as hijabs, kippas, dastaars or Catholic pendants.
Bill 21 inspired widespread condemnation from across English Canada, including from the Conservatives.
But on the issue of integrating immigrants, nationwide polls show that Canadians are increasingly supportive of a system in which newcomers must adhere to certain “shared values.”
A Leger poll from November 2023 found 55 per cent of respondents agreeing with the notion that the Canadian government should be “encouraging newcomers to embrace broad mainstream values and traditions and leave behind elements of their cultural identity that may be incompatible with that.”
That same poll also found that a majority of non-white respondents did not automatically agree with the nostrum “diversity is our strength.”
Instead, 56 per cent agreed with the notion that “some elements of diversity can provide strength, but some elements of diversity can cause problems / conflict” — slightly higher than the share of Caucasian respondents (55 per cent) who said the same thing.
A June poll of Canadian young people, also conducted by Leger, found that integrating immigrants was one of the most popular single issues among the demographic.
Leger surveyed Millennials and members of Gen Z, and found that 70 per cent agreed with the notion that “we should ensure Immigrants/Permanent Residents coming to Canada share common Canadian values such as respect for different minority groups.”
Canada’s European peer countries have also shifted towards integrative immigration models in recent years.
This is particularly true of Sweden. In 2022, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson declared that the country’s failure to integrate newcomers had resulted in “parallel societies” and a spike in gang violence. In response, Sweden has ramped up efforts to introduce language-training and cultural integration to “foreign-born people.”
If Canadians are turning towards a more integrative model of immigration, it may be a reaction to a host of imported ethnic conflicts breaking out on Canadian streets.
Most notably, since the October 7 terrorist attacks, Canada has witnessed hundreds of rallies, blockades and encampments by extremist groups calling for the destruction of Israel.
In both Ontario and B.C., there have been incidents of Sikh nationalists glorifying violence against India, or even attacking symbols of the Indian government.
In November, a crowd of men holding flags supporting a breakaway Sikh homeland of Khalistan allegedly assaulted Hindus outside a Brampton, Ont., temple that was hosting a consular event by the Indian government.
Video uploaded this week by independent journalist Mocha Bezirgan showed a pro-Khalistan rally in the B.C. Lower Mainland that used cutouts to re-enact the 1984 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.
In 2023, Calgary and Edmonton were both subject to riots between rival groups of Eritrean immigrants; one supporting Eritrea’s current one-party government, the other supporting Eritrea’s pre-1993 status as an annexed region of Ethiopia.
In May 2024, after bullets were fired into a Jewish girls’ school in Toronto, Ontario Premier Doug Ford blamed people “bringing your problems from everywhere else in the world.”
“I got an idea: before you plan on moving to Canada, don’t come to Canada if you’re going to start terrorizing neighbourhoods like this,” he said.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has similarly begun denouncing the notion of immigrants importing foreign conflicts into Canada.
“We’re not interested in the world’s ethno-cultural conflicts,” Poilievre said in a recent long-form interview with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. “We welcome the people who come from places that have been afflicted by war, as long as they leave the war behind.”
IN OTHER NEWS
It looks like Saturday could indeed yield the introduction of crushing 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports into the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump told a press availability on Thursday that he would be sticking to the Feb. 1 deadline for tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican imports.
Here’s the good news:
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Tariffs will immediately result in higher prices for U.S. consumers. Canada exports a lot of basic stuff into the United States like beef, flour and oil. If these products are suddenly 25 per cent more expensive, it’s going to be noticed. And if Canada’s experience of the carbon tax is any guide, voters have a reliable penchant for abandoning ideological goals once it results in stuff getting more expensive.
- The U.S. has said that these tariffs are conditional on heightened border security. While Canada has conspicuously stepped up basic patrols of the U.S./Canadian border, it has done almost nothing to crack down on its domestic fentanyl trade, or to step up screening of migrants that potentially pose a risk to the U.S. (such as all the Gazans that new Secretary of State Marco Rubio was worried about). As commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick told a Senate committee this week, if the drugs and migration get action, the Trump White House will stop the tariffs.
Here’s the bad news:
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The Trudeau government seems to be treating this as an opportunity for COVID-style deficit spending. The Trudeau government’s public messaging on the tariff threat has mostly focused on how they’ll retaliate “dollar for dollar” against the U.S. and also draw up massive deficit-financed compensation packages to pay off impacted industries. So, it would basically be the COVID-19 pandemic all over again: The economy grinding to a halt as Ottawa makes up the difference with Second World War levels of debt. The term “COVID-style” has even started to be used as provincial and industry leaders push for federal payouts to affected industries.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has called a snap election that he is likely to win (which is why he called it). Abacus Data, for one, has Ford’s Progressive Conservatives with a commanding 47 per cent of the vote, against just 24 per cent for the second-place Ontario Liberals. This is despite the fact that Ford has spent years as one of the country’s most unpopular premiers. An Angus Reid Institute survey from December found him with an approval rating of just 34 per cent — the lowest of any other provincial leader in Canada. As to why Ford is nevertheless cruising towards his third consecutive majority win, it’s mostly because nobody likes the alternative. Seven years after the Ontario Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne was handed the worst electoral defeat in their history, they still haven’t recovered.
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