Quebec:Safeguarding Their Culture is Not Wrong

We should be doing the same as Quebec on a national scale

I have an issue with people in this country who are so open minded to multiculturalism and the concept of blurring our cultures that they are willing to let any and all newcomers do whatever they want with regards to their culture while trampling on everyone else's. My problem with these people is that they are so willing to ditch their own culture in favour of almost any other culture that they are the real reason why Canada seems to have lost any no real discernible cultural base to begin with.  On top of that, the only part of Canada that actually HAS its own culture, Quebec, finds itself under constant scrutiny for being the one part of the country willing to protect their old and rich heritage and culture (that the rest of the country seems to want no part of) over everyone else. We should be following their example, not denigrating them at every turn.

 Why is it that everywhere else in the world, particularly in the Middle East and Asia,  where cultures are significantly intertwined with religion and persecution based on your religious beliefs is rampant, why is it that there are never any calls for those parts of the world to stop their intolerance and become more accepting. I don't recall the last time I heard one of the Governments of these areas actually heed the words of a human rights advocacy group. Syria is a prime example. The Syrian Government have been under constant pressure to stop their needless war and the killing of innocent people, and yet it has been over a year and despite the mounting pressure both from the media and other nations, nothing has really changed.

The only thing that has seemed to change is that the media has backed off the story somewhat and instead focused on the fear mongering that Nicholas Sarkozy tried to use to win another term as French President. At every opportunity that presents itself, we see media mocking of countries and policies set out by those countries that are considered xenophobic in nature simply because they are designed to “keep France for the French” or keep "Italy Italian". The basic premise sounds great and to be honest there is nothing wrong with this idea in theory. The problem is when you start using fear to rile up the masses. Like Mr. Sarkozy did last year.

Sarkozy preyed upon the fears of his constituents trying to win another term

He failed

 

Europe, as a whole,  may be an aging society but many of the poorest people in the world are still flocking there because of the lifestyle and opportunities that are available to them there far outweigh the ones that exist in their nation of birth. While there are some countries on the verge of economic collapse like Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal (except that you don’t hear much about Portugal anymore since the Government seems to have finally gotten things back in order by essentially increasing taxes on the poor, cutting their wages and benefits at the same time and yet they did nothing to the top 1% of country's richest citizens in the same areas), there is still huge immigration in terms of sheer volume of people coming to Europe. This seems to be occurring mostly in France, England and Germany.

This is the main reason why Mr. Sarkozy choose to focus on immigrants as one of his main attacking points during the French Election. He was wrongfully tying in the immigration numbers of his country with the economic woes being inflicted upon all of France. Immigrants are not always the financial burden that Sarkozy was rationalizing that they are to his nation. Had he chosen to instead say he was defending France for french citizens, he may have been able to get more traction with his argument. In that case, he would have been able to opt for a campaign based on fact, not fear.

It is a fact that immigrants should be entitled to fair and equal rights under law in every nation in Europe and North America. Those rights have been hard earned over nearly 2 centuries of progress. What he should have argued was more about their impact in attempting to alter French laws negatively, he should have pointed to facts about immigrants who move to other countries and refuse to learn the new language or adapt to their new environment and actual factual drain they become on the economy of the nation they have moved to. He should have pointed to crime stats that (may) have risen in areas of the country where there are a higher then normal amount of new immigrants who refuse to learn and adapt to French Culture. Using facts, instead of fear, to explain why his platform wanted to seriously curtail immigration from some parts of the world would have made for a much better campaign for Mr. Sarkozy and he just may have kept his Presidency for another term.

What these European nations are learning (the hard way) is that if you do not put strict limits on immigrants coming into your country, or at least try to put a specific focus into the types of immigrants you want coming in (like having the ability to speak the native language) you are doomed to suffer the same fate as that of France. They now have 2.1 million Muslims living in France, many of whom have no real connection to the country and who simply moved there over the last 30 years in search of a better life, who are now in a position to begin making demands of the French Government. There are enough of them now in France wherein they can have a major influence on every election and on every aspect of French life. The France that they knew, no longer exists thanks to lax immigration laws of the past. What they are trying to do now with their secular laws is much too late to save the society that they once knew as part of the intrinsic nature of what France used to be. 

Instead of offering up a reformed immigration law as part of his campaign, he choose to try to scare his electorate into voting for him by telling them he was their "only hope" to save the France they once knew. Of course these policy concepts he used during his campaign were scrutinized and ridiculed in the media. He and his campaign advisers saw an area where they thought they could just scare people into getting behind them and it failed. Any time you try to focus on immigration as a key aspect of a National campaign you are subjecting yourself to intense media scrutiny. This is mainly due to the fact that there seems to be a much tighter focus on things happening in Europe and North America. The media now has a particular focus on any government policy changes made with regards to immigration as we start to see more 2nd generation Canadians and Americans joining the ranks of the media itself. Judgments are being cast on their policies towards new immigrants and how “racist” they are based not just upon the actual policies themselves but by the lens through which the actual member of the media themselves have seen the actual implementation of Government policies. 

So when politicians in Quebec come out and start suggesting that they want more control over their immigration, you can understand their reasoning and their rationale. Yet even the suggestion of such policies brings out calls of racism and narrow minded thinking on the part of the people of Quebec. At the same time, when the same types of policies (and in some cases much harsher ones) are enacted or in force in countries in Asia and the Middle East, they conveniently forget to go “fight the good fight” over there. The funny thing to me is that the people who are usually clamoring about racism in our neck of the woods, are the same ones that come from these parts of the world where they themselves (or at least people from their OWN culture) have been the perpetrators of the exact same type of prejudicial behaviors that they themselves are complaining about being enacted towards them over here.

I guess the point of my rant on here is twofold; 

#1 I really think that the people who are whining about Quebec trying to protect their French heritage and culture are the same ones who would rather bring their own culture here from overseas and force the people of Quebec to adapt to them, which is wrong. 

The second point is that there is nothing wrong with fighting to protect your culture. Since Canada doesn’t have one and, essentially never really did once it began to encompass such a vast multicultural, pluralistic society, Quebec offers us the only semblance we have of any real culture and yet we chastise them anytime they want to have more power to protect themselves from losing another aspect of that same unique culture.

 Even the Prime Minister has accepted that Quebec is a Distinct Society within Canada

Why shouldn't they do whatever it takes to protect themselves?

Granted, most of North America and Europe used to impose harsh restrictions on immigrants in the past and have histories of being racist towards certain ethnic groups. Over the last 50 years, we have seen many of the nations in Europe and particularly in North America do a complete 180 degree turn with regards to their immigration policies as each country has seen immigrants from all over the world flock to their nations even before their policies changed. The one nation in Europe that seems to still have an issue integrating their immigrants into their society continues to be France and mostly because of the language and religion issues which bares a striking resemblance to a certain province in this country.

So now, over the course of the last 10 years or so, they have begun trying to turn back the clock. They have been slowly trying to show new immigrants that France is still French and the culture of the nation (Catholic religion based secular government) will not be allowed to change just because 2.1 million of its’ 65 million citizens are Muslim. There have been intense debates about laws that have attempted to remove full face and body covering by Muslim women, outlawed any religious artifacts from being worn while in schools. There have been riots in the streets and civil disobedience at times all over France as a direct result of French immigration policy and a perceived lack of available jobs for French Muslim youth. The Government ban on the Hijab is tantamount to trying to put the wild horse back in the stable after its been running wildly all over the ranch. Essentially, its’ too late now to try and get back what you feel your culture has lost by using the law to enact cultural changes in people.   .

Politicians in Quebec are trying to head off the same situation that we have seen in France by attempting to attract French speaking immigrants. I should say French Catholics in particular (if you listen to that idiot Pauline Marois speak, only in French mind you since she won’t do any debates in English, she wants to go much further if elected and her message is resonating with the population as she leads in every poll) as they have protected the use of the lords’ prayer in schools by making it codified in law as well as the personal use of a catholic cross yet no other religious artifact by public servants. They are even willing to go as far as using the Notwithstanding Clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (which they didn’t even bother to sign 30 years ago mind you) to continue to protect what they feel is any essential part of their culture.

It may seem a bit harsh or heavy handed to have to use laws to continue to enforce a culture but given that Quebec has been (essentially) at war culturally speaking with the rest of  North America since the birth of our nation, many Quebecers have had to live with a sense of being vilified over the way that the province goes about trying to protect its culture. Many have probably grown up over the years developing an inferiority complex along the way what with all the negative media attention Quebec gets whenever one of its politicians tries to defend the province for one of these laws.

And that’s the thing that bothers me the most. Why is it that Quebec is the only part of our nation that feels a need to defend its’ culture? Why are they the only ones that can see that Canada would lose something wonderful if the province of Quebec were to just assimilate into what Toronto (moreover, the entire region of South Western Ontario) and Vancouver have become? Quebec is the only  part of our great country that actually has a definitive cultural history that has carried over into the modern day. There really is no identifiable Canadian Culture to speak of other than that which has been painstakingly preserved in Quebec.

 Blue is the Parti Quebecois led by Miss Marois and as you can see, Montreal is the only real multicultural hub in Quebec and everywhere else they are going with the Marois and her "protectionist" policies

With every new wave of immigrants, Canada becomes something different. But it wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t until the mid 1980’s that new immigrants began to take much more control of this land then ever before. Up until then, immigrants were not able to get free language lessons, they didn't have non-profit agencies filled with people from their nation of birth, ready, willing and able to help them not just survive in a new land, but thrive. For the most part, they were stuck in menial jobs for year on end before finally finding a way to progress and they had to endure constant prejudiced behaviours all around them.

Italians and Japanese immigrants in the late 1930’s and through out World War II faced constant harassment. Chinese immigrants before that faced horrific working conditions helping to build our national railway. Even into the 1960’s and 70’s many Portuguese immigrants faced prejudice on a daily basis. These people were forced to fend for themselves and had to adapt or leave. Something changed in the 1980’s once immigrants from Southern Asian nations began to come to Canada in waves. Suddenly, all of this changed as new immigrants began arriving into the GTA with more money then before and that of course meant that they wouldn’t have to be subjected to the same issues that previous generations of immigrants would have to deal with.

 Portuguese and Italian Construction workers essentially have built this country from the ground up

They faced much more prejudice in the 1970's and 1980's then nearly any of the new immigrants face today

This of course is the positive side of things as no one should ever have to be subjected to harassment and prejudiced behaviour simply because of their nationality but the point I am trying to make is that with this new found power, these immigrants have slowly been doing their best to take a more defining role in the everyday lives of the people. It has gotten to the point where we were one horrible Provincial decision away from enacting a law that would have brought Shariah Law into effect as part of the Judicial Family Law system. For those of you that don’t know, Shariah Law is part of Islam that can be interpreted in such a way as to allow a man to divorce a woman simply by saying the word “Divorce” 3 times consecutively.

It also tends to typically favour men in most family law proceedings and yet, in a society like ours where equality of the sexes is enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we were a few weeks away from seeing the idiot Liberals putting Shariah Law into our official Family Law judiciary. It wasn’t until women who had come from countries where this horrific code of laws are used on a daily basis stood up and set the Premier straight on the issue. It was only then that he woke up and did another of his patented political flip flops and dropped the issue completely. How this guy stays in power for so long shocks me to be honest.

To finish up, its time we began to follow in the footsteps of Quebec in the sense that we stand up for our nation and stop allowing every new wave of immigrants to just come in here and start trying to change Canada in whatever image they feel is best. We are Canadian. We should be allowed to protect our culture without having someone somewhere cry racism.  The people who have lived here for generations are the ones that should have the most say and pull politically when it comes to the direction of our country but that has long gone by the waste side here in the GTA. Quebec is doing what it has to in order to protect their culture and the rest of Canada should be proud of them. Not only for actually having a real, definitive culture worth protecting, but also for having the balls to stand up to intense scrutiny and say in a loud clear voice “Either you adapt or you leave”.