Investment in clean-air technology can see a 50 percent spinoff on investment, according to the Conference Board of Canada. The board analysed Alberta’s clean energy fund, the Climate Change & Emissions Management Corp., in concluding spending generated net economic benefits: “There is no silver bullet”.
Québec is cast as xenophobic, a caricature some Québecers have done little to dispel. Only the Québec Soccer Federation banned Sikh children from league matches; “They can play in their backyard,” the director-general said. Only a Québec lunch monitor humiliated a Filipino-Canadian boy who wanted to eat with a spoon. Yet in both instances, many Québecers were as outraged as anybody. The soccer league apologized; the school board was hit with $17,000 in damages from a provincial human rights tribunal.
Sociologist Gérard Bouchard acts as an unofficial translator, attempting a reasoned explanation of why Québec does what it does. Interculturalism is thoughtful and eloquent. The inexplicable has a very simple explanation, Bouchard writes: “multiculturalism” tunes to a different frequency in Québec than it does anywhere else.
“There is in the francophone majority a very strong historical consciousness – we could say a memory under tension,” he writes. “It is a memory that is fueled by the feeling that the francophone majority still has an account to settle with its colonial past and with its present. Quebec, it should be recalled, experienced more than two centuries of domination.”
Interculturalism is no apologia for French-Canadian grievances. Francophones control most public and private institutions in Québec, Bouchard notes. They control media and government, and are the majority in 66 of 75 federal ridings. So, what’s the problem?
It’s obvious, he explains: nine in ten provinces are perfectly comfortable with multiculturalism in the knowledge that immigrants, especially their children, will inevitably assimilate into the happy majority that speak English, tolerate the Queen and enjoy Canada Day fireworks.
In Québec, this is precisely the problem. “Here, the long-term objective is to reach a point where all Québecers share responsibility for the future of the French language as the national language, with the understanding that for many of them French is a second or third language,” Bouchard writes; “All citizens of Québec, immigrants or not, are therefore invited to contribute to the cause of French in the continuation of past struggles.”
Interculturalism depicts a Québec society that is beginning to feel the walls are closing in. Québec today comprises barely 23 percent of the population; they are outnumbered by British Columbians and Albertans combined.
It’s a society that as late as 1986 saw the proportion of immigrants account for “around 7 to 8 percent” of its citizens – a ratio unchanged from the 1930s. Today it is some 11 percent, and projected to double by the 2030s. This means Québec will have the same foreign-born population that Saskatchewan had in 1910, but Saskatchewan did not nurse ancient francophone slights.
“Reflection on the management of ethno-cultural diversity in Québec has always had to contend with the same problem, the same tension: how do we think jointly about the future of the francophone culture inherited from four centuries of history, and the future of all Québec culture?”
So, Bouchard invites a consensus: if the rest of Canada can forgive Filipino schoolboys for eating lunch with a spoon, or understand why observant Sikhs wear turbans, perhaps we might permit Québecers to indulge their insecurities on old struggles.
The irony is noted.
By Holly Doan
Interculturalism: A View From Quebec, by Gérard Bouchard; translated by Howard Scott; University of Toronto Press; 224 pages; ISBN 9781-4426-47763; $19.57
Federal agencies paid more in $17 million in credit card transaction fees last year, according to the Department of Public Works. A bill currently before the Senate would drastically reduce Visa and MasterCard fees payable by public institutions and other vendors: “We pay”.
Young Canada faces more “precarious” job prospects than a generation ago with a university degree offering no guarantee of meaningful work, a Liberal Senate caucus forum has been told. Analysts said the outlook for young job-seekers appeared bleak: ‘Degrees don’t qualify them to do very much’.
The RCMP are gaining new powers to jam cellphone service. Industry Canada proposed to exempt the Mounties from the Radiocommunications Act that forbids use of jammers under threat of $25,000 fines: “If it was too powerful…”
Food processors say they are not to blame for the nation’s obesity rate, but note they’ve commissioned no independent scientific research on the impact of sugar and salt on the Canadian diet: “Individuals paint our industry as a villain”.
Government employees are being cautioned on ethics after a cabinet aide was cited for accepting perks from two trade associations and a mining company. Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson said public officials must beware of gifts from lobbyists: ‘It’s all part of the Ottawa scene’.
Federal regulators are giving the go-ahead to retire old-fashioned payphones after conceding the service now costs more than telecom companies recoup in 50¢ calls. Fewer than 56,000 payphones remain in service nationwide, said the CRTC: “We want to make sure Canadians are notified”.
The tax department is buying Walkie-Talkies in event of a civilian emergency that knocks out all communications at its Ottawa offices. Canada Revenue Agency did not say what scenario it feared would cause a mass telecom failure: “This is quite a stretch”.
Nearly a third of a billion dollars in student loans are being written off by the Government of Canada. Authorities disclosed the write-off at the Senate national finance committee: “It’s a lot of money”.
Railways face an April 1 deadline to comply with safety management policies once deemed too secretive and inaccessible to employees and the public. Rules require that all federally-regulated railways account for safe practices and report non-compliance: “These are long overdue”.
Sport fishing is an $8 billion business though the number of anglers is the lowest in years, the Commons fisheries committee has been told. The Department of Fisheries said it aimed to do more to monitor the industry: “To be candid we are hit and miss”.
Canadian farm debt has climbed to a record $78 billion – an eight percent increase since 2012 – but is manageable if farmers are cautious, says the CEO of Farm Credit Canada. The federal agency has repeatedly insisted there is no farm debt bubble: “We’re watching”.
A proposal to proclaim Remembrance Day a statutory holiday is not “as simple” as other private bills and will face extensive scrutiny, says the chair of the Commons heritage committee. Businesses have protested the bill will lead to unavoidable costs: “The time is short”.
Federal privacy law has failed to keep pace with technology that sees Canadians unwittingly surrendering personal information, says a Conservative MP. The remarks came at hearings on a bill expanding corporations’ use of personal data without consent: “Do people really understand?”
