Quebec’s immigration tensions, in global context
Don’t let valid discussions degenerate into identity politics
François Légault and Trumpism in Quebec. Brexit in Europe. Burkini bans in France.
No matter where you look, tensions over immigration are back at the forefront of global political debate, particularly in the context of election and party leadership campaigns. From Europe to the United States, political talk has been dominated by issues of walls and fences, mass deportation and national values. In Canada, the niqab became an election issue last fall.
In many ways, U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has set the conversation baseline. His bombastic campaign has centred on a promise to build a concrete wall along his country’s southern border with Mexico. He has vowed to end birthright citizenship, suspend immigration from Muslim countries and deport mass numbers of Mexicans.
In Quebec, a debate is beginning over the annual number of immigrants that should be accepted into the province. Coalition Avenir Québec Leader François Légault has been compared to Donald Trump by his political opponents for suggesting that the province scale back its immigration by 20 per cent, from 50,000 to 40,000, in order to protect the French language and culture. For his part, Parti Québécois leadership candidate Jean-François Lisée has also suggested that Quebec lower the number of immigrants being accepted. Immigration Minister Kathleen Weil, whose ministry is engaged in an overhaul of Quebec’s Immigration Act, has called for a stable number of 51,000 over the next two years, to be increased to 52,500 in 2019. Expect this issue to remain at the forefront of debate for some time.
While it’s true that debates over immigration take on certain kinds of dimensions in the province given longstanding concerns about language and cultural identity, Quebec’s tensions are in step with what’s going on in many parts of the world right now.
Pull the frame back and it’s easy to see why. In Western Europe, the waves of refugees and migrants fleeing war, persecution and/ or poverty, compounded by terror attacks committed by Islamist extremists in countries including France, Turkey, Belgium and Germany have led to heightened political tensions and the rise of hardline anti-immigrant nationalist sentiment.
Staunching immigration flows into the United Kingdom was a central pillar of the pro-Brexit (British Exit) campaign. In June, Britain voted to leave the European Union. In France, where the burkini ban recently made headlines, former president and current leadership contender Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to tighten immigration restrictions.
In Canada, we’re seeing these discussions seeping into the Conservative leadership campaign. Last week, Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch was in the news for a survey sent out to her campaign supporters. The question read: “Should the Canadian government screen potential immigrants for anti-Canadian values as part of its normal screening for refugees and landed immigrants?” Leitch’s campaign did not set out what Canadian values are, or who gets to decide.
Recall that during the 2015 federal election campaign, Leitch and colleague Chris Alexander held a press conference to promote the establishment of a tip line for so-called “barbaric cultural practices.” She has since expressed regret for the way that announcement was handled, arguing that the ideas behind it — preventing gender-based atrocities experienced by women and children — were not communicated as well as they could have been.
Be that as it may, the return of national protectionism, cultural identity politics and immigrant scapegoating is worrisome.
Concerns over immigration are not unfounded. Scrape away the rhetoric and there are valid conversations to be had regarding such issues as integration, security and labour demands.
But those of us who lived through the Charter of Values in Quebec remember how quickly debates over identity can descend into ethnic nationalism. We need to resist any impulse to buy into knee-jerk protectionism. These strategies risk not only causing grave social division, but also excluding and alienating groups of people for political purposes.