Quebecers have different views on integration
Vey finds most French-speakers prefer that newcomers give up customs
As the nation celebrates Canadian Multiculturalism Day on Wednesday, a new survey finds that anglophone and francophone Quebecers hold very different views on how newcomers should integrate, and particularly on whether female police officers should be allowed to wear hijabs.
While a majority of both groups said they held positive views of immigrants, francophones were more likely to respond in the affirmative when asked whether immigrants should give up their customs and traditions, or if the influx of non-Christian immigrants posed a threat to society.
At the same time, despite much debate in the province over the difference between the federal policy of “multiculturalism,” which encourages minority groups to maintain their cultural identities, and the Quebec push to embrace “interculturalism,” which emphasizes that French culture is dominant and encourages different groups to interact, the survey found that few Quebecers make the distinction between the two schools of thought.
“For all the talk that the politicians and academics have been pounding away at for the last 15 to 20 years about this big distinction between our two models and approaches, the public simply doesn’t understand the difference,” said Jack Jedwab, vice-president of the Association for Canadian Studies.
The findings came as part of a series of surveys conducted for the Association for Canadian Studies and the Quebec Community Groups Network, looking at the difference and similarity in views between Quebec francophones and anglophones. Previous surveys looked at opinions that the two linguistic groups (determined by the question, “What is the language you first learned at home in your childhood and that you still understand?”) held of each other, and about each groups’ attachment to Quebec.
In the latest survey, titled Multiculturalism versus Interculturalism: Myth vs. Reality, the survey found that 63 per cent of francophones held a positive view of immigrants, as compared to 74 per cent of anglophones. Asked whether immigrants should be “encouraged to give up their customs and traditions and become more like the majority,” francophones were more likely to either strongly or somewhat agree (65 per cent) as compared to anglophones (47 per cent).
At the same time, francophones were more likely (58 per cent) than anglophones (40 per cent) to feel that “our society is threatened by the influx of non-Christian immigrants to Canada.”
As to whether Quebec is doing a better job of integrating immigrants than the rest of Canada, only 17 per cent of anglophones and 23 per cent francophones said yes.
Asked if a female police officer should be allowed to wear a hijab, only 26 per cent of francophones said yes, compared to 67 per cent of anglophones. A political maelstrom on the long-running debate over religious accommodation erupted last April when a 17-yearold police science student said she would keep her hijab if she became an officer.
Those findings, Jedwab said, were almost entirely based on the respondents’ opinion on whether immigrants need to assimilate or pose a threat to society — those who agreed were most likely to oppose the hijab, he said.
“There is a more assimilationist view (on the French side) which is a bit of a striking paradox, I’ve always found in Quebec’s case,” Jedwab said, “because we’re a province that, as a minority population in North America always describes itself as francophone, small group that for centuries that has resisted assimilation,” he said. “But when it comes to immigration, I guess because of that concern, rather than it resulting in a higher degree of rejection of assimilation, there’s actually a greater degree of support for it.”
The responses were not based on the respondents’ opinions on multiculturalism versus interculturalism, the poll found.
The survey was conducted by Léger Marketing with a sample of 1,226 Quebecers — 871 francophones, 275 anglophones and 106 allophones. It was conducted between May 14 to 17 via a web panel and has a margin of error of 3.5 points, 19 times out of 20.