A note to my readers

I have a severe pain in the right arm and the neck preventing me from spending enough time on my blog and in front of the computer in general. The situation is so critical that a simple click on the mouse is directly correlated to an immediate increase of the pain in my neck and my right arm.

I am going through agressive physical therapy right now and will do my best to keep this blog active. My next long posting and commentary will be on Quebec's immigration talk, from the commission on reasonable accommodations for immigrants , to the recent law drafted by the Parti Québécois restricting individual rights for some immigrants, to the province's talk on racism and how the Canadian charter of human rights is seen by many French speaking Quebecers as a threat to their Christian Catholic heritage in the context of a multicultural society. Clearly, Quebecers who agree with Hérouxville's city council are uncomfortable recognising the cultural diversity in their province and uncomfortabkle with the idea of giving cultural minorities some rights pertaining to their culture and beliefs.

This talk on racism and reasonable accomodations for cultural minorities, started with the Hérouxville story, a small municipality in rural Québec whose council drafted a code of life which was seen by many as racist and anti-Muslim. This small municipality which doesn't have one Muslim resident, opened a Pandora's box in the province. Many Quebecers started confessing their racism. Many other Quebecers were schocked by this racist talk.

Listening to the consultations of the Commission on reasonable accomodations was torture for me. My personal story comparing two immigrations persuaded me that total integration, the one I had to go through in France, is possible, but it has its downside, the estrangement of one's own culture. What I loved and still love in Quebec and Canada is the fact that, absent the pressure on complete integration, I was able to retrieve my native cultural roots, while assimilating slowly the local culture. Forced integration has something that one could relate to psychological violence, a violence consented by those who receive it and those who exert it. Living in Quebec and Canada made me reevaluate multiculturalism from my previous French experience of total integration. I thought that, although it had its flaws, Multiculturalism is the only way a globalised world and globalised society can achieve understanding and a good living together amidst diversity.

I am surprised to realise that, although the moment is dark now for multiculturalism, there are Quebecers who think like me. I am most comforted by the intervention of the young mayor of Huntingdon, Quebec, political commentator and radio host,Stéphane Gendron, at the commission for reasonable accommodations. He forcefully argued that multiculturalism is well and alive in Quebec. Drawing on Huntingdon's history, he loathed the province's government for launching a consultation on reasonable accommodations as a way to escape its responsibilities and assume the multiculturalism of the province. I asked him to forward me the text of his memo and he did so instantly and kindly.

I am going through the text now. I would like to expose and compare some interesting views on multiculturalism including Gendron's, Quebec human rights lawyer's, Julius Grey, and philosopher Charles Taylor's position on the subject as glanced at from his book on the self (The sources of the Self, the building of the modern identity). These different but mostly pro-multiculturalist views and positions can help us give a dimension to a phenomenon I hold dear in my heart, from my personal history and experience, and which is under attack from both the right and the liberal left in many parts of the world creating social tensions and feeding the whole flawed concept of the 'clash of civilisations' and 'the war on terror'.

On Kindness or This Is Mutlicultural Montreal

Many people believe that a multicultural society is an utopia. I have been living this utopia since 1991 in Montreal, Quebec. Quebec is the province where multiculturalism is the most vivacious. British Colombia and Ontario for example have much more immigration but it is mainly from east and south Asia while in Quebec, and Montreal which is the recipient of the majority of immigrants, the mosaic is richer, there is no dominant community from immigration.

Of course, many things are difficult for an immigrant here in Quebec, as compared to the rest of Canada, especially when it comes to professional integration and dealing with the nationalistic aspirations of the Québécois who, in their majority, are proud of their distinctive ethnic character and their past, but it is not difficult to coexist with other immigrants from other countries with radically different cultures.

Yesterday, I went to the Eco center of my neighbourhood to get rid of some home painting material. But the Eco center had moved and I found myself carrying a heavy load from one place to another and out from the car and in the car again. After I finished, I went shopping for some grocery. At the cashier, I realised I was tired of carrying heavy bags and I asked the clerk if I could leave my bags near the door for about five minutes, the time I needed to drive the car and park it at the level of the store. A man behind me, a complete stranger, asked at that point where was my car, and I told him. He said: 'I would like to offer my help'. I was pleasantly surprised and accepted immediately while thanking him. We shared the load and walked outside. It was raining. He opened his umbrella for me. He spoke a litterary French, not the local dialect. I asked from which origin he was. He said that he has been living in Montreal since long but that he comes from Russia. I said that I was originally from Lebanon. I was affected by his curteous kindness and kept thanking him. He said: 'don't worry, this is Montreal, and after all, I am sure you would have done the same'.

I thought that it was so easy to be kind with others, even the distant other, that it should be the natural state of intersubjectivity; assuming kindness in others and acting under this assumption.

Update with a significant comment on this post from The Two Wolves blog:

Is it an example of multiculturalism though? Is it really true that even Quebec is really multicultural?

Definitely multi-ethnic but that's something different. Observe that you conversed in a tertiary language and that you were impressed by his mastery of that language. Also observe that you had to ask him where he originally came from, that it wasn't obvious to you. Isn't that an example of his, and your success in integration into a tertiary Franco-culture?

It is necessary to be mult-ethnic to be multicultural but it is not necessary to be multicultural in a multi-ethnic society, in fact I would argue that Canada has escaped the suspicions and privations evident in the US because its immigrants have more readily absorbed a Francophile culture. I think your story underlines that.

The ADQ: from 5 to 41 Seats in Parliament, thanks to the Veil and other identity threatening cultural items !

The ADQ, Action Démocratique du Québec, has nothing democratic about it, the more exact description is populist. It is a rural conservative nationalist party, far right on economic and social issues. Before today and yesterday's provincial elections in Québec, it wasn't even recognised as an official party in parliament. Mario Dumont, its leader, was able to get elected few elections ago in his Rivière Du Loup riding, some 500 Kms north east of Montréal on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence river, and get elected on a simple promise, by defining himself as a staunch nationalist but not a separatist, conforting those Quebecers who are nationalists but afraid to separate from Canada. I call them the wary nationalists, 'les nationalistes peureux'.

Québec's separatists are the second largest party in Quebec and were for sometimes the first in the polls, despite not succeeding in rallying a majority of Quebecers to the separatist project. They came close to winning a referendum on separation on two occasions. And on the second occasion, 1995, Jacques Parizeau, the party leader and then prime minister declared that the defeat in the referendum was made possible by 'L'argent et les Allophones' (The Money and the Allophones). Some have understood 'L'argent' as targeting the Jewish community who is, in a large majority, wealthy and against the separation of Quebec. Parizeau was shunned by his own party after his defeat and this declaration. The Parti Québécois, PQ, and its sister party at the federal level, Le Bloc Québécois, which enjoys a solid majority in Québec, have been making efforts to integrate Quebec's immigrants into the political landscape by offering them seats since they lost the 1995 referendum on sovereignty. Québec's immigrants, on the other side, those who stay in the province and don't migrate to other provinces, and who come in their majority from francophones countries, Haiti and north African and arab countries, were glad at the new opportunities. A synthesis was taking place between a very particular history, the history of Quebecers and their English rulers and tormentors, and the history of these new immigrants. Not only a synthesis, but a mutual empathy. This is when immigrants like me understood that Quebec's separatism has, in essence, nothing to do with Quebec's nationalism, although, at its origin separatism was founded by the most reactionnary and nationalist elements of the Quebec society. But that was when the English speaking community acted as colonisers toward the Québécois Francophones in their own country. Moreover, diffferent political tendencies existed inside the PQ; leftists, conservatives, moderates. Recently however, the PQ was mutating and experiencing internal divisions at the same time the synthesis between its separatist project and immigrants was being achieved. It was too much for a party who elected André Boisclair, an openly gay and ambitious young man who declared having consumed drugs when he was minister, as its leader, in a show of its determination to get rid of its own reactionary and conservative elements. It seems however that the choice of Boisclair didn't find an echo in the Quebec population. I know it didn't have the same negative impact among immigrants because in my riding* which votes against the PQ since the 1970s, no matter who is the opposite candidate, the PQ candidate, practically an unknown man from the immigrant population, fared well (but not enough to get elected) accordingly to the percentage of immigrants in the riding.

On the other hand, Jean Charest, who is an ex federal conservative, turned provincial liberal, was never able to convince true Quebec liberals of his conversion. Many of these true liberals divided their vote between, on one hand, the green party and the party of the left (Quebec solidaire) which together gathered 8% of the vote without succeeding in getting seats in parliament, and the PQ. The result of both processes, the lack of confidence in Charest from True liberals and the lack of confidence in Boisclair from 'wary nationalists' who used to vote PQ but NO for the separation referendum, and conservatives, is the weakening of the two major parties in favor of the ADQ.

Watching Quebec Politics, I realised that it is only in Quebec that nationalism and separatism are not synonymous and I would say, according to today's parliamentary election results, that nationalism is more pervasive outside the separatist party than inside. Yesterday's elections were called by the present prime minister, whose liberal party was elected three years earlier, on the premise that the PQ was having a hard time in the polls. The results have however brought a third party in the equation, the ADQ. The surge of the ADQ is due to two simple facts, the low popularity of the two main leaders inside their parties and the rise of the veil politics in Quebec.

Three months ago, Hérouxville's town council adopted a chart for its inhabitants forbidding the veil, the niqab, and the stoning of women, without the knowledge of its inhabitants, who were shocked at the discovery of the name of their towm in the newspapers as a racist town. Because of course, there were some false assumptions about Quebecers Muslims in this chart. The chart caused a controversy but it turned out that there was not one single Muslim living in this small town. Two years ago, some Orthodox Jews, who refuse to send their children to regular public schools were lobbying the liberal government for funding. The funding was allowed only to be retracted after an outcry from the Quebec population fiercely against such an approach despite the fact that Quebec's schools were still only four years ago funded by the government and recognised along religious lines (Catholic and Protestant). Last year, the ministry of education realised that some Jews actually homeschool their children without any official supervision (actually you can homeschool in Quebec but you have to report to the minstry of education, follow the guidelines, and so on...) The ministry stepped in seeing in this process a coercion on the child and was going to propose to these families some accomodations within the public school system. Last year, a Sikh boy went to the supreme court to force the Quebec school he goes to to accpet him with a dagger in his kippa and won. The accumulation of these cultural particularisms became a central debate in the Quebec society. Most Quebec citizens, who declare themselves at a rate of 60% as racists, were against accomodationg cultural and religious communities, not for the sake of secularism, mind you, but in the name of the Christian character of the Quebec society. The government created an official committee called 'Committee for reasonable accomodations'.

At a public meeting at my son's college early this year, one prominent member of this committee, Canadian political philosopher Charles Taylor, was speaking on the importance to bring people together and on the danger of adopting the theory of the 'Clash of civilisations' by stigmatisating a religion and a culture in a multicultural globalised world and society, I asked him if the solution to the 'Clash of civilisations' wasn't actually the reinforcement of muticulturalism and he agreed. I understood however, after the conference, why the philosopher of multiculturalism, Charles taylor, didn't bring the word once in his talk. I was assailed by two teachers of my son who told me that multiculturalism and its legal companion, the Canada charter of individual rights, were something the former liberal prime minister of Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, invented and implemented against the Quebec society and when I asked why they think it was against them, they answered that they see themselves as a Christian only culture and that immigrants should abide by their culture and when I said that Quebec has abandoned religion in its definition as a nation in the sixties, they said that still, Christianism was part of their identity, of who they are and this is how they see themselves in the face of the immigrant population (more than 50%) in their province.

I was really stunned by the level of nationalism and the influence of religion in this society. The parti Québécois is ahead of its people and this is why even its sympathisers were not able to follow its transformation. There is one other premise in this, the failing of politics. If people are returning to the religious definitions of their identity, this means that politic has failed them. It means that Politic was not able to bring to them a satisfactory social project.

Mario Dumont, the leader of the PQ, is taking people as they are, he stepped in this hesitation. He jumped on the Hérouxville controversy affirming his support for the mayor(I still have to check how Hérouxville voted). He asked the director of Elections Quebec to make sure that Niqab was not allowed on voting day despite the fact that in the whole province there are only few niqabs, and not sure that these women have citizenship and vote rights, and despite the fact that there was never an incidence of the sort at election day before. The controversy took hold of the media for more than a week until the eve of election day. This is how Mario Dumont, a rural conservative whose party didn't take any seat within the city of Montreal, the largest city in Quebec, who is very close to Stephen Harpers ideals and to Bush's ideals on economic and social matters, won the second place in yesterday's elections, putting the PQ in third place. The three parties are however close, 32 % for the liberals, 30 % for the ADQ and 28 % for the PQ. We have a minority government with a minority opposition.

I am not proud of Quebec and I am not proud of our politicians. I voted for the PQ, even though I do not adhere to their separatist project. But I vowed to vote for them when they were, with Quebec Solidaire (a small leftist party), the only to march with Lebanese asking for a ceasefire in Lebanon during the Israeli agression on Lebanon last summer.
*My riding is composed of 15 % Anglophones, 55 % Francophones, and 30 % Allophones (based on the language spoken at home) of whom 4% are Arabs, probably 20% Jewish, and the other are Russians and Eastern Europeans. Jewsih and Anglo, as well as a sizeable part of the Francophones must have voted for the Liberals who had 46 % of the votes, compared to the PQ who had 23 % pof the votes, 10 % for the green party, 9 % for the left, and the rst for other two small parties.