La Presse has a myths vs. reality article on the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodation. It includes some enlightening figures about religion, immigration and language in this province.
Naturally, the facts make it clear that pur laine Quebecers don’t have anything to fear from a few thousand immigrants.
This whole debacle was kickstarted by the demagogic ADQ in search of media attention by amplifying racial issues that were at best isolated cases and blowing it into a full blown racial movement. Thanks to Dumont all the racist loonies came out in droves promoting ideas like Al-Queda had created Islam (yes I typed that in the correct order) and everything spiraled into a fear based monstrosity against the Muslims. Every time I watched the commission on TV I would cringe in embarrassment from all the ignorance and stupidity I had to listen to. Take tiny little mo hills and turn them into mountains of crap that end up costing time and money and for nothing. Just so racists can get all their hate off their chests and political clowns can make bigger asses of themselves.
Oh and give us something to talk about.
Ethnocentric nationalism in Quebec has always been a funny story. In Chineese, there is a proverb that says “Be careful what you wish for, you might as well get it.” However, sometimes, it’s just the opposite that comes up.
In the recent stories about the Bouchard-Taylor commission, it is exactly that. The most recent baby in terms of commissions of Jean Charest, the antithesis of a prime minister just like Robert Bourassa used to be, in between two seats all the time, unsure, undecisive and just like Stéphane Dion who has no leadership whatsoever even when we try to find just a little as hard as we can, has become a little monster in the eye of the ROC (rest of Canada) and also in international press.
Of course, smelling the burning soup and smelling the huge mistake, Jean Charest does what he can do best which is: blame your mistakes on someone else, perhaps one of the only talent Jean Charest has as a prime minister. The question is whether or not people will be buying this worm but that’s a complete other story.
In the case of Québec, we have only ourselves to blame in this topic. Nowaday, ethnocentric nationalists are starting to wonder why we don’t attract successful European people, Frenchmen, Swissmen, Germans, Sweedish, etc people instead of always attracting people coming from corrupt countries dominated by despot dictators who will end up exploiting our welfare system and go in Ontario as soon as the opportunity comes up.
The answer is simple, in their so-called clever answer to denatality problems in which baby boomers only have themselves to blame and their socialists sacred cows (so-called free healthcare, free education and welfare for everyone, the poors and even so-called successful businesses like Bombardier and Alcan who would be long ago bankrupt in one case and gone in China in the other if government wasn’t financing their activities), ethnocentric nationalists thought they should attract French immigration.
Despite wanting to attract Frenchmen from France who’d rather stay in their own socialist nightmare instead of jumping into another one, what they got was more people coming from their colonies.
Now, here we are several years later knocking our heads down wondering what just happened.
By choosing French immigration at all cost over competence, we as Quebeckers only get what we sincerly deserve. By being so anti-anglo in our bias (for example, we’d rather have hispanic immigration over English immigration, English won’t come anyways), ethnocentric nationalists are shooting themselves in the foot several times as if in their masochistic ways, they liked it more than ever. Some are starting to regret that and start to wonder if we should have favorized competent labor instead. Nonetheless, despite all their cries and wonder at the Bouchard-Taylor commission, it’s probably to late to undo the damage done. If they want to find the guilty party as they always like to do what they should do is just try to find a mirror and have a good hard look into it to find it.