Who are we, Quebecers?

The majority of immigrants who wish to settle in this country-oasis which is called Canada have no idea what this land literally sitting on the United States from coast to coast attracts them. all.

Because the new Canada of Justin Trudeau welcomes all the uprooted people of the planet and the political or economic exiles, who will be received with open arms with the ambiguous slogan, « Welcome home ».

However, post-national and community Canada has banned the N-word and discarded the I-word (for integration) by replacing it with the D-word (for diversity).

Armed with these directives, an immigrant has every reason in the world not to learn the basics of Canadian history. Especially since the new generations of Canadians are unaware of it, too.

Obligations

The problem becomes more delicate when newcomers discover that the French-speaking minority located in Quebec has what they quickly consider as advantages and rights attached to their language and their culture. It becomes trickier when these immigrants settle in Quebec and must “undergo specific constraints, including the obligation to learn French and to send the children to French school”.

But Quebec with its more advantageous health system, the low cost of university and college studies and the more generous offer of social services attract immigrants. However, you have to read the comments of some new Quebecers to see their lack of enthusiasm to accept our laws on secularism and our language. This explains the embarrassment they feel when they are called new Quebecers.

A Quebec academic spoke on Wednesday in The Press about it with barely restrained anger. She refuses to be called that. Faten Kikano wrote, “Don’t call me neo-Quebecoise! […] I don’t know your story, but I know another, more painful one […] Now I walk down the street and watch the eyes of passers-by warily. I no longer feel accepted. […] I don’t belong to this land. I will never belong there. I want to leave, but my home no longer exists. »

It is certain that the way in which this academic rejects the expression new Quebecer by claiming that her own history is more painful than ours, even if she admits that she does not know it, sends us, Quebecers of stock, into the intolerant category. How can we be surprised that our nationalism is diluted in permanent historical compromises?

Racists?

What then became of us if the expression “Quebecers of stock” became supposedly racist? What words do we have the right to use to designate French Canadians who are the descendants of the French who took root in New France from the 17^e century ?

It appears that all the words to affirm our roots on the shores of the St. Lawrence are trapped. Only racialized immigrants, LGBTQ, cultural communities now have the right to exist through words of their choice.

Quebecers would therefore only be an amalgamation of diverse peoples, races and marginalities. Will we then have to present a bill to the National Assembly to designate the “nameless” that we would have become?