Quebec municipalities and human rights groups are voicing concerns about proposed legislation that would require newcomers to abide by a set of common values.
They say the new bill on cultural integration could foster anti-immigrant sentiment and impose a heavy administrative burden on communities.
The bill, tabled in January by Quebec’s right-leaning Coalition Avenir Québec government, would have immigrants adhere to shared values including gender equality, secularism and protection of the French language. The legislation is the latest in a series of bills that aim to reinforce Quebec identity, following the province’s secularism law and its overhaul of the language law.
It’s intended as Quebec’s answer to the Canadian model of multiculturalism that promotes cultural diversity, which the government believes is harmful to social cohesion in Quebec. Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge has said he wants to avoid cultural “ghettos.”
It would also allow the government to make public funding contingent on adherence to a forthcoming integration policy. Roberge has suggested, for example, that festivals could have their funding cut if they don’t promote Quebec’s common culture. That part of the bill has prompted concerns from organizations representing Quebec municipalities, which say it encroaches on municipal autonomy. The Union des municipalités du Québec is calling on the government to scrap that part of the legislation outright.
Meanwhile, the Fédération québécoise des municipalités wants the funding requirement to be limited to cultural programs and those related to integrating immigrants. They say it would be difficult to review every funding application for adherence to the policy. Pierre Châteauvert, policy director with the federation, told a legislative committee last week that municipalities are already struggling under the weight of laws and policies they have to apply.
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“The burden causes you to become paralyzed. You paralyze the system,” he said. “This is what we are currently experiencing.”
The federation says it supports the objectives of the cultural integration bill. But it also wants the government to increase spending on French-language classes for immigrants, many of which were cancelled last fall due to lack of funding. Critics have said those cuts run counter to Quebec’s goals of integration.
Other groups claim the legislation goes beyond integration toward a desire to assimilate. In an interview, spokesperson Laurence Guénette of the Ligue des droits et libertés, a Quebec human rights group, said Quebec is using the bill “to create a more homogenic culture.” She said it will stoke fears that newcomers are putting Quebec values at risk.
The organization recently published its objections to the bill in a news release, which has since been signed by 95 civil society groups.
They aren’t alone. Last month, 30 academic and political figures, including several former Quebec ministers, signed an open letter claiming the bill has “assimilationist tendencies.” But Roberge has rejected that idea, saying the bill invites newcomers to contribute to Quebec culture. “We’re not asking (immigrants) to erase themselves,” he told reporters last week.
One of Guénette’s major concerns is that the bill would modify the provincial charter of rights to state that the exercise of individual rights must comply with the province’s model of integration. She fears that means other charter rights—to freedom of religion and opinion, for example—could be infringed.
The Quebec charter has been modified many times since it was passed by the provincial legislature 50 years ago. Unlike the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which can only be modified through a constitutional amendment, the Quebec charter is a bill like any other that can be altered by the government of the day.
The current government has already twice amended the charter when it passed the secularism and language laws. “It’s been proven in the last years that it’s really easy to modify the charter,” Guénette said. “You don’t even need to have a majority of the political parties voting in favour of it.”
She said her organization would like to see new rules to require some kind of “social consensus” before the charter can be modified.
But Marie-Claude Girard, who appeared before the committee Thursday with an organization promoting secularism, said it’s important to specify in the Quebec charter that “we have a different model from Canadian multiculturalism.”
She said the Canadian charter is focused on the rights of the individual, while the Quebec document focuses more on “collective rights.”
Anglophone groups have also expressed concerns about the integration bill, saying it appears to restrict the definition of Quebec culture and heritage to the French language. “We feel like we are being erased from history,” the Quebec Community Groups Network said in a recent brief to the committee.
Hearings on the bill will resume March 18, when the provincial legislature returns following a two-week break.
