Mr Cusack,

With all due respect, you are simply not polemical enough.

I love the province and QC & Isle d’Orleans are enchanting gems. How is Archbishop Ouellet doing in his bid to breathe life back into a Church struck dumb by the Quiet Revolution?

Keep up the good work.

A blogger on LewRockwell.com once made an interesting observation, saying that all religious symbols should be removed from government property, since it would be blasphemous to associate God with government, which even in it’s smallest form is evil.

I’m a Quebec’s residant for more than 33 years, im an european immigrant,almost one of the last to cross the atlantic from that part of the world in mid-seventies.After the end of the eighties the majority of immigrants to Quebec and to Canada came from the Est Europe, North Africa, Middle Est, Asia and Haiti, cultures little differents from the old French and British cultures.My first thing here was to go to school to lern the french language. I did it and after that I got two university degrees.To remind,les Quebecois are the only french speaking majority in North America, surrounded by a more than 330 milions culturally threatening english speaking people and they feel threateded. The central question of the Bouchard-Taylor commission was the so called reasonable accommodation, accomodation raisonable,of the competing immigrant’s cultures practiced in various every days domains and the follow-up of some courts decisions based on the Charter of Rights.Todays Quebec society is a secular one, open and tolerent and not so religious as in the past. The churches are empty, many stranformed in luxurious condominiums.Quebec has one of the lower birth rates in the world, 1.4 child per women.So Quebec needs immigration.The vast majority of the immigrants choose Montreal, 40% of the population of Monrteal are immigrants or immigrants descendants.The question then is not the one of the crucifix or any other religious symbol, those are for the politicians, for electoral purposes.The real question is the integration of the immigrants in the Quebec’s society and the best way, as we know, it is not by some accomodations left and right but the real integration of the immigrants in the works force. Only 4% of the municipal jobs are allocated to immigrants and it is the same in the public sector.Quebecers keeps the best paying jobs even if the new immigrants are more educated and skilled.The immigrants obviously feel excluded and the authorities know the problem. As long as this will be unchanged the problem of the immigrants integration will stay unsolved and the crucifix will be always a convenient scapegoat.

So Marius, increasing the Quebecois birthrate is not an option then? You wouldn’t
have to worry about immigration if you did that?

And why immigration from French-speaking coutnries of the third world? Could not
encourage immigration from metropolitan France if one is seeking persons to fill
the labor force?

Just curious....

Well,Sean Scallon , they tryed, the government with various incitative programs in the last 15-20 years or so to boost the birth rates but in vain.The intitution of family went through big changes here as elsewere.Family, as community and then society, is a collective institution that fits bably in the individualistic todays society.You know, what it’s count today is the individual, the god promoted by the political and economic system.But what is strange in that it’s the fact that the individual needs the family, the community and the society, like a mirror, to show him self,to exhibit his self, to be valued. So to be short,not rise in the birthrates in the horizon and then Quebec needs the immigrants more that the immigrants need the Quebec. I can say again that the Quebec’s society is a good one , open and tolerant, much better than many other places. The immigrants, by definition, are mobile and the integration of them has its own dynamics. They dont care much about religious symbols what is counts is the every days life. The best way to integrate them is the integration through the working force, with good jobs and good salaries, not to marginalise them and not treat them as second or even third class citizens. We go through that every day be it with the accent, the name, the food and so on, the most of the time in a subtle way.

Quebecers keeps the best paying jobs even if the new immigrants are more educated and skilled.The immigrants obviously feel excluded

Then the immigrants should return to their native lands where their education and skills must be in great demand.

Culture sans une culte, ca n’existe pas. 

Je viens de Jackman, un village sur la frontiere de Quebec et Maine, ou le plupart des gens “d’un certain age” parlent le Francais.  Alors, la culture Quebecoise est aussi dans une sense la mienne.  Celle de mon peuple, ma ville, mon etat. 

Pour moi, comme un anglophone (c’est evident de mon Francais, non?) qui partege l’experience quebecois, qui est aussi catholique, je dois dire que si on oublie le foi, on oubliera notre histoire, inseperable de notre foi, on va perdre nous- meme. 

C’est a dire que c’est véritablement de bonnes nouvelles.  Les Quebecois se rappellent finalement.  Nous nous souvenons.

Vive Quebec, Francais et catholique!

To answer to Matra, that is exactly what you told us so many times, so often ‘’ returne dans ton estie de pays moutzi immigrant’’ but don’t ask after d’embrasser ta culture et ta religion ma chère, ou mon cher, because I have my own and I want to keep it or even to share it but not to abandon it for you because I know that you accept me, you don’t have other choices, but you don’t like me, and you can not say that either because I didn’t came here illegally, I came here because you , your government and your country, because it is your country, not mine, needed badly my skills and my work, to pay taxes for your kids to be able to go to school, to rend your apartment and pay a loyer to you, be a client to you store, to your grocery, help your economy runs and all that doing the job that your refuses to do in the first place and for thanks you came out here , in Taki’s Magazine, Takis, en passant, est un compatriote de moi, alors , j’espèere que vous avez bien déviné ma nationnalité, to say the same ugly things that we, immigrants, have heard so many times, at list find something new and intelligent to say. But keep in mind, Matra, what I said :  today’s Quebec needs much more the immigrants than the immigrants need the Quebec, alors ,voyez-vous le rapport de force???

In the past few years, the Quebec birth rate has risen from 1.4 to over 1.6 children per woman. That is still well below replacement (2.1 children), but it’s a sign that the recent incentives for child bearing are paying off.

It’s false to say that Quebec tried over the past 15-20 years to raise the birth rate and “it was all in vain.” For a long time there was much talk but little action. Ironically, it has been Liberal governments that have tried to address the problem. The Parti Quebecois studiously ignored it and reversed any pro-natalist measures whenever it came to power.

Much more could be done. Unfortunately, public policy is still influenced by groups who see marriage and family life as just one choice among many.

As for immigration, it is not a solution to the aging of Quebec’s population because immigrants are, on average, only slightly younger than Quebeckers. Family reunification inevitably leads to many parents and grandparents being brought over.

Nor is immigration a solution to the shrinking workforce. Over 27% of welfare recipients are immigrants. From my own observation, this is not because of discrimination but because certain immigrants have no inhibitions against milking the system for all its worth. A very large proportion of these welfare recipients actually work full-time at jobs that pay only in cash.

While the so-called “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s created an altogether more secularized modern society, robbing the Quebecois of their cultural and religious heritage..

Who has done the robbing? If the Quebecois did not want secularization in response to the ignorance and and poverty that the Church requires of most parishioners to maintain slavish devotion, it would not have happened. Secularization is as valid a tradition as any other in the non-static world.

That being said, displaying an important cultural symbol does not, or should not, interfere or influence the functioning of parliament, nor does praying, so long as the requirements of others are accommodated (such as not requiring attendance to prayers).

Until such time as the population is inevitably replaced by another (as reminded by Elijah Harper’s symbolic gesture), Charest is the reasonable one.

Once again, Quebeckers prove that they have the will to stand up to the corrosive forces of a secular state religion.  The rest of Canada should follow the example of “les habitants.”

The song “Dégénération”, by the Quebecois group known as Mes Aïeux, says it all (YouTube it--it has subtitles en anglais). There could still be a cultural revolution in Quebec to turn back the tide…