I believe that a great majority of CEGEP graduates have an idea of where they want to go and what they aspire to become in the future. I have always had the willpower and desire to continue my university studies abroad and possibly uproot my life from Quebec for a chance at a wider range of opportunities. One day, walking down the vague and narrow hallways of Dawson leading up to the auditorium, my eye caught the sight of a laminated poster full of colors in contrast to the blank wall it had been attached to. Reading “Want the opportunity of a legal lifetime? Join us in our adventures abroad…” in bolded white had already intrigued me leaving me careless of what the rest of the sentence mentioned. This was advertising an internship for multiple law firms over 3-9 weeks (about 2 months) during the summer vacations. After doing some research on the program’s website, the options were to study in Italy, Madrid, or Barcelona. Going to Italy is on my bucket list of places to visit. Not only for its incredible food, architecture, and views, but also in consideration to my Italian heritage. This opportunity got me questioning if I could settle and study at an Italian university after CEGEP instead of just being there for a summer. Of course, living there would mean obtaining an Italian citizenship. However, with the laws that are in place, I can only get one if my living ancestors continue to maintain one as well. This means my parents or grandparents, which neither sets of individuals hold an Italian citizenship, at least not anymore.
With the saying “parents always know best,” I went to get myself informed from my parents that had a little more knowledge about the situation than I did. If I recall correctly, my father’s answer was “ah yes, your grandfather’s business decision is finally catching up to us.” Having little to no clue what decision he was referring to, I asked for a little story time. I soon found out that my grandparents had given up their citizenship once they immigrated to Quebec in the 1970s to participate in the restaurant industry. The laws around this time stated immigrants needed to obtain Canadian citizenship while their original citizenship of where they came from would be revoked. Not only was this due to not being able to afford more than one at a time, but this was also due to Quebec’s laws surrounding its economy and society. I do realize that it was a sacrifice they were willing to make to ensure a better life for them and their family. He had dreamed of opening a restaurant because the delicacy in cooking and its creative aspect is what sculpted his childhood. Having grown up in poor conditions, his skills were limited, but one passion had always been sharing the richness that food and cooking contain. To do so, he along with my grandmother had to lose their legal ties to Italy and commit themselves to the Quebec government and social norms. This was an equivalent to losing a piece of their identity. They felt unaccepted for who they are, not being one of the typical francophone nationalists that Quebec empowers.
The Immigration Act of 1976 promotes that solitude of not being “one of them” or equal to everyone else. Although this reinvented act was one step closer to breaking down the walls of discrimination and applying to a culturally and ethnically diverse society, it continued to uphold categories for certain individuals. Immigrants and refugees were classified under groups where people were made aware of their status of not being born Canadians. Even though this was the first act put in place that outright stated against discrimination and provided help to those migrating in, they were not fully accepted for who they were and how they chose to identify themselves as, taken in example from my grandfather’s story. The Quebec government labeled them as refugees and immigrants which completely disregarded them as part of the Quebec society or even as citizens of the country and residence of the province. Each person is brought up within different ethnic and cultural groups, including from many distinct parts of the world, that maintain different languages, traditions and even practice different religions. All these aspects, including the aspect of what their country of birth is/ their native home, are how we identify ourselves and what people choose to associate themselves with. This is how individuals also connect with society and connect with different social groups who withhold the same morals, values, and background as they do. Part of the identity of some or most immigrants was taken from them forcefully.
It may seem ridiculous to believe that incidents and laws as such mentioned continue to be very present years later in which is supposedly a progressive society. Sadly, this ridiculous belief is true and very current. In the year of 2019, the Quebec government passed a laicity law known as Bill 21, or Quebec’s secularism bill, which contains contents very controversial towards religion. This Bill enacted a ban on religious symbols in public governmental institutions for those who exercise functions within any of these government owned facilities. This was the governments idea of the separation of the state and religions, a way to uphold the states religious neutrality, equality amongst all citizens and each person’s freedom of conscience and religion. On the contrary to showing sign of “good intentions,” this law targets racial, ethnic, and religious minorities within Canada and impacts workers of public service such as health workers, politicians, government legal facilities like the Saaq and in majority the educational system. The consequences of Bill 21 affect the Jewish community and the Muslim community. In an interview with Sonia Galluccio, a CISSS worker in Laval, proves this point by expressing ““ I’m catholic… it is easier for myself being able to tell people that I am catholic, being a white women here in Quebec even though I’m from an immigrant family, I think the fact that I’m white and catholic, it is not as hard being accepted as if I were from another religion”. Their religious symbols are the keepa and the hijab for the Muslim religion. Individuals are told to remove them to be allowed to continue their work and maintain their jobs, which is clearly conflicting with their human rights and freedoms of religion beliefs and practices.
In a 2021 census, the percentage of Muslim individuals in Canada was at 4.9% of the total Canadian population, which puts Quebec to containing 421,710 individuals of this percentage, the second highest provincial population of Muslim individuals. With immigration rates continuously rising, we can imagine that this number of Muslims in Quebec has only gotten higher from 2021 to now.
Part of this census, is a Muslim woman named Fatemeh Anvari who has lost her job consequently from Bill 21. She was an English elementary school teacher in Chelsea Quebec who was beloved by her students. This young 28-year-old teacher felt numb about the loss of her job that she worked hard for and held very dearly to her heart. At a loss for words and feeling anxious about what shall happen next for her and many others, she strongly stood by her choice to not remove her hijab and expressed this choice to the apologetic principal of the school. The principle was not in any position to decide such an action nor go against the law. Anvari stated in an interview “I am always about encouraging kids to find their own identity, and grow on their own terms, and that nobody should dictate who they are… I would not have been me in my class.”. She refers to her not being her true self, not coinciding with her identity if she were to continue instructing her students without the hijab. Her statement pushes the message a law forcing you to remove such a religious symbol (the hijab), being just as wrong as the one which forces women to wear the hijab in the first place. This morally wrong action had many parents and children protesting Bill 21 and its injustices. Many parents encouraged the idea of Miss. Fatemeh Anvari being given her job back as kids felt encouraged by her, adored her, felt safe within the classroom as they walk with posters written “we love you Ms. Fatemeh” . Fear uplifted within Anvari when she noticed she had no other option but to give up her job so that she would not push herself more into marginalization, since she along with other Muslims and religious minorities are already marginalized.
In relation to Mrs. Anvari’s statement on marginalization, the province of Quebec continues to worsen the marginalization of certain groups not only based on religion, now involving language as well. Over the course of several years beginning in the 1960s, the Quebec government has enacted laws and regulations stating French as the provinces official language, the language to be used within businesses and toward the public as well as laws prohibiting certain individuals from having access to an anglophone education. These regulations refer to Bill 101 allowing only children with at least one parent that has attended and graduated their levels of education in English to have the opportunity to be taught in English, if not a French education is implied and made obligatory. In 1974, Quebec passed the Official Language Act referring to workplace and services to be given, spoken, and explained in French, completely disregarding the English language.
Most recently, the language regulation law 14, known as Bill 96, has been passed and created more controversy than ever. Bill 96 is a major reform of Bill 101. The French language is now to become Quebec’s “exclusive language of communication” with the minimal exceptions of healthcare and court involvement. This invokes those smaller businesses maintaining a range of 25-49 employees are to adopt French as their work language and affects students as anglophone CEGEPS are to limit their number of acceptances to 17.5%. Not only has this law been protested by anglophone communities, but it has also been affecting and been protested by indigenous communities as well. These two communities are considered minorities within this province, but alike Bill 21, Bill 96 oppresses these communities increasingly and as well bypasses certain criteria on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with a notwithstanding clause.
Within these minorities are immigrants and refugees who are once again in search for a better life. These immigrants are once more discriminated against through the enactment of this Bill due to only having 6 months to learn the French language upon arrival and can no longer have access to many public services in another language. The Montreal Immigration help groups state that their clientele will “ struggle to have their basic rights respected under Quebec’s revamped language law” , taking into account the struggles they face as individuals from foreign countries only consisting a knowledge of their ethnic and cultural language and ,most of them, a little to no understanding of the basics within the English and French languages. It is very unfair as ones who are Canadian born are given the opportunity to learn and improve their French knowledge throughout their entire lives, while individuals who have uprooted their lives and left their homes with nothing willing to learn and grow for the new province or country they are residing in are given a mere amount of 6 months, which in example is not even considered the length of a full school year. A Filipino woman residing in Quebec since 1975, Evelyn Calugay, states “We really feel discriminated against., it took [me] a year of full-time French classes to get to a point where [I] could understand and be understood in French” .
A petition with 1,887 signatures from a man named Tore Gustafson, was made in anger and frustration addressing the Canadian government and their involvement in the enactment of Québec’s discriminatory language laws. The Canadian government gave all right to the Quebec government to bypass the rights and freedoms of their citizens to try and maintain and praise the French language. He states that “The Language laws in Quebec serve no one but a minority of die-hard prejudiced francophones who wish to eliminate every other language in Quebec other than French.” . Coinciding with Gustafson’s opinion, the interview with Mrs. Sonia Galluccio indicated that “this is just one example of Québec’s ongoing discrimination” in relation to immigrants and even Canadian born citizens. She mentions that the government is afraid of diversity because “if we have more immigrants from other countries that dot speak French, then well end up losing the French language and culture.”
The difficulties that outcome from these laws are ones that split apart families and exclude individuals from a true welcoming and equal life amongst everyone else. A co-worker of Mrs. Galluccio, also mentioned in her interview, is not able to see her brother nor sister-in-law as the Quebec government told her to work in another province for healthcare as she is not very fluent with the French language. She remains there until her documents are received fully in French and until the Quebec government decides when she will receive French courses to learn the language.
Quebec’s discriminatory timeline proves itself to be continuous in the years leading up to the and presenting itself in today’s modern society. The province has become more limited towards which individuals they welcome and the opportunities they are given. A lot of Quebec’s immigrant population feels threatened as they cannot fully immerge themselves in their “new” society with their own identity, assuming their ethnic or cultural backgrounds. The diversity of a society bases itself off the difference of languages, cultures, religions, and ethnicities. It is incredibly unjust to infringe upon the fundamental freedoms and rights of individuals as most of these controversial laws bypass the content of the charter of human rights and freedoms. Considering how recent these matters are, it presents the government’s choice of not making progress over the years and the lack of interest in making progress in the future.
Works Cited
Anderssen, Erin. “Quebec Teacher Removed from Classroom over Bill 21 Says Taking off Hijab to Keep Her Job Would Send Wrong Message to Students.” The Globe and Mail, The Globe and Mail, 6 June 2022, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-quebec-bill-21-hijab-fatemeh-anvari/?login=true
“Bill 21 – CCLA.” National Assembly of Québec, Québec Official Publisher, 2019, https://ccla.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/2019-06-16-Bill-21-Passes-and-Becomes-Law.pdf
Bonan, Chelsea, and Talia Taras. “Bill 21: Targeting Racial and Religious Minorities in Canada.” MARL, Summer Practicum Students, 2 July 2021, http://www.marl.mb.ca/articles/244-bill-21-targeting-racial-and-religious-minorities-in-canada
Busque, Anne-Marie. “Quebec Language Policy”. The Canadian Encyclopedia, 08 June 2022, Historica Canada. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/quebec-language-policy
Dirks, Gerald E. “Immigration Policy in Canada”. The Canadian Encyclopedia, 23 October 2020, Historica Canada. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/immigration-policy.
Gustafson, Ture. “Sign the Petition.” Change.org, 2013, https://www.change.org/p/government-of-canada-repeal-of-the-discriminatory-language-laws-in-quebec
“Islam in Canada.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Feb. 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Canada
Stevenson, Verity. “Immigrants in Quebec Could Struggle to Have Rights Respected under New Language Law | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 27 May 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/immigration-impact-bill-96-1.6465770
