Ethno-nationalism during the provincial election

At a time when 50% of all deportations in Canada take place in Quebec and 200 people are deported each week in Montreal by the Canada Border Services Agency, Christine Fréchette is proposing more insecurity, discrimination, and precarity, as well as more state violence.

The position of the CAQ isn’t exactly original: this institutional violence is all the rage these days. Eager for power and unable to take responsibility for their political choices—namely, the dismantling of our public services—the political class is resorting to ever more despicable tactics and distractions to avoid being held accountable.

Impunity and incompetence were already the party line of the CAQ. Instead of working on solutions, it has become commonplace to blame immigration for everything wrong in Quebec. Racist rhetoric is intensifying, as seen in the disgusting comments by the leader of the Parti Québécois, who imported the term “second-generation immigrants” from France before singling them out, thereby creating a de facto second class people to “true” Quebecers.

Our schools are overcrowded, and apparently it’s the children’s fault—certainly not that of the adults sitting in parliament. What a fine display of political courage!

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen, in a society born of colonization, white people receiving services from people of color who aren’t entitled to those same services!

Yet it’s not that complicated: you work, you pay taxes, and therefore you receive services. That’s one of the foundations of the social contract. If you work, pay taxes, but don’t get any service, where are you in that contract? These marginalized communities are exploited by the cruel and ruthless system in which we live. The guilty part are the lawmakers and the wealthy class who impose this broken social contract in the first place.

What would our public services be without the crucial contribution of immigration? Has Christine Fréchette forgotten the guardian angels of the pandemic?

The CAQ would certainly like you to forget the horror in the CHSLDs—a catastrophe that would have been far worse had it not been for the sacrifice of these people, whom some politicians essentially now label as parasites. This dehumanization continues to intensify and seems to be heading to the worst.

Divide and conquer by exploiting ethnic nationalism—we know all too well where that can lead us. Anyone can look south of the border to see the staggering levels of brutality that result. And anyone with a sense of history knows the barbarism into which European and Euro-descendant societies can descend after years of giving the impression of regaining power by scapegoating minorities.

That doesn’t stop someone like Éric Duhaime from taking a cue from the current U.S. administration to declare his intention to deport 70,000 asylum seekers. To hell with human rights. Duhaime wants to follow Trump’s example instead.

For Fréchette, Duhaime, and PSPP, migrants are not among those worthy of a happy life. They are undesirables to be controlled, counted, dominated, and deported. Perhaps we can’t expect anything better from people who want to count themselves among the masters of the world, masters who support the genocide in Palestine.