http://archive.is/jj95j
>François Legault is no Québécois Donald Trump. The Coalition Avenir Québec leader hasn’t called immigrants rapists and drug dealers, or proposed to build a wall at the border, or to carry out mass deportations, or to turn away Muslims.
>All he did, ostensibly, was express concern about Quebec’s ability to absorb the additional 10,000 immigrants a year the Couillard government proposes to admit.
>So Premier Philippe Couillard surely exaggerated when he attacked Legault for “mounting the anti-immigrant backlash movement we observe south of our border and in Europe,” and of “blowing once again on the coals of intolerance.”
>Commentators and even political adversaries came to Legault’s defence against what they said was an attempt by Couillard to discourage legitimate debate.
>And then I happened upon a media release issued by Legault’s party this week.
>In the release, the CAQ candidate in the April 11 Chicoutimi by-election challenged her Liberal opponent to say where she stands on the Couillard government’s proposal to admit 60,000 immigrants a year instead of the present objective of 50,000.
>Rather, she spoke about identity, the French language and Quebec values. The former Parti Québécois government’s “charter of values” may be dead, but apparently the values issue itself isn’t.
>“Today, the population of Chicoutimi has the right to know what (Liberal candidate) Francyne T. Tremblay really thinks about the increase of 10,000 immigrants a year,” the CAQ candidate said. “It’s simple: we can’t raise immigration levels without the (present) courses on French and common Quebec values (for immigrants) being made compulsory.”
>When I saw those numbers, I was reminded of Hérouxville. That’s the economically depressed Quebec village that in 2007 became infamous when its council adopted a code of conduct for the immigrants who weren’t coming there anyway.
>That was at the height of hysteria in Quebec over religious accommodations, which a forerunner to the CAQ rode nearly all the way from third-party status to power in the general election later that year.
>While Chicoutimi riding doesn’t have many immigrants, it does have a lot of nationalists, having voted PQ in every election since the party’s first, in 1970.