Québec election: Anti-immigration sentiment propels CAQ to landslide

Ed. here. Normally we don't cover regional/local politics, but yesterday's election in the province of Québec has implications for all of Canuckistan, so we pressed our National Sports Editor, Poor Len Canadien, into service to analyse the result. Over to you, Len.

Tank youse, Hed. Hier soir au Centre Bell [Len? Len! The election, Len. Not the hockey game! Ed.]

Oh... yeah... Well... Four years and two days ago, François Legault led his fledgling Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), theretofore barely a blip in the polls, to a surprise victory over the Québec establishment, winning a majority of the seats in the Assemblée Nationale to form a new government.

The CAQ government made good on his promises, passing a number of controversial laws, including Bill 21 on the secularization of the state, which bars public school teachers and government officials in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols, including headgear. The law also denies fully veiled Muslim women access to health care and other government services. 

The very first major piece of legislation passed by the CAQ on coming to power drastically reduced the number of immigrants admitted to Quebec, and requires them to provide evidence that they have learned democratic values and Quebec values.

Last May, M Legault's government passed into law Bill 96, which reinforces the primacy of French, "the official and common language of Québec", making it the only official language of la Belle Province.

All these measures were condemned by English-speaking federal and provincial politicians, the lickspittle media and all progressive thinkers, including Prime Minister Blackie McBlackface, as reactionary, xenophobic, divisive, discriminatory, anti-immigrant, chauvinistic, and (of course) racist. But the Québécois approved overwhelmingly, and the CAQ was almost universally predicted to win a second term in Monday's election.

So last night's result came as no surprise. The only shock was the extent of M Legault's re-election triumph. With most polls reporting (as of 0100 today, EDT), the Coalition Avenir Québec had bagged 89 seats (out of 125) in the Assemblée Nationale, 13 more than they started with, and close to the contemporary record established in 1989.

Both Radio Canada and TVA predicted a CAQ majority within 10 minutes of the closing of the polls at 2000. The only question for the rest of the evening was who would form the official opposition and how many seats would be left for the other three parties. In the end the once-mighty Liberals retained the title with 21 seats, six less than they had when the legislature was dissolved.

It is noteworthy that the Liberals, led by a Woman of Colour who grew up in Haïti, slipped to fourth place in the popoular vote, behind the Parti Québecois and socialist Québec Solidaire. That they got so many seats is due to the concentration of their support in Montréal, where their candidates were elected in predominantly English-speaking, Jewish and immigrant-majority ridings. The Liberals failed to elect a single candidate outside of the Montréal-Laval region. One commentator said (repeatedly), "There are  now two Québecs."

At the outset of the campaign, Premier Legault proclaimed immigration a key ballot issue. He implored voters to give him a clear majority so he would be in a strong position to demand the federal government cede to the province all but exclusive control over immigration. In a speech to the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal, M Legault said it would be "suicidal" for the Quebec "nation" to increase its intake of immigrants since they are responsible for the decline of French.

This followed earlier remarks in which the Premier associated immigrants with crime and violence, and suggested they were a threat to Quebec values. CAQ Immigration Minister Jean Boulet was forced to apologize after stating in a radio debate, "80 per cent of immigrants go to Montreal, do not work, do not speak French or do not adhere to the values of Quebec society." 

M Legault responded by saying M Boulet had "disqualified" himself from the position of Immigration Minister if the CAQ retained power. Note the careful wording. M Boulet remained the CAQ candidate in the riding of Trois-Rivières, which he won handily, and will probably remain in cabinet, just not in the immigration portfolio.

This photo, of Mounties welcoming "asylum-seekers" (fleeing the racist USA!) at Roxham Road, near Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle QC, illustrates perfectly the unfettered mass migration which Québécois reject. Since 2017, thousands of these "refugees" have crossed the US-Canada border illegally at this "unofficial" point of entry. 

A recent Radio-Canada investigation revealed that the Just In Trudeau's ultra-woke government has spent half a billion dollars on infrastructure and services at the border crossing, to accommodate these illegal aliens in the name of "diversity". 

Québec Conservative Party leader Eric Duhaime (whose party won 0 seats in yesterday's election) condemned illegal immigration and raised the idea of building a wall along the border. Imagine that! M  Duhaime’s rejection of illegal immigration is shared by the vast majority of Québécois outside of Montréal. 

Over the last 15 years, as more and more "refugees" who cannot and will not be assimilated into Québec society have flooded into the province, people have become fed up with unreasonable accommodations being made for religious and racial minorities. 

Call it "white supremacy" or "nationalism" or whatever you like, but the people of Québec, like those of France, Italy and even the American heartland are uniting against multilingualism, multiculturalism and the New World Order. There should be a lesson in that for politicians in TROC (The Rest of Canada). Whether they, especially Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives, will wake up and smell the coffee remains to be seen.

Majority of Québécois want crucifix displayed in National Assembly, religious headgear banned in public sector

During September's provincial election campaign, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) vowed, if elected, to end once and for all the pandering to minorities that kept both the Liberals and the Parti Québécois from passing lawas to prohibit the display in public places of religious objects, including religious clothing, such as the Jewish kippah, Sikh turban and Muslim burqa/niqab/hijab. Banning such things was, they said, the will of the majority of Québécois, and sure enough, the people of la belle province gave the CAQ a strong mandate.

Ever since, the usual NPCs, SJWs and liberal chattering classes -- not your typical francophone Québeckers, but English speakers -- have been pissing and moaning about "minority rights", Islamophobia, and (of course) racism. Such discriminatory legislation, they whine, is not in keeping with real Québec values, and the election result didn't really reflect the will of the people.

The lamestream meeja and others hired a couple of pollsters to give Québeckers another chance to come up with the politically correct answers to a couple of decades-old questions:
Do you support a ban on the wearing of religious symbols by public-sector workers? and
Should the crucifix be removed from its place of honour above the Speaker's throne in the Assemblée Nationale?
You'll never guess how the real people responded...

Or maybe you will. A CROP poll taken from the 14th to 19th of November estimated that 72% of Québécois supported banning visible religious symbols for judges, 71% supported banning them for prosecutors and police officers, and 65% backed extending the ban to public-school teachers. CROP also found widespread support (55%) for leaving the crucifix in its place in the National Assembly; only 28% wanted to see it removed.

CROP's president told Radio-Canada (the French-language state broadcaster) that the results indicated unprecedentedly high levels of support for banning religious symbols. "I think we can conclude that the average Quebecer really wants to remove religion from the public sphere," he said, "especially for people who hold positions of authority.... The numbers are high but they are the product of a public discussion that has lasted since Bouchard-Taylor," he said, referring to the public commission into reasonable accommodation that wrapped up in 2008.

In the month after the October 1st election, Vox Pop, which polls for the CBC and Radio-Canada, surveyed 4000 people about identity issues. Respondents were shown images of various types of religious clothing and symbols and asked to choose different situations where they should be banned. The results suggested no less than 87% (!) in favour of preventing police officers and judges from wearing the burqa. If you're not sure what that is, check out "Hijab, niqab, burqa -- what's the difference?", WWW 28/7/10.

The number in favour of a ban dropped to only 65% for the turban and kippa. The Vox Pop findings also suggested Québeckers are divided about what religious symbols teachers should be allowed to wear in the classroom. The kippah was opposed by 49%, the turban by 51%, the hijab by 52% a large cross by 53%. Vox Pop summarized its findings by noting that a majority of survey participants -- 55% -- backed the Bouchard-Taylor consensus referred to above.

Tomorrow, the National Assembly begins its first session. The CAQ government has indicated that introducing a bill to replace the previous government's Bill 62 (which was never enforced) would not be its first order of business, but that it would tackle the issue early in the new year, confident that it is doing the will of the people of Québec.

Footnote: The burqa and other Islamic attire has already been banned in the Netherlands, Denmark and even Muslim-majority Morocco. The Québec government is behind the curve of public opinion on this one, but not so much as the government of Canada, which refuses to discuss the issue, let alone admit that the majority of Canadians would support such legislation. M-103.

Right-wing party ousts Liberals in Québec

Walt here, back home after five days touring (not tearing) through les Cantons de l'Est du Québec. It's good to be back in a place where I don't have to think before I speak [or write! Ed.]. How I envy people like my guide, Poor Len Canayen, who can switch effortlessly from French to English and back again.

Another person who can do that is Chantal Hébert, a columnist for the Toronto Red Star and regular guest on the "At Issue" segment of CBC's The National. Around the middle of September, in the middle of the Québec provincial election campaign, Mme Hébert told Agent 3 that immigration to la Belle Province and the resultant anti-immigrant backlash was a non-issue in this election. She called it "the dog that didn't bark."

The issue was raised by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) led by millionaire businessman François Legault, who promised that his party would cut the number of immigrants coming into the province from 50,000 to 40,000 per year. And it would force them to take an assessment of their knowledge of the French language and of Québec values within three years in order to obtain a Quebec Selection Certificate, which they need in order to get permanent residency from the federal government.

Those vows brought M Legault into conflict other provincial party leaders. The Liberals predictably accused him of not respecting diversity and stirring up divisions. The Parti Québécois accused him of not going far enough.

The lamestream media dismissed the idea of a values and language test as a warmed-up version of the proposed Charter of Québec Values which (they told us) cost the Parti Québécois the provincial election of 2014, won by the moderately progressive Liberals. There's no anti-immigrant sentiment in Québec, they told us. Québécois are just as tolerant as other Canadians, who, as is well known, love immigrants, espeically the bogus "refugees" and asylum-seekers who are crossing the border between Vermont and Québec illegally, at St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, at the rate of over 1000 per month, assisted by the Mounties who carry their bags and direct them to the welfare office. It was to that part of Québec -- the Eastern Townships -- that we went to gauge the sentiment of real habitants, not the chattering classes of Montréal.

In our travels through the ridings (electoral districts, for our American readers) of Brome-Mississquoi, Orford, Sherbrooke, Granby, Saint-François and Mégantic, we saw lots of signs and posters for the CAQ, some for the other parties (notably Québec Solidaire in Sherbrooke) and very few for the Liberals. The people we talked to -- no taxi drivers or media types! -- were surprisingly unemotional, but pretty sure that change was coming, in the form of a CAQ government.

Why? Not because of the economy, which several told us was doing well enough, under the Liberals, but because of "the values thing". No-one actually said "Québec aux Québécois!", but that was the underlying sentiment, as I read it. That part of Québec, sometimes called l'Estrie, went solidly Liberal in 2014. It contains the largest percentage of anglophones (English speakers) outside of Montréal's west island, but even they seemed in the mood for change, so much so that we couldn't even start an argument, let alone get some bets down!

So... it came as no surprise to Poor Len and yr obdt servant that the CAQ swept l'Estrie and virtually all of Québec, apart from the aforesaid west island. There are 125 seats in the Québec Assemblée Nationale. Final count (as of this writing, subject to a couple of recounts): CAQ 74 (a comfortable majority); Liberals 32; Québec Solidaire 10; Parti Québécois (the former separatists) 9. Turns out the dog that didn't bark chose to bite instead!

As with the American election of 2016 and the Ontario election of this past June, the pollsters and meeja pundits got it WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! They were so sure, right through mid-day yesterday, that the "divisive" CAQ, led by a millionaire businessman (cf. Donald Trump and Doug Ford) couldn't win, that their wildest prediction was that the Liberals might be reduced to a minority government.

The looks on the "experts"' faces reminded me of nothing so much as the long pusses displayed by Joy Behar and all the rest on American TV on The Night of the Trump. I hope someone is putting together a highlight reel showing the moment when the CBC realized the CAQ was going to win. It was at 8:19 PM EDT -- 19 minutes after the polls closed. Just In Trudeau and federal Liberals take note -- YOU'RE NEXT!