Québec to force "newcomers" to adopt "common culture"

What follows is excerpted from a report in the Groan & Wail, Canada's national snoozepaper.

Québec’s immigration minister says newcomers to the province need to embrace the “common culture,” as the government looks to put Québec identity back at the forefront of the political agenda. 

The Québec government will table a new bill Thursday on the integration of immigrants, which will require newcomers to adhere to Québec values like gender equality and secularism. 

"We will be pretty clear. We are a nation, we have a culture, we have democratic values," Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge told reporters in Québec City as the provincial legislature resumed Tuesday following the holiday break. "And people coming here must accept that." (Walt's emphasis.)

M Roberge said the bill aims to prevent "ghettoization" of immigrant communities by defining a social contract that will emphasize French as the official language of Québec. He said Québec has never accepted the concept of Canadian multiculturalism, first outlined in a 1971 policy to promote cultural diversity and enshrined in law in 1988. 

Canada has not defined a common culture for the country, the minister said, and Québec prefers the idea of interculturalism, focused on integrating immigrants into Québec culture. Newcomers have a "moral duty" to adhere to Québec culture, M Roberge said, adding that there will be obligations laid out in the bill – mechanisms to ensure its principles are upheld, though he offered no details.

Walt doubts that most Québécois would equate "gender equality" and "secularism" with traditional Québec values. Obviously M Roberge has in mind the new, woke, "progressive" values which have been imported from the US of A -- the ones he refers to as "democratic values". There should be a capital D there.

Nevertheless, Walt thinks making "newcomers" -- presumably including the bogus refugees and asylum-seekers which Québec is trying to push into other provinces -- adapt to the values and customs of their unwilling hosts, rather than the other way around, is a good idea. Many people in the rest of Canuckistan will wish their governments had the cojones to follow this course. 

Note from Ed.: I had a hard time finding an appropriate illustration of "Québec values". That tells you all ye know and all ye need to know about this subject.

The last Christian nation in Europe?

If a country's identity can be seen in its declared faith and morals, and if that identity is to be found in its constitution, there are virtually no nations on earth which self-identify as Christian. Phrases like "one nation under God" have been deleted from most supreme laws in the name of secularism and political correctness.

One or two European countries -- Britain and Sweden -- have "established" (official) churches. But overt expressions of a nation's belief in Christianity are discouraged by the European Union, lest people of other religious persuasions should feel excluded. Case in point: Slovakia, which last June was told by the EU to take the images of Sts Cyril and Methodius off its coins.

Happily there is one prominent exception. Italian journalist Alessandra Nucci, writing in Catholic World Report, characterizes the constitution and guiding principles of Hungary as "everything the EU has labored to abolish".

In sharp contrast to current EU policies, Sr Nucci writes, Hungary’s fundamental law includes:
* the recognition of Christianity as the religion of Hungary’s people
* the protection of the right to life from conception
* the definition of the family as a unit based on male-female marriage
* the acknowledgment of parents’ rights
* the duty of legislators before God
* the ban on eugenics, and
* the definition of the nation in ethnic terms (albeit with protection for minorities).

According to the article, Hungary’s new constitution begins, "God bless the Hungarians". It acknowledges St. Stephen as the founder of the Hungarian, or Magyar, state as “a part of Christian Europe.” The preamble further celebrates "the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood".

Good for the Hungarians, I say! And shame on all the European politicans who disregarded Pope John Paul II’s reiterated call to fight, for a mention of Europe’s Christian heritage in the European Constitution.

Had Europe’s historical Christian roots been acknowledged in the EU’s founding documents, there would now be a solid foundation on which to base resist media and political pressure to adopt laws that fly in the face of Europe’s identity and tradition.