Are Vancouver Olympics Melting Down?

So far it doesn't seem to be a very auspicious start for Vancouver's Olympic Games. The lack of snow is the over-riding element and has already played havoc with the scheduled events, but it is not the only problem.

Was Vancouver a mistake in the first place?

The death of Georgian luge athlete Nodal Kumaritashvili was tragic and sad, but paradoxically actually heightened interest in the Games, just as a good car crash brings out our ghoulish instincts.

Of course, no west coast event would be complete without an anarchist demonstration, bent on destroying property and generally adding a healthy dose of mayhem to the festivities. It's hard to understand exactly what they are protesting and I'm not sure that they know themselves.
Some complain that the games are being staged on Native land, but it seems that the Indians have been pretty happy about their role that they've been assigned at the Games.
Others protested that the money spent on the Olympics should have gone to social programs. From the looks of the demonstrators, I am sure the money could have been well spent on more safe injection sites. Perhaps the Olympics should have considered making one into an official venue.

That being said the opening ceremonies did not go off cleanly, with the failure of machinery to hoist some of the pillars that were to be lit with the Olympic torch.

While Montrealer Nikki Yanofsky gave a talented and jazzy performance of O Canada, it seems that it didn't sit well with about half the country, who were outraged at the liberties she took.

The lack of French throughout the ceremony was so pervasive that it was embarrassing to all Quebeckers, including we Anglos. Subtitles are just not acceptable in a bilingual country, VANOC seemed completely oblivious to that fact that Canada is almost one quarter French. Bobby Orr was a good choice to to be a flag bearer and Wayne Gretzky an excellent choice for flame lighter, but geez, what about Guy Lafleur?

The entertainment was an English only affair with just one performance in French. The fiddle number which featured Ashley McIsaac included performers from all over Canada, except Quebec, which has an excellent fiddle reputation. For me, that was the most insulting slight.

As for the controversy over Miss Yanofsky's rendition of O Canada, I never realized how picky Canadians can be.

I even read a post where a gentleman was outraged that the Canadian flag hoisted in the stadium was not regulation and had a distorted vertical element.
Sounds pretty petty, but he was right.

For those of you interested in what a bad representation of the Canadian flag is, here's a sample;

Don't see anything wrong with it? Neither did I, until it was pointed out to me that the following is the correct and official version of the Canadian flag;

Can you see the difference? Apparently VANOC can't either!

Let's hope things get better.

Good Luck to all Canadian Olympians, Especially our Anglo Quebeckers!

The Olympic opening ceremonies are over and it's time to encourage all our athletes from across the country to do their best.

Because this blog is about the Anglo Quebecker experience,  I feel no shame in wishing the following Anglo-Quebec athletes good luck.

Jeffrey Frisch, from Mont Tremblant,  who is a skier.

Anna Goodman, another skier from Pointe Claire, Montreal

Gina Kingsbury a hockey player from Rouyn-Noranda










Roberto Luongo a NHL hockey goalie for the Vancouver Cunucks, who hails from St. Leonard in Montreal




Catherine Ward a hockey player from Montreal












Clara Hughes, a speed skater from Glen Sutton and Canada's flag bearer!








...and how about Hampstead, Quebec's Nikki Yanofsky, who sang O Canada in the Olympic opening ceremonies. Wow!

She also sings the theme to CTV's Olympic theme for the 2010 games. See it here!!!

Quebec's Immigration Dilemma Part 5- Assimilation

Assimilating immigrants in Quebec has proven to be a costly and largely unsuccessful affair.
For obvious reasons Quebec has favoured choosing immigrants from French speaking countries. It was felt that these people would transition into the French side of the language divide and maintain the predominance of French in Quebec. But so far, the French assimilation rate of immigrants is only 60%, and falls short of the 80% necessary to maintain the status quo.

The newcomers, while speaking French, are as culturally different from Francophone or Anglophone Quebeckers, as can be. It presents an unexpected problem, the newcomers don't fit in at all.

This is because they lack the necessary skills needed in a complex society.  Most immigrants who arrive from Muslim  countries don't even share fundamental values, such as the equality of men and women.
Today's immigrants, unlike the previous waves of newcomers,  are prone to demand that Quebeckers accommodate them, rather than vice-versa.

A rising chorus of voices is advocating that accepting people with fundamentalist religious views or little education and job skills, just because they speak French, is a mistake.

Many Quebeckers, especially those outside Montreal, demonstrate an outright hostility towards immigrants, believing that is they and not the immigrants who are being assimilated. The overall Quebec view of immigration is at odds with what Canadians think in other parts of the county.

Here's a video made by Radio-Canada a couple of years ago. It's quite an eye-opener.

Quebec finds itself caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. In order to maintain it's demographic position in Canada, it needs to match the high Canadian immigration rate. But by bringing in a large amount of unproductive people, many of which  don't fit in or assimilate over to the French side, Quebec is becoming more populous, but less and less French.

For Quebec, the economic price of immigration is staggering. It's welfare rolls are bloated with unproductive immigrants. While immigrants make up less than 10% of Quebec's population, they represent 30% of the people on welfare and 25% of the people on unemployment insurance. Quebec also subsidizes immigration support organizations with over $14 million in aid a year.
Up to one third of  immigrants are refugees or family reunifications, immigrants who are unproductive and represent the largest economic strain.

The generosity of  Quebec society is at it's breaking point.

For Quebec, there is but one solution, lobbying Ottawa to drastically cut the number of immigrants, so that Quebec can do likewise.
To continue on with massive waves of immigration will have dire consequences.The province will become poorer, less French and continue to lose it's demographic position in Canada.

Quebec's Immigration Dilemma- Part 4 The Effect of the Ethnic Vote in the Next Referendum

One of the greatest fears that Quebec nationalist's share, is that immigration will render a future referendum almost impossible to win.
There's no doubt that if immigration remains at the historically high level that it is at today, that  fear is entirely justified.

Today Quebec welcomes 45,000 new immigrants each year (that limit will be increased to 55,000 in 2010), Since 1995, according to the Quebec government statistics, the province welcomed 598,000 new immigrants. Subtracting from that number those immigrants who leave to greener pastures in BC or Ontario, the net effect is that Quebec has gained  480,000 immigrants since the last referendum.

In that 1995 referendum, immigrants as a group voted over 90% against the sovereignty option and were largely blamed for the referendum defeat. (Remember Jacques Parizeau's "Money and the ethnic vote" remark.)

Today Quebec does a better job of absorbing newcomers into the French side of the language divide, so it's fair to say that in any new referendum the number of immigrants voting for sovereignty would be higher. That being said it would be an achievement if the number reached 20%. Even if we use this optimistic (or pessimistic) higher number in a hypothetical scenario, it augers badly for the sovereignists.

Let us consider the razor thin margin that the "NO" side won in the last referendum. Out of the 4.7 million votes cast, the NO side received 2,377,028 votes (50.58%) and the YES side received 2,322,740 votes (49.42%.) Just 54, 288 votes (1.16%) separated the Yes from the No's!

Let us also imagine another referendum, one held today in 2010, where everybody voted exactly the same way that they did in the 1995 referendum. The only difference now,  we will incorporate  fifteen years worth of new immigrants who will vote 80% in favour of the NO side. Under this scenario, the NO side would get an additional 358,000 votes and the YES side an additional 120,000 votes, for a net gain of 238,000 votes for the NO side.

The new totals would look something like this;

2010 Referendum 

NO       2,735,028    (52.9%)

YES     2,442,740    (47.1%)

Difference - 292,288 (5.8%) versus 54, 288 in 1995.(1.2%)

For sovereignists, it is a frightening scenario. If we project things out a little farther it even gets worse (or better)

If Quebec maintains the historically high figure of 55,000 immigrants per year, it will mean that in five years, there will be another 225,000 new ethnic voters and the results of a referendum in 2015 might look something like this, again, using 1995 referendum numbers as a base.

2015 Referendum 

NO      2,915,028    (54.0%)

YES    2,487,740    (46.0%)

Five more years of immigration will yield:

2020 Referendum 

NO      3,095,028   (55.0%)

YES    2,504,740   (45.0%)

If things trend out, twenty-five years after the referendum of 1995 (10 years from today), immigration will have added 744,000 votes to the NO side and only 186,000 to the YES side. Immigration will represent an absolute swing of 10% over to the NO side as compared with the 1995 referendum.

It means that in 2020,  5 out of every 7 seven francophone Quebeckers will need to vote YES in order to achieve sovereignty.  Not likely......

Quebec's Immigration Dilemma- Part 3 Montreal versus the ROQ

The history of Quebec has always been defined by the clash of the 'Two Solitudes', the competition between the English and French communities, a struggle that lasted for over three centuries.

But the era of French versus English drew to a close with the election of a separatist government in the early 1970's. The decline and fall of the Anglo empire was first signalled, much like the fall of the Roman empire, by the slow and inexorable withdrawal from nether regions of the province.

Vibrant English communities in the Gaspé, the Eastern Townships and the Pontiac, melted away like snow in Spring  and today these communities are a mere shadow of what they once were, as the exodus of Anglos out of the province or to the last safe haven in western Montreal expanded. While there remains some scattered vestiges of their presence around the Province, these Anglo communities are no longer self-sustaining and destined to become historical footnotes.

The Anglo community has fallen to just 8% of the provincial population, the vast majority holed up in the western part of the Island of Montreal and like the Christians of West Beirut, survival and perseverance, is the best that can be hoped for.

While French language and cultural militants continue to fight a battle for language supremacy against the English, a fight, that has already been won, they are blithely ignoring the growing influence of Montreal's ethnic community.

Once again Quebec is two nations.

The battle today no longer has anything to do with language, but rather culture, the conflict between traditional white, unilingual Catholic francophone society versus the cosmopolitan melting pot that the Montreal region has become.

Despite forty years of sustained immigration, the rest of Quebec (ROQ) remains as lily white and Catholic as ever. With the withdrawal of the English from the regions and the refusal of immigrants to settle anywhere but the Greater Montreal region, it's hard to find a place of worship other than a Catholic Church outside the Montreal region.

Ethnics are so scare in the ROQ that even the Chinese restaurants have white francophone operators and servers.

While 25% of Montrealers are members of a visible minority, less than 2% of those who live in the ROQ can say the same and while 50% of Francophone Montrealers are bilingual, less than 15% of those in the rest of Quebec can carry on a decent conversation in English.

The cultural differences are so striking that the ROQ looks upon the region of Montreal as a modern version of Sodom and Gomorrah, a foreign, unfriendly place where a common language cannot mask the  overwhelming cultural differences.

Like tourists with craned necks gawking at the skyscrapers of New York, visitors to Montreal from the ROQ stare in utter disbelief at the city's changing face.

Hasids in broad hats and long coats, Indian in saris, Muslims in Hijabs and a Sikhs in turbans leave these visitors shaking their heads in utter disbelief and muttering under their breath words like, "Ça's peut pas!" ('No way!').

It's as if they have landed in another country, one that speaks the same language, but one that is as culturally different as Toronto is from Glasgow.

The rest of Quebec remains frozen in time. Crucifixes adorn town halls and Catholic benedictions are offered before town council meetings. No 'holiday' parties here, it's strictly Christmas and Santa Claus and elves adorn city offices, stores and public streets.

Fearful that immigrants will change their way of life, rural towns that can't count a Muslim, Jew or Black among them, draw up holier than thou manifestos, instructing immigrants on how to act, lest they bring discord to the hitherto harmonious community.

Francophone and Anglophone Montrealers have to a large extent made their peace with the immigrants. Like Toronto or Vancouver, the city has become a vibrant multi-coloured collage of different elements. While Montreal speaks French as a common language, it does so in so many different ways and different accents.

Montreal society has evolved, while the rest of Quebec society stubbornly resists and dreams of the good old days of Gilles Vigneault, Felix Leclerc and Maurice Richard.

As their numbers grow, newcomers to Montreal are finally shedding their historical role as fearful outsiders and have become proud and involved elements of Montreal society.

North African Muslims have successfully petitioned the city to create it's third 'ethnic' neighbourhood and so 'La Petit Mahgreb' joins Chinatown and La Petit Italie as recognized districts.

When the city decided to rename an important artery to honour the memory of the late Premier Robert Bourassa, the city's Greek community organized a successful defence of their beloved Parc Avenue. Interestingly, the majority of city Francophones supported the demand that the Greek community's fierce attachment to the name be respected.

Nationalists decry the fact that Montreal is now less than 50% old stock francophone and with 30,000 new immigrants arriving and settling in the city each year,  there's little doubt that the divide will widen.

The immigration debate is only now igniting. Old stock Quebeckers are sounding an alarm that may be, in many respects, too little and much too late.

With Quebec set to accept a record 55,000 new immigrants for the next few years, the writing is on the wall.
Quebec society is branching off into two distinct directions.