Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - October 2007
This Saturday Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois defended her party against criticism of their proposed amendments to the province's immigration policies. The new policy, part of Bill 195 presented to the National Assembly in Quebec this past week, would require that new immigrants to Quebec are able to speak French, rather than either one of Canada's two official languages.
The PQ tabled Bill 195 in a shift toward a new "identity" agenda within Quebec politics. However, as The Gazette points out in the article, the Bill is unlikely to be passed anytime in the near future since the PQ is not currently in power at the National Assembly.
The proposed change immediately drew harsh criticism from the PQ's opponents who claimed that the policy was "intolerant" and "unjust", and would create two levels of citizenship, Canadian and Quebec, each having different rights. Under the new policy, in order to obtain Quebec citizenship, new immigrants would have to demonstrate a "working" level of French (statistics indicate that only 40 per cent of new immigrants to the province speak the official language). People who do not speak French would face limited rights at the political level and would not be allowed to hold public office.
Members of the party, such as MNA Agnes Maltais, came out publicly in support of the policy. "I find it normal that people who come to Quebec learn to speak French," she said at the party's gathering Saturday. "It gives them a change to integrate. The spirit is that the state is obliged to give you French lessons."
Source:
The Gazette
