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The Bloc isn't quite as bad as PSPP on this but they're guilty of this too. During one of the 2021 debates, Blanchet claimed to be the only Québécois on stage, only to get chewed out by Trudeau, who is natively bilingual and lives in Montréal - i.e. ALSO a francophone Québécois

So it's a horrific, racist cycle in which anything PSPP doesn't like (such as high immigration), he portrays as something that happens TO Québec, without Québec's input - even though most of what PSPP dislikes comes from Justin Trudeau's government which was heavily Québec-based

The problem is that modern QC discourse has basically abandoned that "colonizer" recognition. PSPP et al. portray Québec as an innocent victim in everything that happens, and ignore the fact that Québec voters do wield power in the federal government just as every other province does.

(this is also where the idea of "colonisateur et colonisé" comes from in Quebec nationalism: french Canadians are colonists in North America, but are also themselves colonized by the UK which took Canada in a war and tried to eradicate french speakers)

Thus the idea behind Quebec nationalism is, in theory, to ensure that francophones in NA have full access to job opportunities, services, etc. in their native language, just like anglophones do.

The answer to that is a resounding NO, because English is so dominant in North America that francophones are pressured to learn English but not the other way around.

What I mean is that, ideally, this isn't a "cultural preservation" issue at all, but an issue of linguistic equity. The question should be "does a unilingual francophone in Québec have the same opportunities as a unilingual anglophone in Ontario?"

Péladeau's media empire needs to get dismantled tbh. A near-monopoly on the Québec media environment (its only real competitors are government/public broadcasters) and he uses it to push right-wing isolationism

I wouldn't really call it francophilia - there are legitimate concerns about the fragility of French in North America, and there is a real history of Anglo dominance over francophones in Québec. But PSPP blames all of this on immigrants and the cultural sector, à la American right wing conspiracists

Yes - or in PSPP's case, he has an idea (sovereignty) that would theoretically protect the francophone nature of Quebec but has ruined his chances of making that idea viable or popular because he's so xenophobic/racist

And of course under a sovereignty association agreement then it may become immigration in the legal sense, depending on how work authorization and other issues were handled

Not in a legal sense, but in a sociopolitical sense. Québec forms a small-n nation whose language, customs, culture and government (Québec uses civil law) are distinct from the rest of Canada, such that an anglo-Canadian's experience may be similar to that of immigrants (esp. outside of Montréal)

Gabriel Nadeau Dubois would maybe be a good choice, but idk if he would run with an explicitly federalist party, plus whatever infighting made him step down from QS might have sapped him of any desire to run for office again.

Is there a sort of "career politician" thing going on where he doesn't really care about political positions that much and thus keeps to the party line?

Similarly, my parents don't speak any french get along okay because they're just visitors. Compare that to something like the Air Canada CEO who basically bragged about how he hadn't learned any French, 2 years into being head of a Quebec based company where most office workers are francophone

People were very nice to me when I had to speak in English, because I was always apologetic and they knew I was working on my french skills (although I'm white so that might affect the situation).

Yes - for context I'm originally from the US, and french is my second language. I've been the person who spoke in English in a majority-francophone context (mostly when I was first learning the language). IMO it's really about having the right attitude about the situation

I know I'm kind of rambling here but it's wild that PSPP is so far into right wing conspiracy circles that he can't focus on the *actual* strongest case for separatism, because that would require him to recognize that racial and ethnic minorities can be part of a francophone Québécois society

If you were to make it harder for anglo Canadians to immigrate to Quebec but double the rate of immigration from francophone parts of the world, you would have a strongly french-speaking society that's also quite racially diverse. But PSPP is too busy being a racist conspiracist to acknowledge this

Montreal has a ton of immigrants from Haiti, the Middle East and Africa who are fluent in French. A number of Hispanic immigrants speak French but not English because the former is easier to learn if you already speak Spanish.

It's actually pretty common for anglo Canadians to move to Montreal and work in "bilingual" environments that are actually just "pressuring francophones into speaking English". But that's not what PSPP seems to focus on!

One of the most bizarre aspects of PSPP's ethnonationalism is that "newcomers are endangering our ability to live in French" is sort of true EXCEPT that the people in question are wealthy (predominantly white) anglo Canadians who don't have to prove knowledge of french in order to move here

Anecdotally I have heard of some English Canadians who voted yes in 1995 because they thought it was a sovereignty association referendum and then were pissed off when Parizeau started going off about how secretly he wanted to force a total separation

As an American living in QC (and who speaks French as a second language), I would consider voting Yes on a sovereignty association referendum under QS. But that's because it wouldn't be total separation and because QS's argument for independence doesn't rely on scaremongering about immigrants

Unless he manages to stuff the PQ nominees with diehard personal loyalists, the caucus would likely rebels against him

Maybe. But unlike Yoon or Trump, PSPP is working in a Westminster system and thus can lose his role as head of government without the complications of an impeachment process. so there's a good chance that if he tried something like that he'd be ousted VERY quickly

Which will be too low to credibly spin as anything than a repudiation of the PQ's vision for independence

I'm sort of optimistic about it in the sense that I think PSPP will be utterly incapable of appealing to the left (see Manon Massé recently saying that she would vote no on independence without specific conditions) and won't get more than 35 percent support

I do wonder sometimes what Lévesque would say if he was still around

Its the french equivalent of "lol". It's not supposed to represent the sound of laughter. Really shouldn't be included on this map tbh