{"id":175235,"date":"2025-09-28T11:35:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T11:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/175235\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T11:35:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T11:35:16","slug":"as-quebecs-immigration-debate-turns-ugly-a-beloved-authors-plea-to-cool-the-rhetoric-creates-sparks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/175235\/","title":{"rendered":"As Quebec\u2019s immigration debate turns ugly, a beloved author\u2019s plea to cool the rhetoric creates sparks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Canadian writer Kim Thuy, left, is invested as a member of the Order of Canada by Governor-General Mary Simon during Canada Day celebrations at LeBreton Flats in Ottawa.Spencer Colby\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Quebec audiences answered \u201cpresent\u201d when Ru was released in movie theatres in late 2023, enabling the screen adaptation of author Kim Thuy\u2019s Governor-General Award-winning novel to best major Hollywood films at the province\u2019s box office for several weeks running.<\/p>\n

Francophone Quebeckers have long been known to be big consumers of local television and film productions, putting English-speaking Canadians to shame in that category. But what set Ru apart from the typical Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois hit was its plot line recounting the 1979 arrival of a Vietnamese refugee family in small-town Quebec<\/a>, using harrowing flashbacks to juxtapose the clan\u2019s flight from horror with the warm embrace it received in Granby.<\/p>\n

Ms. Thuy, whose 2009 novel was largely autobiographical, had already become one of Quebec\u2019s most successful authors when Ru hit theatres. But the film propelled her to an entirely new level of celebrity in a province that carefully cultivates its own star system. Ms. Thuy became a staple on the province\u2019s red carpets and talk-show circuit.<\/p>\n

She also became a symbol of how much the very definition of the word Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois had expanded since French-Canadians in the province began using that term to describe themselves more than six decades ago. She was proof that one no longer needed to be able to trace one\u2019s roots back to French settlers who arrived in New France before the British conquest. Though she was neither born in Quebec nor spoke French before arriving in the province, most Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois considered Ms. Thuy to be one of them. Or so she thought.<\/p>\n

Quebec\u2019s hit immigration drama Ru is \u2018the story of Canada\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

In a recent Radio-Canada interview to promote her new play Am, Ms. Thuy confided that she experienced \u201creal heartbreak\u201d while writing the piece, which, in contrast to Ru, depicts the underbelly of the immigrant experience in early-21st-century Quebec. Ms. Thuy said she had told her partner that she wanted to leave Quebec as the debate over immigration<\/a> takes an increasingly ugly turn in the province. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe hear the politicians, we hear their discourse, and it enters our bodies without us realizing it. \u2026 They keep repeating that [immigrants] are the problem, that they\u2019re the cause of all your problems, and we end up believing it,\u201d Ms. Thuy told Radio-Canada. \u201cSuddenly, I become the adopted child and not a child of the family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or more like a black sheep. The pile-on was swift and furious, as Ms. Thuy was roundly attacked on social media \u2013 mostly, it seems, for sounding ungrateful toward the province that has enabled her to thrive personally and professionally. Nationalist and conservative columnists insisted she would have a hard time finding a warmer welcome elsewhere amid the populist backlash against immigrants sweeping the United States and Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re talking a lot about mass immigration in the West, it\u2019s because mass immigration causes a lot of problems with respect to identity, social spending, insecurity, housing and border control,\u201d Journal de Montr\u00e9al columnist Mathieu Bock-C\u00f4t\u00e9 wrote<\/a>, directly addressing Ms. Thuy. \u201cQuebec does not deserve your spittle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immigration has become a hot-button issue across Canada since former prime minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s government raised the number of newcomers the country accepts to boost economic growth and fill (mostly low-wage) gaps in the labour market. Quebec also saw a spike in the number of asylum seekers that was proportionally higher than in other provinces. Instead of shrinking, as most pre-2020 projections predicted it would, Quebec\u2019s population has grown by more than 500,000 since 2021<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Konrad Yakabuski: Out with \u2018tu\u2019 and in with \u2018vous\u2019 as Quebec aims to restore respect in public schools<\/a><\/p>\n

Vast swaths of the Quebec economy now rely on temporary workers to function. The province\u2019s language police have been inundated with complaints<\/a> from francophone Quebeckers about not being able to order a coffee in French at Tim Hortons. <\/p>\n

It might be asking too much of the current crop of Quebec politicians lacking inspiration or credible solutions to the province\u2019s economic and social challenges to resist the temptation to exploit the cultural insecurity of Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois who have fought to preserve their language and traditions. Already, in 2022, Coalition Avenir Qu\u00e9bec Premier Fran\u00e7ois Legault<\/a> warned that it would be \u201csuicidal\u201d for the province to accept more than 50,000 new permanent residents annually. His government is now considering cutting that modest target in half and ending social assistance payments to asylum seekers<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon recently warned<\/a> that criminal organizations were increasingly targeting immigrant communities to recruit gang members. \u201cBefore the demographic changes created by immigration, we never would have thought that criminal groups could be so aggressive in identifying young people, at the age of 12 or 13, to turn them into active criminals capable of murder at 16,\u201d he said in July.<\/p>\n

Ms. Thuy\u2019s comments did not emerge out of the blue. Sadly, she had an abundance of material to draw on. All Quebeckers need to reflect on that before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Canadian writer Kim Thuy, left, is invested as a member of the Order…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,1008,66],"class_list":["post-175235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-pleasemod","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}