- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Drummond
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $108,134.67
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- Feb/28/24 2:08:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Centre d'écoute et de prévention suicide Drummond, or CEPS, is celebrating its 40th anniversary. It has spent 40 years promoting life, 40 years working to reduce suffering, 40 years awakening hope. That is what they call sowing the seeds of happiness.
Last year alone, CEPS answered over 8,000 calls from men, women, adults, teenagers, and even children. Vulnerability can affect all age ranges. Someone is on the other end of the line 24/7 to lend an empathetic year to those who can see no end to their distress.
They defuse crises, provide support for those in mourning and reignite the flame of life. CEPS volunteers have a gift for bringing light to the darkest corners. I call that working miracles. If listening is an art, CEPS members are artisans; artisans of life.
Happy 40th anniversary to CEPS Drummond. Thank you for being there to foster happiness in our community.
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- Oct/6/23 11:18:31 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, do not put away your festive summer spirit just yet, because there is still some life left in this year's festival season.
This weekend, enjoy lively traditional music in a New Orleans atmosphere right in Drummondville at the second edition of the Trad-Cajun Festival at Woodyatt Park. This year, organizer Steve Veilleux has put together an amazing lineup that includes Salebarbes, Nicolas Pellerin, Les Grands Hurleurs, Lendemain de Veille and many others. Drummondville knows how to celebrate, and this weekend will be no exception.
However, not everyone in the cultural industry feels like celebrating these days. Right now, arts promoters and festival organizers are getting only bad news from the government, including 25% to 30% cuts to their funding, often announced at the very last minute. They deserve our support. Our culture deserves more, better and quicker support than that.
I want to thank festival organizers and arts promoters for showcasing our artists, and I want to wish Steve Veilleux and his crew a rip-roaring good time this weekend.
Long live the Trad-Cajun Festival.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased and honoured to rise today to speak to Bill C-232, which seeks to designate April as Arab heritage month. This is also a good opportunity to recognize the outstanding contributions that Arab Quebeckers make to Quebec society and culture and to direct the focus back to the Arab community, which certainly deserves to be recognized for all that it does for our community.
I commend my colleague for introducing this bill, which seeks to make April Arab heritage month.
There are all sorts of Bloc members. Should we cue the tumbleweeds? One may be gullible or slow, while another may be educated, but all of us are open-minded, welcoming and generous. I think it is important to remind members of that because, although we may be open-minded, welcoming and generous, we also hold certain fundamental values. We have a vision for living in harmony that is different from that of the rest of Canada, and I feel the need to remind the House of that often by rising to speak.
I think that these differences are worth acknowledging. They are not better. We are not better. We are different. I like to remind members of that occasionally, and this bill gives me the perfect opportunity.
The bill refers to Arab Canadians in general, but I think a distinction should be made between Arab Canadians and Arab Quebeckers.
I will begin by saying that we hear a lot of different things about Quebec's Charter of the French Language. We hear about it these days in other contexts, but I do not want to talk about that. Let us just say that people often insinuate that it has bad intentions and harmful effects. However, it is extremely necessary to enable the French language to survive, flourish and reverberate, to keep French in Quebec alive.
Quebec's charter has also had an extremely positive impact on many francophones and francophiles around the world. Think, for example, of people who live in generally miserable conditions in certain francophone countries where democracy is often non-existent. Quebec appeared to them as a haven of peace, as a destination where they could put down roots and rebuild their lives in a more welcoming environment.
Thousands of Arabs who came to settle in Quebec did just that and made Quebec better over the years. Arab Canadians and Arab Quebeckers certainly do not have the exact same history, especially since the Quiet Revolution. As I was saying, the adoption of the Charter of the French Language and this particular tie that unites Quebeckers of all origins means we have a common history and we are enriching a common culture through the French language.
Of course, Quebec and Canada's respective national realities have had an impact on how successive waves of immigrants have been welcomed over the decades. While Canadian immigration laws and policies have been applied throughout Canada and influenced the pace of Arab immigration in what could be called the golden age of immigration, Quebec's explicit desire to strengthen its ties with Maghreb countries and to promote francophone immigration, which it has been expressing since the Quiet Revolution, has necessarily had an effect on the trajectory of Arab immigration to Quebec that sets it apart from the rest of Canada.
The linguistic and cultural factor is enough to preclude equating the journey of Arab Quebeckers with that of Arab Canadians. In fact, they do not integrate into the same society. Immigrant populations that settle in Canada outside Quebec integrate into Canadian society, in other words, into the English Canadian majority. Much good may it do them. Immigrant populations that settle in Quebec integrate into Quebec society, which is a totally distinct society. I will not get into that. They also integrate into the Quebec nation, meaning the francophone majority.
There are historical factors that explain why many Arab populations already share francophone culture. It is only natural that the integration pathway differs depending on whether it is experienced in Quebec or in Canada. It is quite possible, and even desirable, to recognize the cultural heritage of Arabs in Quebec and Canada.
That is why the Bloc Québécois intends to proudly and happily support Bill C‑232.
Not all people of Arab origin need to assimilate, however. We would like to make a distinction between those who have settled in Quebec, in the francophone part of the country, thereby enriching the francophone culture, and those who have settled in the rest of Canada.
As I said, there is no doubt that the Bloc Québécois is eager to support this bill. We will be celebrating Arab heritage month in April.
I will repeat what I have said on previous motions and bills of a similar nature aiming to designate a certain month, week or day as a time to highlight the exceptional contribution of a particular community to Quebec and Canada. I hope this month of April will henceforth serve to highlight everything that has contributed to the enrichment of our respective cultures, both in Quebec and in Canada. What is the point of designating an Arab heritage month if we do nothing with it, if we do not use it to educate people, to promote the community, to forge links and to build bridges?
I would like to point out that the first Arab immigrant to Canada arrived in Montreal in 1882. His name was Ibrahim Bounadère and he was Lebanese. Why did he choose to settle in Montreal?
Actually, he first went to New York and, when he got there, he heard that people in Montreal spoke French. In those days, people spoke French in Montreal. He was delighted about that and decided that that was where he would settle. The rest is history.
I will close by congratulating my colleague for introducing this bill.
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- Sep/20/22 2:18:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, free, objective information sources are essential to democracy. We cannot overstate how important and invaluable the media is. The media is so invaluable that cable companies themselves made the decision 30 years ago to come together and create an independent channel dedicated exclusively to parliamentary affairs.
It is a privately owned, non-profit, ad-free service that is dedicated exclusively to broadcasting the day-to-day workings of democracy. This service, known as CPAC, is broadcast on television and online for free and is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. I want to wish CPAC and all of its staff a happy anniversary on behalf of the Bloc Québécois.
I thank CPAC for being there to broadcast the historic moments and the not-so-historic ones, the big speeches and the not-so-big ones, the decisive scrums and the more meandering ones, as well as the crucial question periods and the more over-the-top ones. I also thank CPAC for giving Quebeckers and Canadians an unfiltered view of everything that goes on in the House and for showcasing our political system in the name of democracy.
Happy 30th anniversary, CPAC.
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