Defenestrate Them All: Canadian Politics 2021

It’s just a handful of individuals, you see.

Also, is he saying that only ‘old stock’ Québécois are white? If so, that’s quite the hot take.

Ha, I wasn't sure where you were coming from earlier about discrimination over exotic-sounding names but maybe that goes some way towards clarifying?

Yeah, I’m curious about the data on whether in Quebec you are less likely to get an interview with an employer if you have a ‘non-Western’-sounding name (my hunch is: probably) and whether that qualifies as ‘racism’ or another kind of discrimination altogether.

In any event, it does seem that the answer to this question was "yes":

did they deliberately go looking for the whitest motherfucker they could find

A Chinese colleague of mine said he couldn't get interviews for IT jobs in Canada until he adopted a Western first name.

I believe it.

This is purely anecdotal, of course, and perhaps a bit paranoid on my part, but I've often wondered whether I didn't make it to the interview stage for certain jobs on account of my 'alien'-sounding first name (my legal last name is also 'weirder' than the one I usually go by) despite scanning as 'white'. I've never been gratuitously stopped by a cop while going about my business, so this is obviously a different and less crucial ballpark – I don't mean to minimize the oppression visible minorities continue to suffer in Quebec, and elsewhere. Still, it's an insidious kind of discrimination that has always made me feel like I'm never going to fit in 100%. Maybe it just comes with the territory when you're an immigrant, idk.

Tbc there are other positions I applied for where I did not get this impression at all. Rather, it seems to be a pervasive issue at a particular kind of institution where 95% of employees have a franco-sounding name (I'm not going to spell it out because I'd rather not doxx myself just yet).

I've definitely 'changed' my name on the phone in my illustrious former telemarketing/phone survey career (and was advised to do so by one manager) but I just thought the potential discrimination involved there, as with the example of the Chinese IT worker, fit under the generally understood rubric of racism, as opposed to anything about exotic names in and of themselves. The case where someone would not experience bigotry based on anything like skin colour, clothing, or accent but might be discriminated against just because their name reveals them to be the wrong type of white person is interesting, though.

The case where someone would not experience bigotry based on anything like skin colour, clothing, or accent but might be discriminated against just because their name reveals them to be the wrong type of white person is interesting, though.

It's a very minor problem, really. I'm curious about it for mainly personal reasons and because of my own nagging sense of foreignness. The Romanian community appears to have done fairly well for itself in Quebec, as far as I can tell. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if having an overly anglo-sounding first *and* last name was also an impediment in some fields.

When my dad came to Toronto in 1950 from England, some employers said straight out they wouldn't hire limeys. Not to say the English were discriminated against in any real way, but people have always found a way to underline a difference between themselves and the other.

I've been told that in the Hungarian community in my grandparents' generation there were even prejudices against other Hungarian immigrant cohorts, like those who came over in '56.

Sneetchyarok

Update: We’ve secured 20 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine - and on top of that, we’ve now reached an agreement with the Serum Institute of India for another 2 million doses. Our first shipment of half a million doses is expected to arrive within weeks.

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 27, 2021

Nice.

Don't know where to put this but here: https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/596096/dis-son-nom-ne-peut-etre-anonyme

Maybe someone knows enough about Quebec/Canadian law to explain why the anonymity of the abuse victims, and all their conversations to the Dis Son Nom account had to revealed?

This whole thing is so aggravating. I wish eternal sadness and solitude to that Marquis dude.

Just as things start to reopen, this, which I doubt is a blip; felt like an inevitability.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/03/08/coronavirus-updates-covid-19-canada-ontario-toronto-march-8-2021.html

As the new cliché goes, it really is a vaccine-variant race.

They just very recently ramped up asymptomatic testing in lots of locations around Ontario (we had it offered here on Saturday and it’s available again on Thursday) so it would be good to see which proportion of that new increase is attributable to those - the % that were previously just going unnoticed.

Labs report 38,063 completed tests with a 3.4 per cent positivity rate.

That's a jump too; I think we're somewhere between 1-2% when we're doing well...I don't want to sound all doom and gloom--the vaccines are just about to be administered widely. I just dread another shutdown, for personal reasons and for what it will do to public morale.

I’m just annoyed that none of this data reporting seems to answer that sort of really obvious question. Even the govt pages don’t give that breakdown or mention it under the caveats heading -unless I’m missing it.

https://files.ontario.ca/moh-covid-19-report-en-2021-03-08.pdf

CP24 is blaming the jump on a “data catch up”

Good to hear--I remember now that lagging data was an issue when they switched over to a new reporting system a few weeks ago. Even better, that CDC news today about masks, which I assume will be adopted here, too, at some point.

this made me laugh:

Aaaand the Conservatives have deleted their ad for Justin Trudeau. pic.twitter.com/O8tsTMgiKO

— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) March 16, 2021

Haha

wow that is dim

Amazing

wtf I love the Tories now

I was tbh shocked to see Isabelle Hachey retweet this call (by an Ottawa-area journalist) for UOttawa to reconsider a prof's position bc of an opinionated tweet about QC health care and racism, considering what seemed like her v principled liberal defence of Véronique Lieutenant-Duval. Is academic freedom less important now?

Ce prof est digne de votre institution, @uOttawa ? https://t.co/j0mXRqtZzg

— Louis-Denis Ebacher (@ldebacher) March 15, 2021

I find Attaran's takes eye-rollingly simplistic and deliberately provocative but that seems very deux poids, deux mesures on Hachey's part, I agree. Criticize him if you want, but to imply that he ought to lose his job over such tweets is about as self-contradictory as it gets.

tbh I appreciate her making explicit who she thinks deserves academic freedom and why.

find Attaran's takes eye-rollingly simplistic and deliberately provocative

I agree but, here, wasn't he basically reacting hyperbolically to a legitimately shocking recording of an aboriginal woman dying after being ignored and then insulted by nurses?: https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/sante/2020-09-29/mort-d-une-femme-autochtone-a-joliette/une-infirmiere-qui-a-tenu-des-propos-racistes-congediee.php

This seems more offensive, if anything:

Lots of Albertans mad at me. Don’t give a damn.

I’m not the one killing you. YOU Albertans are killing yourselves by refusing to lock down or wear masks. But instead of fixing the problem’s source, you beg Ottawa for field hospitals to warehouse more dying! Grow up already.

— Amir Attaran (@profamirattaran) December 4, 2020

I agree but, here, wasn't he basically reacting hyperbolically to a legitimately shocking recording of an aboriginal woman dying after being ignored and then insulted by nurses?

Of course, but the implication that no one is taking this issue seriously in Quebec is ridiculous:

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/2021-03-16/autochtone-discriminee-a-joliette/un-autre-cas-qui-ne-passe-pas.php

At least that's how I read his 'Alabama of the North' comment.

also similar things happen everywhere in canada

there was a case in bc that in at least one emergency room the staff played a game of guessing the blood alcohol level of indigenous patients

"grow up and quit dying" is an interesting approach to politics

OK, I agree that the tweet was characteristically rash and unfair but not with the claim, quoted by the journalist above, that the absence of a response to AA from 'authorities' is evidence of widespread anti-Quebec bias at UOttawa or the country (as per Attaran's tweets about other provinces).

Oh totally, that claim is absurd. Def not defending Sivis Pacem (whoever that is), Ebacher or Hachey here.

Here comes the obligatory hand-wringing:

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2021/03/17/quand-le-racisme-est-a-geometrie-variable

Ha, based on the tweets he quotes, you could just as easily argue that Attaran is racist against Americans (although he is one).

I mean, maybe that's flip but, while I strongly disagreed with the suspension of Lieutenant-Duval, comparing one prof's ill-judged actions in the classroom to what another prof writes on a personal Twitter account (where he makes clear in his bio that it is not affiliated with the university) seems specious to begin with. And taking his tweets about Quebec in isolation from his equally vicious tweets about Ontario or Alberta and claiming that this is evidence of a broader oppressive colonial mentality (esp when talking about a child of Middle Eastern immigrants) is OTT - but the disturbing part is when the author essentially attributes any Canadian criticism of racism in Quebec to this imperialistic contempt. I question why one of the only fully bilingual universities in English Canada, and the largest, seems to have been chosen as a target for outrage.

otm

Le Journal de Montréal is chockfull of such bullshit. I'm surprised Mathieu Bock-Côté has yet to enter the fray.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/no-doubt-experts-warn-third-wave-is-upon-us-1.5350751

Legault's newfound strategy appears to be 'let's vaccinate our vulnerable populations asap and let the new strains do their thing among the young and healthy'. Curfew in Montreal just got pushed back to 9:30 and a semblance of normalcy is resuming in orange zones across the province. We'll see where this goes.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/reports-of-anti-asian-hate-crimes-are-surging-in-canada-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-1.5351481

Hardly surprising, alas. It's only gotten worse since the start of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, we need to keep talking about the *real* victims here:

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/2021-03-18/l-alabama-du-nord/le-pq-portera-plainte-contre-un-professeur-de-l-universite-d-ottawa.php

Wow

I didn't even read that because I was immediately distracted by this headline: https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/sante/2021-03-17/hopital-de-saint-eustache/dix-offres-d-emploi-pour-femme-blanche-seulement.php

Their justification for it is quite bizarre, to say the least:

A spokeswoman with the authority said the job posting, which La Presse said was distributed to external placement agencies, was exceptional and connected to a patient at the St-Eustache hospital suffering from dementia who was disruptive in the presence of racialized staff.

"So it seems that the choice to ask for a white employee was more about ensuring the safety of the staff of colour, whom we do not wish to place in risky situations, and not to respond to a patient's racist preference, which is very different," Julie Lemieux-Cote wrote.

"On the other hand, this is absolutely not the right way to resolve such a problem, and we will see that other options are considered instead in the future."

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/quebec-health-officials-investigate-job-posting-requiring-applicants-be-white-women-1.5351247

I mean, this doesn't exactly pass muster when set against Occam's razor.