Can Quebec’s 96,000 new citizens impact next month’s election?
Posted September 5, 2022 12:17 pm.
Last Updated September 6, 2022 11:27 am.
Thousands of new citizens concentrated in Montreal and its surrounding areas are eligible to vote in next month’s election – but will they? And could they have an impact on the result?
Political analyst Eleni Bakopanos, a former federal Member of Parliament, says the 96,000 new Canadian citizens living in Quebec are likely to influence especially tight races on the island of Montreal.
But how exactly, is difficult to predict.
Bakopanos, who represented the Liberals in Ahuntsic for more than a decade, outlines four potential scenarios.
The first: the newly arrived immigrants vote Liberal, as had traditionally been the case with minorities in Montreal.
The second: the new citizens split their vote among the Liberals, Conservatives and two new Anglophone-centric parties – Bloc Montreal and the Canadian Party and Quebec. This would be at the expense of the Liberals.
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“Now they have other options. And this is where this election gets very interesting,” said Bakopanos. “Because you do have now the Conservative Party, which is also appealing to them. There’s also the two parties, which are so-called, if I may say, Anglophone parties or minority-rights parties. Will they appeal to the new immigrants?”
The third: the new citizens split their vote among those four parties, but the Liberals still manage to hold onto those seats in Montreal ridings typically known as Liberal strongholds.
“It’ll depend on how fast the Liberals, the Conservatives and the other two parties get out their message to these new voters,” Bakopanos added.
“It certainly is an election campaign that I haven’t seen for a long time in terms of how the variables can change really quickly.”
The fourth scenario: most new citizens don’t bother casting a vote in the Oct. 3 election because they feel alienated or not properly informed yet on the issues, or because they’ve come from countries where exercising a democratic right to vote was not allowed under certain regimes, or viewed as not effective.
Bakopanos says she encountered that sentiment often among newcomers while she campaigned in the late 1990s into the 2000s. That meant a lot of boots-on-the-ground work to reach those new constituents.
“There has been a tradition of mostly minorities voting Liberal. Now they have other options. And this is where this election gets very interesting because you do have now the Conservative Party, which is also appealing to them. OK. There are also the two parties, which are so-called, if I may say, Anglophone parties or minority rights parties. Will they appeal to the new immigrants? It’s going to be it certainly is an election campaign that I haven’t seen for a long time.”
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“That’ll be up to the individual candidates, obviously, to go after those new immigrants,” said the former MP. “And I often made specific effort to actually knock on those doors more than on others, because there is also, don’t forget, a language barrier sometimes. So usually as a candidate, you try to have somebody with you who speaks the language because… I don’t speak all the languages, so it helps.
“It also helps to reach out through their community papers and newspapers to pass the message.”
Low voter turnout?
That fourth scenario – a low voter turnout among new citizens and overall – is the one that’s most worrisome for Bakopanos.
“The worst that can happen is when people are dissatisfied and this is what worries me about our democracy. The worst is for people to stay home,” she said.
“By people staying home and saying, ‘oh they’re all the same, there’s no option.’ There is always an option. There is always an option. And a few interesting options now.
“And I’m hoping personally that people do go out and vote. It’s important. We don’t want a deterioration of our democracy.”
Bill 21 and Bill 96
Bakopanos believes it’s unlikely François Legault’s CAQ receives many votes from the batch of 96,000 new citizens – mainly due to the party’s position on language and religion.
The province’s new language law reform, Bill 96, caps enrolment at English-language junior colleges, requires immigrants to communicate with the government exclusively in French after six months and introduces measures that some fear will limit access to health care in English.
Then there’s Bill 21, also passed by Legault, which prevents civil servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols on the job.
“People who are against both of those bills will probably be much more likely to vote because usually you’re voting against something,” said Bakopanos. “And that’s been a tradition in terms of voter turnout.
“For Bill 21, when we look at the Muslim communities, if a lot of these new 96,000 voters are from those communities and they’re emboldened enough by the organizations that are in their own communities getting out the vote, certainly that will be a big factor also in terms of their vote.”
As for those voting, some people CityNews spoke with agree with Bakopanos saying Bill 96 and Bill 21 will determine how they vote, adding other matters like healthcare will sway their decision.
“The Bill 96 and Bill 21 are really like threatening. You get scared when you hear about these bills and the provisions and really we wanted our kids to grow up as fully bilingual, but I think that we see the government is going, it’s trying to eliminate English from the province,” explained Vishal Verma, an immigrant from India who has been in Canada for over 20 years.
“I think, like all the Canadians and all the care because of the health care system,” added Verma. “So we, our family doctor retired a couple of years ago. We are without a family doctor. And I think the amount of taxes we pay, I think we deserve at least a better health care system. So these two things will be my concerns. One is the protection of Anglophones and all forms, and rights and the other is a better health care system. This can be done and I know to be happy.”
Rayan Benrahal, an immigrant from France who’s been living in Montreal for nine years says, “In terms of healthcare, we need more medications and treatments to be covered because it’s true that here in North America there aren’t all these advantages.”
Others CityNews spoke with said the state of the economy will also determine their vote.
“Everything else is important. But in the world that we’re living, money and health care is our issue right now,” said Bianca Lopes de Lima.
Rami Taleb, an immigrant from France who’s been living in Montreal for four years adds, “From my final four years here, I could see each year, every year things increasing. So and especially the rent, the rent to live. It’s very very expensive now. Like it’s increasing a big amount, I found. So, things like gas or everything, they can increase.”
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Despite pollsters predicting a runaway CAQ majority victory, Bakopanos says a lot can happen in the final 28 days of the campaign.
“Having done many elections, I find this election one of the more interesting,” she said. “And even though in some ways the outcome seems – again, I’ll underline that it seems – to be that the CAQ is ahead.
“I’ve seen many campaigns which have turned around in the last week or even the last day. One faux pas, by any leader or any candidate, and that may change.”
