Solidarity Québec's Ruba Ghazal wants to reconcile sovereignty and diversity in her new book. Locals also come from other placeswhere she talks about her journey as a “Law 101 kid” that led her to fight for independence.
“[Je suis] a separatist to the core,” Ms. Ghazal said in an interview with the Le Bilan show on Monday evening.
When she arrived in Quebec in 1988, she didn't speak a word of French. She says she learned the language, in part, from a popular children's show. Passepartout.
“You know, at 10 or 11 years old you get older, but I continued to listen to them for a long time because I didn’t speak French well and because Passepartout spoke to us very slowly,” she explained.
But his interest in sovereignty did not begin before the children's show.
Ruba Ghazal was born in Lebanon to Palestinian parents and grew up in the United Arab Emirates before settling in Montreal. She says the idea of a sovereign Quebec had already “resonated with her” when she immigrated there.
“All my childhood I was lulled by the thought that one day we would have a country – that is, Palestine,” she admitted. All my childhood my parents told me about the Palestinian struggle, about Yasser Arafat, and then one day we will return to Palestine and we will have our own country. So when I arrived in Quebec, this desire to have a country and the national liberation of Quebec resonated with me because I was lulled into this discourse of independence, but only for Palestine.
However, in his book, the politician criticizes a certain part of the Quebec independence movement and its perception of immigration.
“The Quebec nationalist movement, since the 1990s, has gradually become the preserve of an identity-based, defeatist and insular right, a right that perceives newcomers as a threat and has neither the ability nor the desire to unite the Quebec “we” in all its diversity,” we read.
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Ms. Ghazal's pointed remarks are to remind us that immigration is not a problem, but an asset essential to the vitality of Quebec.
“I am confident that the Quebec nation, the culture of Quebec, the French language in Quebec will survive thanks to immigrants, thanks to the children of immigrants. Look what a lover of Quebec culture I am,” said the solidarity worker.
Watch the full interview with Ruba Ghazal in the video above.
