Andrew Chung



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Network aims for diversity
MONTREAL–When it comes to Quebec television, Télé-Québec is a different story.
For years, the provincial public broadcaster has been at the vanguard of portraying diversity in its programming. The network has as its mission to put in its schedule programs that reflect the "Quebec reality, of which cultural diversity is at its heart," Télé-Québec director general Claude Plante tells the Star.
In 2006, the network launched a groundbreaking comedy series Pure Laine (pure wool), a reference used to describe born-and-bred francophone Quebecers, but which took the perspective of a Haitian immigrant father who married a Quebec woman and adopted a Chinese girl.
For Didier Lucien, who played the father, the role was a revelation. "Usually I have to play somebody who comes from somewhere else, or I'm adopted or not supposed to be here," he explains. "First time in 20 years, I played a man with a child, a wife, like everybody else."
- Andrew Chung
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THE SERIES
Immigration is on the rise in Quebec, and nowhere in Canada is the struggle to integrate newcomers more challenging. The Star examines what's behind these challenges in a three-part series this week.
• TUESDAY: An analysis of how Quebec falls short in the economic integration of newcomers compared with provinces such as Ontario and British Columbia.
• WEDNESDAY: The Star pays an exclusive visit to one of Quebec's new compulsory seminars for immigrants, which purport to teach the province's "common values."
• THURSDAY: Though increasing immigration means there are more visible minorities in Quebec, you'd never know it watching Quebec television.
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MONTREAL–The hugely popular Quebec reality TV show Occupation Double is like a lot of its Canadian or American counterparts, with young, attractive women and muscular men hot-tubbing, gossiping and hooking up.
It diverges in one very key area, however. The participants are almost always white.
Through six seasons and 98 participants on the show since 2003, just one person has been non-white, a 28-year-old Laval basketball coach named David, who was half-black, half-white.
With 1.5 million weekly viewers, Occupation Double is one of the most-watched shows ever on Quebec TV, a flagship program of the popular TVA network. But Occupation Double is an ironic reflection of "reality," given that in real life Quebec's population is 8.8 per cent visible minorities, and Montreal's, 26 per cent. And immigration is rapidly increasing.
"Montreal is multi-ethnic," said Donald Jean, a journalist who hails from Haiti. "But when we look at the TV, what we see is white, francophone and Catholic, and it doesn't reflect the composition of the population."
A Toronto Star analysis of a series of key dimensions of integration, from the ability to find work to the attitudes of the dominant social group, shows that among the provinces that receive the most immigrants, Quebec is where newcomers and visible minorities face the most significant challenges.
Sociologists have long studied the representation and treatment of minority groups on TV as an important indicator of acceptance and integration in a society.
In Quebec, there are major problems. A viewer need not watch French-language TV networks very long to notice there is a near absence of non-white, non-"pure laine" Quebec faces in both entertainment and news programming.
Didier Lucien is a well-known character actor who came to Quebec with his parents from Haiti when he was 3. He attended the famous National Theatre School in Montreal. He did everything any aspiring actor would do.
Yet for the last 20 years in the business, he has yet to play a character independent of the colour of his skin. He says he's tired of trying to portray an African accent.
"Things haven't changed since I got out of school," he says. "In fact it's even worse."
He's had fewer gigs in the last few years, forcing him to go back to teach at the theatre school. He's also started up a web-based mime production, called Didier Ze Mime.
His last TV gig was a single day of filming for the TV soap opera Virginie. His role? An African father.
"I'm an actor," he declares. "I want to play characters, not just what I look like."
The state of representation on television was placed in sharp relief earlier this year when Quebec's Intercultural Relations Council released a report analyzing the programming schedules of francophone TV networks for the presence of "ethnocultural minorities."
For Radio-Canada, the CBC's French counterpart, the rate was 11.5 per cent. For the private TVA, it was 7 per cent. (The council wasn't able to analyze a programming schedule, so instead looked at star biographies on TVA's website.)
These numbers indicate a marked underrepresentation of "ethnocultural minorities," which in Quebec make up 30 per cent of the population. Notably, "ethnocultural minorities" comprise all non-francophone Quebecers, including whites of other groups. As such, the rate for visible minorities would be significantly less.
In general, says the council's president Patricia Rimok, "Visible minorities are less represented, less well treated and less included."
The same report analyzed newspaper coverage of immigrants. Out of 600 articles in 2008, 48 per cent were deemed negative, 29 per cent positive and 23 per cent neutral.
"Nine times out of 10, you'll talk more of a street gang fight involving immigrants than their contributions," Rimok says.
Radio-Canada spokesperson Marc Pichette said the public broadcaster is committed to diversity and last spring held auditions for 250 people from ethnic communities with the goal of creating an inventory of actors who could eventually be part of its programming.
TVA did not respond to the Star's repeated requests for comment.
The report also highlighted provincial public broadcaster Télé-Québec, which appears to be an exception with an ethnocultural presence in prime time of 26 per cent.
The report further highlighted some English- vs. French-language media differences. It noted that among ads on French TV, those with the highest representation of ethnocultural minorities were ads translated from English to French.
As well, the council surveyed 38 cultural, ethnic and religious groups on their media perceptions and found anglophone TV and newspapers are better perceived than the francophone equivalents.
There are success stories. One might consider such performers as Gregory Charles, Normand Braithwaite and humorist Rachid Badouri, who'll soon have his own show in TVA. Actor Pascal Darilus has a role on the popular TVA soap Yamaska ... as a man who was adopted as a child in Haiti. As his character biography notes, he feels like a bit of an outsider because of his skin colour.
Some experts point to these examples as exceptions.
Researcher Danielle Belanger co-authored a study in the mid-1990s on TV representation, and did a follow-up 10 years later. She found not only had things not improved, but they probably had deteriorated.
The problem with wide representation gaps, she explains, is that it's a "reflection of people" and helps people to construct their identities, which in turn affects their integration into society.
"For children it's extremely important," she adds. If they don't see themselves on the screen, it's hard to see themselves in society.
There have been efforts to tackle the problem, including an annual conference organized by private broadcasters called Télédiversité.
But journalist Jean has attended and calls it "marginal."
Fo Niemi, executive director of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, is more blunt. When it comes to cinema and TV, he insists, "When people say `Québécois,' it's clear who they mean."