Québécois people
The dictionary Le Petit Robert, published in France, states that the adjective québécois, in addition to its territorial meaning, may refer specifically to francophone or French Canadian culture in Quebec.
Newspaper editor Lysiane Gagnon has referred to an ethnic sense of the word Québécois in both English and French.
[25][26] The name originally referred to the area around Quebec City where the Saint Lawrence River narrows to a cliff-lined gap.
In 1774, Guy Carleton obtained from the British Government the Quebec Act, which gave Canadiens most of the territory they held before 1763; the right of religion; and their right of language and culture.
As shown by the 2016 Statistics Canada census, 58.3% of residents of Quebec identify their ethnicity as Canadian,[a] 23.5% as French and 0.4% as Acadian.
[33] The emphasis on the French language and Quebec autonomy means that French-speakers across Canada now self-identify more specifically with provincial or regional identity-tags, such as acadienne, or franco-canadienne, franco-manitobaine, franco-ontarienne or fransaskoise.
Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe scheduled a similar motion in the House of Commons for November 23, 2006, that would have recognized "Quebecers as a nation".
The English version changed the word Quebecer to Québécois and added "within a united Canada" at the end of the Bloc motion.
The Prime Minister specified that the motion used the "cultural" and "sociological" as opposed to the "legal" sense of the word "nation".
Intergovernmental Affairs minister Michael Chong resigned from his position and abstained from voting, arguing that this motion was too ambiguous and had the potential of recognizing a destructive ethnic nationalism in Canada.
Liberal MP Ken Dryden summarized the view of many of these dissenters, maintaining that it was a game of semantics that cheapened issues of national identity.
[43] These results were based on a question on residents in each household in Canada: "To which ethnic or cultural group(s) did this person's ancestors belong?
[45] The ethnicity "Canadien" or Canadian, did appear as an example on the questionnaire, and was selected by 4.9 million people or 68.2% of the Quebec population.
[51] Jantzen (2005) distinguishes the English Canadian, meaning "someone whose family has been in Canada for multiple generations", and the French Canadien, used to refer to descendants of the original settlers of New France in the 17th and 18th centuries.
[53] Fourth generation Canadiens and Québécois showed considerable attachment to their ethno-cultural group, with 70% and 61% respectively reporting a strong sense of belonging.
