VEIL OF FEARS
Toxic debate over niqab recalls earlier attacks on minority rights.
If most Canadians were allowed to choose which language should be spoken exclusively at citizenship ceremonies, let’s be frank: it would be English.
Fortunately for the French-language minority in Canada, this isn’t how we’ve historically settled matters of rights and citizenship in this country.
Which makes it all the more strange how Quebec has become the epicentre of an entirely unnecessary, toxic debate in this federal election about what can be worn at citizenship ceremonies. What is going on there?
It wasn’t so long ago that Quebec sought to be recognized as a respected minority in Canada, against an overwhelming English-language majority fighting outbursts of antiFrench hostility.
Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, one might recall, intolerance toward Quebec took several ugly turns. In 1990, a group of Anglo rights protesters in Brockville, Ont., stomped on the Quebec flag to demonstrate their opposition to the Meech Lake constitutional accord and its gestures of accommodation to Quebec.
In 1997, the Reform party ran a highly inflammatory election ad, arguing that Canada didn’t need any more prime ministers from Quebec.
Though Stephen Harper didn’t run as a Reform MP in the 1997 election, the no-Quebec-prime-ministers ad — and the sentiment behind it — contributed to Quebec’s initial suspicion about the new Conservative party built in part upon the old Reform base.
You see where I’m headed here. Quebec, merely on the basis of this history, would presumably be the last place in Canada where one would see people arguing that small minorities should fall in line with the wishes and the intolerance of the majority.
Yet this is the drumbeat we keep hearing through every discussion of whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear face coverings at citizenship ceremonies.
Harper himself peppers his arguments against the niqab with “most Canadians believe” and “the overwhelming majority,” as though that has always been how minority rights have been settled in functioning democracies. On the international stage, Harper positions himself as an opponent of nations where minorities are downtrodden by the majority. Diplomacy of that kind should perhaps begin at home.
Years ago, in the heat of the Meech Lake drama, the premiers who were in favour of the accord beseeched opponents such as Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells not to base their arguments on mere popular support of their anti-Meech positions.
They warned him that he was attracting support he may not want — namely, the kind of people in Canada who were opposed to Quebec simply because it was French. “No one wants to become their hero,” at least one premier warned.
Wells wasn’t anti-Quebec or antiFrench, though he was often portrayed that way, especially after the death of Meech in 1990 and the wave of rejection that swept through Quebec.
It’s the warning, though, that should be sticking in the minds of all politicians as this needless debate rages over the niqab: there are some votes you should not want. There is some support you do not seek out, no matter how tempting it is as a vote-getter.
Periodically through this long election campaign, one number gets to play a starring role for a day or two. During the first leaders debate in August, it was the number nine. “Nine,” Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said, when NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair challenged him to come up with the figure needed to trigger Quebec’s potential separation from Canada. (Nine was a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada judges and their decision on this matter.)
This week, the magic number is two. That’s the total number, out of nearly 700,000 people, who have wanted to wear face coverings in citizenship ceremonies, according to a Radio-Canada report.
So all this agitation over the niqab, all the fierce declarations of what the majority in Canada wants at citizenship ceremonies, is about fewer than a handful of people. Except that it isn’t about those two people; it is about tapping into support that any responsible politician shouldn’t want.
No political party in the 1980s or 1990s, except the occasional fringe one, was actively whipping up antipathy to the French minority in Canada. You can’t make a country work that way, even if it does yield some crucial votes.
And no party in this election, similarly, should be whipping up antipathy to Muslims, or any religion or culture. It’s repulsive if it works and even more repulsive if it was planned to work that way.
Quebec is still part of Canada, and French is spoken at citizenship ceremonies because the majority didn’t roll over the rights of minorities and because responsible politicians didn’t pander to intolerance. It would be a shame if this election put a blot on that proud history in Canada. sdelacourt@bell.net