Feedback doesn’t validate the values charter

The Parti Québécois government’s claim that its proposed Charter of Quebec Values has been validated by favourable random feedback from Quebecers is bogus — as bogus as its previous justifications of this odious measure.

Some weeks ago, the government had invited comment on the charter from Quebecers by phone or email, and on Tuesday it released the results, if only in part and in a deliberately skewed manner.

Bernard Drainville, the minister responsible for selling the charter, announced that of 26,305 responses registered, 47 per cent were entirely favourable and a further 21 per cent were for the most part favourable, but with some reservations. Lumping the two together, he proclaimed that the consultation showed 68 per cent of respondents favour the charter, or at least to the extent it has been revealed so far.

Professional pollsters rightly sneered at what even Drainville admitted was a consultation exercise prominently lacking in scientific rigour. They charged that the government was touting flawed data as a legitimate representation of public thinking.

In a real poll, respondents are selected in such a way as to constitute a representative sample of the population, weighted on the basis of age, gender, language and region. None of this applied to the government sounding. And, besides refusing to make the responses public, the government was unable to give even a regional breakdown of respondents.

As it was, more than 625 people who generally favoured the charter proposals, but disagreed with its most contentious aspect — the ban on public employees sporting readily discernible religious accoutrements — were lumped in with the supporters by Drainville’s count. So were 275 more who felt the ban should apply only to authority figures with coercive powers, such as judges and police officers, the position adopted by the opposition parties in the National Assembly who have declared they would vote against the charter as presented so far.

This is also by and large the position taken by the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on the reasonable accommodation of religious minorities, which closely studied the issue and held province-wide hearings six years ago.

In sharp contrast, studies that justify the government’s proposed charter measures are conspicuously not forthcoming. That is, if any such studies exist at all.

The devastating critique of the charter proposal by Quebec’s own human-rights commission last week suggests there are none. Commission head Jacques Frémont — who, incidentally, was appointed by this Parti Québécois government — said only one per cent of complaints made to the rights commission concern religious accommodation.

He furthermore said the commission is not aware of any case — not a single one — in which freedom of religion has infringed on gender equality. Yet it is gender equality that the government proclaims it is seeking to protect with the discriminatory measures it proposes.

What is being proposed, as the rights commission declared, is an unprecedented assault on fundamental liberties, something no amount of mob approval can validate.