Values and identities

Did the Parti Québécois government open the proverbial can of worms with its proposed Charter of Quebec Values, or the political gates of hell?

By pursuing a policy that would alienate itself from voters in its largest cities, the PQ has made it blatantly clear that it has never been interested in representing the interests of all Quebecers — just enough of them to inch its way to its own objectives of Quebec statehood.

The clumsy sequence of easily refuted philosophical arguments used to defend the charter also has cast doubt on other policies conceived and defended in the same manner, particularly regarding language. Bill 14 can no longer be viewed as a rational attempt to preserve the French language, but rather a piece of questionable policy that can only be sold to Quebecers by creating fear and feeding it.

By proposing to add yet another hoop for minorities to jump through in order to be accepted in Quebec society, efforts to include minorities in the sovereignty movement have been pushed back. While other sovereignist groups may oppose the charter, the PQ has conclusively demonstrated that its tenets of Quebec nationalism can only be imposed on people, not embraced by them.

Ironically, no one has done more than the PQ to suggest that there are in fact two distinct identities in Quebec. Voters heading to the polls to elect a mayor now see the importance of electing someone who will aggressively, if not abrasively, defend the interests of their city, since the province cannot be depended on to do that.

We may be weeks, months or years away from the next provincial election, but our understanding of the political landscape in Quebec and the importance of some voters over others has never been clearer. Adil Siddiqui

Montreal

Since the release of the background paper describing the Parti Québécois’s now-internationally infamous Charter of Quebec Values, there has been an outpouring of opinion.

Of all the kitchen-table debates, among members of both linguistic solitudes, that I have been witness to, one line always resurfaces: “Well, they decided to come here, so shouldn’t they live the way we live?”

The debate concerning a secular society, especially in Quebec, is not only academically stimulating, but also a very timely and necessary one. My issue is with its framing and the lack of understanding shown by a large proportion of the population.

In case anybody still has any doubt, all of the “immigrants” sporting those nowcontroversial kippahs and hijabs did not all come to Canada yesterday. We have always been, and will always be, a country of immigrants, of all colours and stripes. Fortunately, there is no rating system making any one race, cultural belief or religion more Canadian than the rest.

The reference to those affected by this charter as “they” misses the point completely and does not take into account that the religious minorities across the country are Canadians. Thus, when the ins and outs of a secular society are debated (and they should be), they need to be debated with an eye to the holistic impact of the fine print of any charter of this kind on a heterogeneous Canadian society. Jonathan Gravel

Ottawa

This latest attempt to “secularize” state-run institutions in Quebec raises a number of questions:

1. Is it not a disguised attempt at assimilation of ethnic communities, such as the British colonizers attempted to do with the First Nations of Canada in the 1800s through residential schools, etc.?

2. Is there a fine line anyway between religion and culture, such that one can eradicate one from view without eradicating the other?

3. Can religion really be relegated to the private sphere when forms of religious expression are frequently communal and therefore public?

4. Is tolerance not a prerequisite to be cultivated in any multicultural society, including its state-run institutions?

5. How would application of this values charter affect the multicultural fabric of our society outside of state-run institutions?

These are but a few of my concerns about a policy that appears to be driven more by politics than the pursuit of harmony and peace in a multicultural society. Bernadette GriffinDonovan Montreal