Hérouxville’s
André Drouin delivers a stern warning at the values charter hearings.
QUEBEC — His message was bluntly worded and direct: Get moving on ridding Quebec of religious accommodations or face the perils other countries have.
André Drouin, the former Hérouxville city councillor who became an international figure in his battle for secularism, made an appearance Wednesday at the committee examining Bill 60. He has not changed a bit. Off the top, the veteran of several commissions on the issue including BouchardTaylor put MNAs of all stripes in their place, saying he’s heard all the arguments — pro and con — before.
“There are no more guidelines today then there were seven years ago,” Drouin, wearing his trademark checkered shirted, told a hushed room.
“We are spinning in circles and the more we spin the deeper the hole gets and we can no longer get out. It’s not too late. It’s not too deep.
“I have the impression our elected officials are scared to take a stand, to say, my man or woman, put your beliefs aside for six or eight hours a day and the other seven hours you can practise.
“We did the same thing with smokers in Quebec not so many years ago. We told them where they could smoke and where they could not.”
He then urged the politicians to take a tour of the province’s hospitals and schools if they need to see proof of the need to ban religious symbols.
“In Hérouxville we don’t have a problem,” he joked.
In his opinion, it would be a sign of respect to immigrants because the rules, or how he put it, the “vivre ensemble,” will be clear.
He urged the province to make sure — through the ban — that people can no longer guess what faith a person has by looking at them.
“But in your living room in the evening, if you want to burn candles burn them, put onaburka… Butduringwork hours you follow the norms and regulations.”
Drouin stole the spotlight but he was actually acting as an adviser to a Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières professor, Ghyslain Parent, who presented a brief that he said debunks 16 myths about religious symbols.
The two were accompanied by a citizen, Louise Hubert, who testified she became a pariah in Trois-Rivières when she battled against the traditional prayer at the start of the Trois-Rivières municipal council.
So she joined up with Drouin and the secular movement.
“I said I had to do something because I felt threatened, I felt my daughter was threatened. Why?
“Because a person who wears a conspicuous symbol is part of a dogma which can kill me,” Hubert told the com- mittee before Democratic Institutions Minister Bernard Drainville stepped in to ask to choose her words more carefully.
And Drouin added it’s not for nothing that unemployment is high in the immigrant population. Employers, he said, are afraid to hire them because they could kick up a fuss over their religious beliefs and disturb the workplace.
“It’s the first time MNAs got up and came to shake my hand, MNAs from all parties,” Drouin told The Gazette after his appearance.
He said he sees a lot of his famous Hérouxville declaration in Bill 60 and that’s a good thing.
Drouin made worldwide headlines in 2007 when, in his then role as city councillor, he had the city of 1,300 with virtually no immigrants adopt a code of conduct for minorities.
The testimony came at the end of a roller-coaster day at the committee, which opened under the news that a new poll shows support for the charter has stabilized.
The CROP poll conducted for La Presse shows support for the charter which proposes to ban religious symbols like turbans and kippahs in the public sector at 47 per cent compared to 40 per cent opposed and 11 per cent who did not say.
Earlier, a union group with close ties to the Parti Québécois sparked a thunderstorm when it launched a blistering attack against Québec solidaire MNA Amir Khadir accusing him of condoning the segregation of men and women in mosques.
The Syndicalistes et progressistes pour un Québec libre (SPQ-Libre) tabled a copy of a photo of Khadir attending a rally of a Muslim association.
Taken in 2012 just before the provincial election, Kadir is seen sitting in the men’s only section of the rally while the women at the rally, veiled, sit on the other side.
There is no wall or curtain between the group. The event took place near a mosque, the Centre communautaire musulman de Montréal, in Montreal North.
“The photo says it all,” SPQLibre administrator Louise Mailloux told the committee. “What you need to understand is that Amir Khadir condones such a rally.
“Amir Khadir condones the segregation of the sexes. For a left-wing MNA, it does seem very progressive to me.”
Reached later by The Gazette, a furious Khadir, the MNA for the Plateau riding of Mercier, described the accusations as “false and harebrained.”
He confir med he was present at the event but said he was there to explain QS’s election platform to the Muslim youth outreach group, L’Association Bridges, not attract religious fundamentalists.
He said he believes dialogue is the best way to dissuade fundamentalists.