Charter vacillations erode confidence in Couillard
Pity the webmaster of the Quebec Liberal Party, trying to keep up with the constant “Philippe-flops” in the party’s position on the Parti Québécois “values” charter.
On Wednesday morning, on the same page as the party’s latest position — at least its fifth by my count — there was still a link to its different, original one of last Sept. 5. (That link was removed by Wednesday afternoon.)
Elsewhere on the site, there was a video of one of Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard’s “over-my-dead-body” speeches on the charter.
It’s the one to the party’s general council last Oct. 26, in which he vowed that the Liberals would “never, never, never” compromise on individual freedoms, and would defend them “at all cost … to the end.”
That, however, was before Fatima Houda-Pepin came out against Couillard’s position in November.
In the first of Couillard’s “Philippe-flops” on the charter, fundamental freedoms became negotiable, after all, if that would keep Houda-Pepin in the Liberal caucus.
It didn’t, because Couillard could never satisfy HoudaPepin’s demand that she be allowed to dictate a new party position.
So by Tuesday, when Couillard presented the compromise intended to appease Houda-Pepin, it was already a failure; dissatisfied with it, Houda-Pepin had quit the caucus the evening before.
The new position was also bound to fail as an attempt to compete with the PQ at its own populist game.
Even had the Liberals belatedly matched the PQ’s popular proposal to ban the wearing of minority religious symbols by public employees at work, it still would have been the PQ’s idea.
The Liberals, however, settled for compromising their principles just enough to make them unrecognizable.
Admitting that they were bowing to public “perception” rather than fact, Couillard proposed new limits on the freedom of religious minorities, especially Muslims.
On religious symbols, the Liberals now disagree with the PQ only on how “conspicuous” they can be.
While the PQ would ban even the Muslim woman’s head scarf known as the hijab, the Liberals would draw the line at its full-body version, the chador.
So the Liberals now measure the exercise of a fundamental freedom the way the Office québécois de la langue française measures the nonFrench lettering on a commercial sign: with a tape measure.
That’s even though Couillard admitted that a woman who wore a chador would be unlikely to seek work outside the home anyway.
The Liberals have also introduced an additional, original limit on the exercise of a freedom: a needs test.
Concerning a request for a religious accommodation, the burden of proof would be on the individual to prove its “necessity” rather than on the institution to show why it is unreasonable.
And while the Liberals have criticized the PQ for not proving that its charter is necessary, they promise their own demagogic “fight against fundamentalism” — meaning Muslim fundamentalism — even though they don’t know whether that’s actually a problem in Quebec.
At the cost of their principles, the Liberals have made a late bid for a small number of votes they have no hope of winning away from the PQ anyway. In the latest Léger poll, only 10 per cent of voters chose the charter as their top priority.
A bigger problem for the Liberals than the charter itself is what it has done to their leader.
All the “Philippe-flops” have raised doubts about Couillard’s competence as a leader and potential future premier, which is probably of concern to more voters than the charter.
He has been unable to change the subject from the charter to other issues more favourable to the Liberals.
And he wasted two months on a futile attempt to keep Houda-Pepin in the caucus.
Now he may have only a few weeks in which to restore confidence in himself before a general election.