Welcome to greater Hérouxville, population 8 million
It felt this week as though all of Quebec had become a sort of greater Hérouxville.
That’s the village that infamously put its name on the map in 2007. Amid province-wide hysteria over “reasonable accommodations” of minority religions, the Hérouxville council adopted a code warning prospective immigrants that, among other things, they would not be allowed to burn women alive.
The immigrants to economically depressed Hérouxville were imaginary. The Hasidic Jews in Outremont are real, and for years there has been friction between them and other residents of that Montreal borough.
Last Sunday, in a referendum with an unusually high municipal-vote turnout of 60 per cent, citizens of one Outremont district in effect voted against allowing the establishment of a new synagogue for the growing Hasidic population.
In the provincial capital, politicians were preoccupied with the question of what to do about female government employees wearing long Muslim veils, who are as non-existent as Hérouxville’s immigrants. The present Liberal government didn’t seem to know how to respond to the escalating competition between opposition parties over identity, any more than the former one did about accommodations in 2007.
Liberal members of the National Assembly were increasingly nervous, Le Journal de Québec reported, over Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée’s fumbling defence of her proposed “bareface” legislation. Among other things, Bill 62 would generally deny public services to veiled Muslim women, but allow exceptions.
The bill confuses even the government that proposed it. At one point last week, Premier Philippe Couillard said it would allow Muslim women to take the driving test wearing facial veils, while Vallée and Transport Minister Laurent Lessard said it wouldn’t.
The Liberals aren’t the only politicians on the defensive over identity. “The Zig-Zag man,” originally the character on packages of rolling papers that became popular in the 1960s, could also be the nickname of the new leader of the Parti Québécois.
Like a sailor tacking into the wind, Jean-François Lisée has repeatedly changed his message on identity as he navigates between several constituencies: the PQ members who voted for him in the leadership election, the 49 per cent of them who didn’t, the rival opposition parties, and the voters in crucial byelections Dec. 5.
Immediately after the leadership election last month, he announced he would soften the hard line on identity on which he had won in order to create a “comfort zone” for the more moderate rivals he had defeated.
Two weeks ago, he announced proposed amendments to Bill 62. They included what for him was a new proposal to prohibit civil servants from wearing the chador, a shawl covering the body and the head, except for the face, worn by some Muslim women.
Then, last week, two days before the Québec solidaire party on his left was to discuss the PQ’s proposal of an electoral alliance, Lisée downplayed his positions on identity, which the Solidaires had criticized.
And finally, this week, a day after the publication of poll results
suggesting that the PQ was losing ground to the Coalition Avenir Québec party on its right, Lisée announced the party caucus had agreed to a new policy on identity. It took an even harder line than he had during the leadership campaign. Among other things, it would extend the chador ban to all government employees, including teachers.
Lisée changes direction so abruptly that it’s hard to keep up. On Thursday morning, the CAQ accused Lisée and Couillard in an American-style attack ad on Twitter of being in favour of the chador for teachers. Less than three hours later, the PQ had moved closer to the Coalition, at the risk of appearing to be following the CAQ’s lead.
As for the chador itself, the Coalition had to illustrate its tweet with, the Huffington Post Québec reported, a stock photo taken in Syria. That’s because in Quebec in 2016, women wearing the chador are almost as rare as immigrants in Hérouxville in 2007.