’Quebec-bashing’ is in the eye of the beholder
The term “Quebec-bashing” seems on the surface to be self-explanatory: “to fiercely criticize or oppose” (Oxford) Quebec or the Québécois people, (I’ll add) with disproportionate zeal when compared to discourse on similar issues in the anglo-Canadian provinces. But when overused by privileged pundits and politicians, the term has a deeper, more sinister meaning.
My concern over the use of the term is not a negation of the phenomenon. Anti-Quebec xenophobia certainly exists, as does anti-Canadian xenophobia. Both are worth denouncing with vigour as relics of a Two Solitudes debate that has since lost all relevance. But the threshold for what constitutes “Quebec-bashing” is disproportionally low, and significant discrimination is at play in determining which bashers are ostracized, and which are lauded.
The resignation of Andrew Potter as director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada followed a much-maligned Maclean’s piece, quickly retracted by the author, where it’s argued government response to a snowstorm exposed a lack of solidarity among Quebecers. It was a stretch. (Had Potter limited his criticism to the public sector and avoided bizarre generalizations, I may have agreed.)
Treatment Potter received from leaders in media and politics in response to his misstep was also inappropriate. More aggressive commentary taking aim at the Québécois is routinely published in French.
To be described as a Quebec-basher by this province’s elite, it helps to be an outsider, particularly from English Canada. Potter has been labelled a relative outsider, though this is irrelevant to whether or not his social criticism had merit; in any case, he is now a Quebecer, and transplants from foreign lands like Ottawa are entitled to public opinions, flawed or not.
Even lifelong Quebecers born into the wrong community or linguistic group are considerably more likely than francophones to qualify, however.
McCarthyist activists at Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste in 2012 placed me and other lifelong anglo-Quebecers on a list of Quebec-bashing commentators. For a francophile raised bilingually and a promoter of institutional bilingualism, this was baffling. In response, I lambasted the report’s author, now president of the Bloc Québécois, in French on English-language radio as I found this sort of culturally specific attack to be unethical.
As Don Macpherson demonstrated last week, Journal de Montréal columnist Richard Martineau certainly engaged in what could have been considered Quebec-bashing — aloof Quebecers “selling beer 24 hours a day,” and so on — just as Potter released his contribution to the Highway 13 snowstorm debate.
Perhaps an even more striking comparison is the case of Martineau’s Journal colleague, sociologist Mathieu Bock-Côté, who lectures at Université de Montréal and is part of the sovereignist movement’s brain trust. As with the Potter affair, selectively and hastily applying sociology to punditry can look an awful lot like stereotyping; MBC wrote this past January that, because they so overwhelmingly reject sovereignty, Quebecers are showing symptoms of “collective suicide.”
I would never write words so scornful of Quebecers.
It’s not uncommon for defeated sovereignists to blame the lack of traction on policies based in ethnocentric nationalism on Quebecers themselves, supposedly too blind or self-loathing to see the virtues of the movement. That kind of inaccurate, insulting and nihilistic view seems largely passable from a franco-Quebecer; the more mild charge of lacking solidarity seems outrageous from an anglo-Quebecer.
“It’s an article of very poor quality,” Premier Philippe Couillard said of Potter’s work. “It aims to paint a negative portrait of Quebec, based on prejudices.”
While he might be correct, the premier and other leaders are encouraged to apply similar scrutiny to more influential francophone pundits, or, better yet, avoid using public office to disparage all social critics.
This double-standard is anti-intellectual, immoral and xenophobic. The incongruity systematically positions minority critiques as less relevant, and ultimately is more destructive to the social fabric than any single problematic article.