Couillard playing game of identity politics
If competition between the Parti Québécois and the Coalition Avenir Québec party doesn’t put identity on the province’s political agenda between now and the next general election, then Liberal Premier Philippe Couillard will.
Last week, in a stunning departure for Couillard, he assigned particular responsibility to the Muslim community in general for the attack in Flint, Mich.
In the June 21 attack, Amor Ftouhi of Montreal is alleged to have shouted “Allahu akbar” — “God is great” in Arabic — and stabbed a security guard.
“Unfortunately,” Couillard said the next day, “you cannot disconnect this type of event — terrorism — from Islam in general.” He said he shared the position of French President Emmanuel Macron that Muslims in general have a “responsibility” to explain that terrorism is “contrary to the teachings of the religion.”
Previously, Couillard had taken pains to avoid encouraging Islamophobia by associating terrorism with Islam. Until less than a year ago, he refused even to describe terrorism with the narrower adjective “Islamist,” which refers to a movement among some Muslims.
When Couillard made his comments last week, we knew nothing about what might have influenced Ftouhi. His neighbours said they hadn’t noticed anything unusual about him. We didn’t know whether he was of sound mind. We didn’t know what mosque he attended, or even whether he attended one.
Yet Couillard immediately leaped to the conclusion that “Islam in general” was linked to the attack. Couillard, who rightly objects when his party is found guilty by association for alleged wrongdoing by one of its members, did the same thing. He implied that there is something Muslims could have done to prevent the attack, though a week later he still hadn’t suggested what that might be.
He deflected a reporter’s question as to whether he was concerned about a backlash against Muslims in reaction to the attack. Instead of discouraging such a backlash, he stigmatized an already-marginalized minority.
This wasn’t just another of Couillard’s slips of the tongue. This week, even after Muslim community members had expressed alarm at his comments, he stood by them, and said he believes that most Quebecers and in particular most Muslims agree with him. One prominent identity warrior, columnist Richard Martineau of Le Journal de Montréal, hailed Couillard’s “courage and frankness.”
For once, Couillard had said what he meant to say. It appears that he had anticipated a question on the attack, and prepared his answer.
And it appears that he seized upon the question as a welcome opportunity to reconcile himself with Frenchspeaking voters.
Already, a campaign to give nationalist credentials to Couillard’s Liberal government in preparation for the general election due by October 2018 was underway.
Couillard launched the campaign four weeks ago by presenting a policy of “Quebec affirmation” in the province’s relations with the rest of Canada, leading ultimately to constitutional negotiations on Quebec’s terms.
Domestic identity politics are also part of the campaign. In mid-August, the government is to resume debate in a National Assembly committee on Bill 62, its proposed legislation limiting religious accommodations, which has lain untouched and halfforgotten on the Assembly’s order paper for most of the past year.
And the “affirmation” policy contains, on page 71, a little-noticed announcement that the government intends to present a policy on “interculturalism,” or the proper place of the province’s minorities.
Some recent polls suggest that the Liberals are third in popularity among the Frenchspeaking majority, and increasingly threatened by the soft-nationalist CAQ. The Liberals can no longer count on winning another election by running against the threat of secession, due to PQ Leader Jean-François Lisée’s “noreferendum” pledge.
The risk for Couillard is that his giving in to identity politics will be not enough to fend off the CAQ, and too much for the minorities who turned out to vote for the Liberals against the PQ “values” charter in the last election. But that’s a risk he appears willing to take.