Quebec’s long arm
Watching all the political shenanigans south of the border, it’s hard not to wonder sometimes at what goes on in the heads of Americans.
Not long ago, they actually elected a President who tried to overthrow his own government.
Today, that same ex-president is solidly in the lead to be his party’s next nominee for his old job.
What else boggles the mind about our southern neighbours?
Well, despite having the world’s biggest problem with mass shootings, America can’t seem to fathom that having more guns in their country than people just might be the root of their problem.
Instead, they let their school children get mowed down by fanatics with semiautomatic rifles. Then debate whether or not to arm teachers with such guns themselves!
Yes, America may be the land of contradictions. But one way they tend to be consistent: They will not, and cannot, stomach their elected officials meddling in their private lives.
Here in Quebec, we could use a dose of that trusty American distrust of authority.
Since at least the 1970s, with the passage of Bill 101, we have grown numb to our governments sticking their noses where they don’t belong. Want to educate your child in English? The government will have its say. Want to decorate your bar or restaurant with an English poster? Beware the state language police. Want to be a teacher, but also happen to be a person of faith? Beware the state fashion police.
The problem is getting worse. The controversial Bill 96, voted into law one year ago, is coming into effect this month, its sneaky and unwelcome clauses worming through the social fabric of our province.
One of the new, under-reported requirements of the law is that businesses of a certain size must declare how many of their employees “are not capable of communicating in French.” This information will then be posted on a public register, presumably to name and shame the offending business and its linguistically challenged workers.
Next up: stocks and pillories if you still struggle with le subjonctif.
Perhaps the saddest example of this top-down trampling of rights is taking place, once again, in our schools. When children are involved, the zealots tend to get most zealous.
This example does not come courtesy of Bill 96. Rather, it is a decree from on high, from our new Education Minister, Bernard Drainville (a decree that was then given full and shameful approbation by an unanimous National Assembly).
The decree was this. That on no publicschool grounds, under no circumstances, will students be allowed to openly pray or express any kind of spiritual life. So speaketh Drainville. And wherefore the need for such a kingly pronouncement?
According to press reports, a few Muslim students at a few Laval schools were trying to find a place to do their prayers during the recent month of Ramadan. They were praying in stairwells and parking lots. Naturally, teachers offered them a room, for some privacy and dignity. As any reasonable teacher (or human being, for that matter) would do.
Yet reasonable is too much to expect from our political class. According to our blinkered rulers, a school offering a child a room for prayer represents a mortal threat to the sanctioned religion of secularism.
For the record, I’m a devoted secularist. If you don’t believe in the importance of the separation of church and state, then the place for you is probably Tehran. (I hear it’s lovely in the spring.)
But there is a cavernous gulf between a school imposing a religious orthodoxy on its students, and a school permitting students to comfortably and privately fulfill the tenets of their faith. Only a true fundamentalist would conflate those two scenarios.
Americans may accept gun battles in their schools. They may sit on their hands and do nothing about such preventable horrors.
But here in Quebec, we sit on our hands as our elected officials blast holes in the fundamental rights of our children. Even the Yanks would never tolerate that.