Speaking up for decency
It’s one thing to want to affirm Quebec’s separation of church and state and its respect for women’s equality, and another to pander to popular prejudice
They are icons of Quebec nationalism, former premiers and fierce champions of the province’s francophone character. They cannot have taken their decision lightly to break with Premier Pauline Marois over her benighted campaign for a Charter of Quebec Values and its populist pandering to those who fear religious minorities.
Canadians who cherish civil rights can only hope that the public rupture pitting Lucien Bouchard and Jacques Parizeau against the Parti Québécois government on the issue of cultural non-accommodation will be a decisive turning point for the better in this discouraging debate.
As the Star’s Chantal Hébert writes, Marois has just suffered a “public rebuke” from her movement’s spiritual leadership. By injecting a degree of decency into a fetid debate they may embolden others to do the same and demand that the charter be softened, or better yet abandoned altogether. It is inimical to Quebec’s interests. In an interview with LaPresse published Friday, Bouchard warned that the charter was pitting Quebecers against each other, pointing to nasty debates in the National Assembly and to ugly incidents of minority-baiting in the streets.
“This isn’t good for Quebec,” he said. “It affects Quebec’s reputation. It divides Montreal and the regions, sets minorities against each other.” Sadly, all too true.
Earlier, Parizeau was equally blunt. In a radio interview Thursday with Montreal’s 98.5 FM, he warned that “a fire is starting in our society,” that the PQ government is “going in with our big boots” and newly arrived immigrants are starting to be scared. “Obviously, the charter hurts the sovereigntist movement; it’s horrible for a sovereigntist like myself,” he said. That, too, is hard to dispute.
Both former premiers rejected Marois’ sweeping attempt to rein in religious freedom by forbidding doctors, nurses, civil servants, teachers, daycare workers and others on the public payroll from wearing religious clothing while on the job.
“I never proposed removing a religious right,” Parizeau said. That said, they endorse the PQ’s broader push to affirm Quebec’s secular character. And they are sympathetic to the idea that those in positions of state authority, including judges and police, be barred from wearing religious symbols.
As Bouchard and Parizeau effectively point out, it’s one thing to want to affirm Quebec’s separation of church and state and its respect for women’s equality, and another to pander to popular prejudice by keeping the Catholic crucifix in the National Assembly while suppressing garb worn by Muslims, Sikhs and Jews, and inviting the private sector to do the same. That’s where a line must be drawn, by the Supreme Court if need be.
The PQ’s spiritual leaders aren’t the only ones who have balked at the charter. As drafted, it is dead on arrival in the National Assembly because Marois’ minority government hasn’t got the votes to get it into law.
It has split Quebecers down the middle and support is eroding. Polls show that Quebecers rank the charter near the bottom of a long string of political priorities that include balancing Quebec’s books, cutting taxes, battling corruption and creating jobs.
Mayors representing nearly two million people in the Montreal region have rejected it. And so have prominent Quebecers including former prime minister Jean Chrétien, Thomas Mulcair, Justin Trudeau and provincial Liberal opposition Leader Philippe Couillard.
In short, the PQ charter is a poisonously divisive, intellectually threadbare, legally dubious fiasco that has managed to shame even the party’s friends. It ought to be consigned to the dust heap of history.