No need for an apology
The question put to Yves-François Blanchet was well within the bounds of fair debate. It carried no suggestion that Quebecers as a whole are any more racist than others
The three main federal party leaders managed to agree on at least one thing this week: the people who organized their English-language debate should apologize for a question that, they say, painted Quebecers as racist.
“Quebecers are not racist,” proclaimed Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. “We’re tired of Quebec-bashing,” added Conservative Erin O’Toole. “It’s a mistake to imply that only one province has a problem with systemic racism,” agreed the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh.
We’d like to applaud this rare moment of unanimity in the midst of a contentious campaign, but we can’t. Because all those leaders are wrong: the debate organizers need not apologize.
Certainly, it wasn’t a perfect question. Moderator Shachi Kurl asked Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet “why your party supports these discriminatory laws” — meaning Quebec legislation that bans some public sector workers from wearing religious symbols.
It would have been better if she had rephrased, for example by saying something like “these laws that a Quebec court has found to be discriminatory” (which it has). That’s the more traditional role of a debate moderator: guiding the conversation rather than being seen to express a view.
All of which would make a fine subject for a symposium on political debates, or a panel discussion of broadcasters and journalists. The English debate was pretty terrible for a host of reasons, and voters deserved a lot better.
But no, it couldn’t stop there. Blanchet, exquisitely attuned to the sensibilities of his nationalist constituency, saw an opening and he pounced. It wasn’t just a bad question, he protested. It was an insult to the entire Quebec nation, an example of “le Quebec-bashing,” another attack from elitist anglophones.
Not to be outdone, Quebec’s National Assembly took up the cause. It passed a unanimous resolution calling on the broadcasting consortium to issue a formal apology for the “hostile” question. All the federal leaders were then put on the spot; none of them wanted a headline along the lines of “so-and-so refuses to demand an apology for insult to Quebec.” So they went along with the crowd.
This is understandable from the point of view of crass politicking. But on principle, it’s just wrong. There’s nothing inherently “anti-Quebec” about criticizing the laws in question, especially Bill 21 which bans those religious symbols. No more than criticizing Canadian laws is anti-Canadian.
There’s no shortage of Quebecers who oppose Bill 21 (even though it is indeed generally popular among the Frenchspeaking majority). The Quebec judge who ruled on it last April called it, among other things, cruel and dehumanizing, even though he upheld it because the province had invoked the notwithstanding clause to put it out of reach of human rights challenges.
Yes, of course we know things are different in Quebec, that there has been a long and tangled debate there over the right balance to be struck between majority and minority rights. Given the history of francophone Quebec, which always feels its language and culture to be under threat, it could hardly be otherwise. And yes, of course Quebecers have a right to reach their own collective decisions on such matters.
But that should not put particular laws passed by a provincial government out of the realm of criticism. Racism and discrimination are being called out everywhere these days; any politician who denies that Canada is riven by “systemic racism” or that the treatment of Indigenous peoples in the past amounted to “genocide” can count on being roundly denounced.
Should Quebec’s laws and practices be out of bounds for criticism, whether inside the province or in the rest of the country? No, they shouldn’t. And the question that Shachi Kurl put to Blanchet was well within the bounds of fair debate. It carried no suggestion that Quebecers as a whole are any more racist than others.
If the debate consortium feels in the mood to apologize, it could say it’s sorry for how little actual debating the leaders were allowed to do in the sole English-language event of the campaign. But it need not apologize for one less-than-perfect question.