Pauline Marois’ monocultural dream
Robert Fulford
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/08/24/robert-fulford-pauline-marois-monocultural-dream/
For years, Marois has been working the rich vein of identity politics, searching for a way to arouse enthusiasm among her more myopic supporters.
For generations, a large part of the Quebec population has nourished the dream of a unitary, indivisible society in which everyone speaks the same language and holds roughly the same views. While the world and the rest of Canada grow increasingly multicultural, many in Quebec, including leaders of the present government, struggle to create a monoculture.
The details of the Parti Québécois government’s planned Charter of Quebec Values that leaked this week have been denounced by minority groups and compared to repressive Russia by a leading expert on multiculturalism.
Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has expressed his “enormous concerns” that the charter will limit individual freedoms.
In other words, everything is going perfectly as far the PQ is concerned.
It’s a hopeless idea in 2013, but that doesn’t even slightly diminish the passion of those who believe in it.
The monocultural dream was the guiding impulse behind the province’s severe restrictions on the use of English, the first language of about a million Quebecers. The provincial government, by interfering with residents’ access to business and education in the official language of their choice, has relegated English speakers to second-class citizens.
The same motive lies behind the plan of the Parti Québécois government to ban from public buildings all the visual identifiers people use to express their religion — hijabs, crucifixes, kippas and turbans. Many will consider this proposed law trivial, but it will mortify the individuals it affects, robbing them of what they have good reason to consider an intrinsic and unquestionable freedom.
Still, there’s nothing surprising in what Premier Pauline Marois now proposes: PQ voters who gave her a minority government last year must have known what they were doing. For years, she’s been working the rich vein of identity politics, searching for a way to arouse enthusiasm among her more myopic supporters.
The term “identity politics” began in the 1970s, among U.S. blacks, and has since been applied to gays, North American Indians, the disabled and many others. Those groups identify themselves as minorities struggling for justice, unfairly ignored by majorities. It’s an impossible stretch to apply this way of thinking to French speakers in Quebec — a heavy majority in their nation. They control provincial politics, the courts, labour codes, education policy, etc.
This doesn’t stop Marois. She follows the pattern set originally by Dr. Camille Laurin, a psychiatrist and a minister in the first PQ cabinets. Four decades ago, he successfully argued that historic oppression had so damaged the soul of Quebec that the government needed to mend it by limiting the use of English. Laurin did all he could to persuade millions of people to see themselves as victims of history.
In 2007, while in opposition, Marois proposed a “Quebec Identity Act,” which would have forced immigrants to learn French before running in any election, local or provincial. After that idea failed, she came up with a plan to bring all businesses, small as well as large, under the language law, and require newcomers to learn French. That failed, too. Undaunted, this summer, she declared her vigorous support for the Quebec Soccer Federation’s short-lived ban on turbans worn by Sikhs.
In the Fall, she hopes to propose an official, government-written “Charter of Quebec Values” to ensure that civil servants aren’t wearing their religions on their sleeves. That word, “values,” takes on a peculiarly ugly sound when used as a tool of oppression. Abusing it is now the habit of politicians everywhere. Traditionally, our values grow organically, out of the lives of the citizens, our history and our private institutions. Values legislated by civil servants and politicians are bound to be hollow and intrusive.
Telling Sikhs not to wear turbans when they work in a government office demonstrates a perverted view of secular government. In a secular state, as this is usually understood, all religions are free to flourish because no religion holds power. Secularism in government is not a licence to inhibit expression of religious views.
Jocelyn Maclure, a philosophy professor at Laval University and the co-author with Charles Taylor of the 2011 book Secularism and Freedom of Conscience, believes that a secular state “should not be anti-religious, it should not criticize religion, it should leave it up to the people to decide.” Maclure doesn’t believe state neutrality requires government employees to hide their religious identity: “What matters is how they act. Their rationales, their decisions, their behaviours need to be neutral.”
If the law allows that a small neck-worn crucifix or Star of David is inoffensive, precisely how small will such an object have to be in order to escape censure
Around 75 years ago Quebec society was the opposite of secular. Governments and media deferred to the Roman Catholic Church, which represented itself as an essential instrument in Quebec’s survival. At that time, a Catholic Quebec insisted on the public display of one set of religious symbols. Today, in the name of the same cultural survival, the Quebec government is moving toward an insistence on no religious symbolism.
Apparently, there’s sizeable public support within Quebec for the ban on religious symbols. If so, then making it a law will surely represent the tyranny of the majority. It will also create a legislative and enforcement nightmare. Expensive lawyers will write elaborate rules, creatively expanding their billable hours by drawing up ever more detailed specifications. If the law allows that a small neck-worn crucifix or Star of David is inoffensive, precisely how small will such an object have to be in order to escape censure (Please give dimensions in cm)?
Will inspectors be empowered to enter schools and offices, searching for offenders? Naturally, many citizens will break the rules, as a matter of principle. We can imagine a day when the cries of inspectors — “Take off that kippa!” or “Drop the hijab!” — will resound through child-care centres and government buildings.
This will add to Quebec’s uniqueness by demonstrating the parochial small-mindedness of nationalist politicians, in themselves a unique community of busybodies.
National Post
robert.fulford@utoronto.ca
Robert Fulford
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/08/24/robert-fulford-pauline-marois-monocultural-dream/
For years, Marois has been working the rich vein of identity politics, searching for a way to arouse enthusiasm among her more myopic supporters.
For generations, a large part of the Quebec population has nourished the dream of a unitary, indivisible society in which everyone speaks the same language and holds roughly the same views. While the world and the rest of Canada grow increasingly multicultural, many in Quebec, including leaders of the present government, struggle to create a monoculture.
The details of the Parti Québécois government’s planned Charter of Quebec Values that leaked this week have been denounced by minority groups and compared to repressive Russia by a leading expert on multiculturalism.
Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has expressed his “enormous concerns” that the charter will limit individual freedoms.
In other words, everything is going perfectly as far the PQ is concerned.
It’s a hopeless idea in 2013, but that doesn’t even slightly diminish the passion of those who believe in it.
The monocultural dream was the guiding impulse behind the province’s severe restrictions on the use of English, the first language of about a million Quebecers. The provincial government, by interfering with residents’ access to business and education in the official language of their choice, has relegated English speakers to second-class citizens.
The same motive lies behind the plan of the Parti Québécois government to ban from public buildings all the visual identifiers people use to express their religion — hijabs, crucifixes, kippas and turbans. Many will consider this proposed law trivial, but it will mortify the individuals it affects, robbing them of what they have good reason to consider an intrinsic and unquestionable freedom.
Still, there’s nothing surprising in what Premier Pauline Marois now proposes: PQ voters who gave her a minority government last year must have known what they were doing. For years, she’s been working the rich vein of identity politics, searching for a way to arouse enthusiasm among her more myopic supporters.
The term “identity politics” began in the 1970s, among U.S. blacks, and has since been applied to gays, North American Indians, the disabled and many others. Those groups identify themselves as minorities struggling for justice, unfairly ignored by majorities. It’s an impossible stretch to apply this way of thinking to French speakers in Quebec — a heavy majority in their nation. They control provincial politics, the courts, labour codes, education policy, etc.
This doesn’t stop Marois. She follows the pattern set originally by Dr. Camille Laurin, a psychiatrist and a minister in the first PQ cabinets. Four decades ago, he successfully argued that historic oppression had so damaged the soul of Quebec that the government needed to mend it by limiting the use of English. Laurin did all he could to persuade millions of people to see themselves as victims of history.
In 2007, while in opposition, Marois proposed a “Quebec Identity Act,” which would have forced immigrants to learn French before running in any election, local or provincial. After that idea failed, she came up with a plan to bring all businesses, small as well as large, under the language law, and require newcomers to learn French. That failed, too. Undaunted, this summer, she declared her vigorous support for the Quebec Soccer Federation’s short-lived ban on turbans worn by Sikhs.
In the Fall, she hopes to propose an official, government-written “Charter of Quebec Values” to ensure that civil servants aren’t wearing their religions on their sleeves. That word, “values,” takes on a peculiarly ugly sound when used as a tool of oppression. Abusing it is now the habit of politicians everywhere. Traditionally, our values grow organically, out of the lives of the citizens, our history and our private institutions. Values legislated by civil servants and politicians are bound to be hollow and intrusive.
Telling Sikhs not to wear turbans when they work in a government office demonstrates a perverted view of secular government. In a secular state, as this is usually understood, all religions are free to flourish because no religion holds power. Secularism in government is not a licence to inhibit expression of religious views.
Jocelyn Maclure, a philosophy professor at Laval University and the co-author with Charles Taylor of the 2011 book Secularism and Freedom of Conscience, believes that a secular state “should not be anti-religious, it should not criticize religion, it should leave it up to the people to decide.” Maclure doesn’t believe state neutrality requires government employees to hide their religious identity: “What matters is how they act. Their rationales, their decisions, their behaviours need to be neutral.”
If the law allows that a small neck-worn crucifix or Star of David is inoffensive, precisely how small will such an object have to be in order to escape censure
Around 75 years ago Quebec society was the opposite of secular. Governments and media deferred to the Roman Catholic Church, which represented itself as an essential instrument in Quebec’s survival. At that time, a Catholic Quebec insisted on the public display of one set of religious symbols. Today, in the name of the same cultural survival, the Quebec government is moving toward an insistence on no religious symbolism.
Apparently, there’s sizeable public support within Quebec for the ban on religious symbols. If so, then making it a law will surely represent the tyranny of the majority. It will also create a legislative and enforcement nightmare. Expensive lawyers will write elaborate rules, creatively expanding their billable hours by drawing up ever more detailed specifications. If the law allows that a small neck-worn crucifix or Star of David is inoffensive, precisely how small will such an object have to be in order to escape censure (Please give dimensions in cm)?
Will inspectors be empowered to enter schools and offices, searching for offenders? Naturally, many citizens will break the rules, as a matter of principle. We can imagine a day when the cries of inspectors — “Take off that kippa!” or “Drop the hijab!” — will resound through child-care centres and government buildings.
This will add to Quebec’s uniqueness by demonstrating the parochial small-mindedness of nationalist politicians, in themselves a unique community of busybodies.
National Post
robert.fulford@utoronto.ca
