taylornoakes.com

taylornoakes.com

Search
Skip to content
  • About this Site
    • Featured Montreal articles
    • Back when we used to dream…
  • Contact & Published Work
  • Montréal: The Basics
  • Photographs
    • Photographs I
    • Underground
    • Photographs II – Montreal, circa 1900
    • Photographs III – Quartier des Spectacles & Fur District, Montreal
    • Photographs IV – the Plateau Mont Royal
    • Photographs V – Jacques Cartier Bridge
    • Photographs VI – Occupy Montréal
    • Photographs VII – Saturday Morning in Old Griffintown

Daily Archives: January 18, 2014

Commentary, Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, Let's make this an election issue, Political commentary, Québec sovereignty, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist, Sovereign Socialist featured article

A Public Obscenity

January 18, 2014 Taylor C. Noakes 2 Comments

***

Please note, the people in this video do not represent the majority of Québécois. They are not representative of the people of this province.

They are, however, representative of PQ supporters.

Draw your own conclusions.

This video is now making the rounds, I guess it was recorded on Friday at the Bill 60 public consultation. For this blog’s international audience, the current minority government of Québec (the Parti Québécois or PQ) is proposing the adoption of a charter of Québec values, effectively enshrining secularism as official government policy.

While I’m generally supportive of more secularism, the bill as proposed is a hopeless mess of poorly disguised ethno-nationalism and politically expedient fear-mongering. Particularly disturbing is the simultaneous enshrinement of Catholicism as an integral part of the Québec cultural identity. While I’m cognizant of the Catholic Church’s influence on local affairs throughout much of our history, I’m loathe to go as far as saying the Church is officially a part of my identity.

In any event, the three ‘witnesses’ provided a pretty clear and direct insight into the minds of our province’s equivalent to Tea Party supporters. They are incredibly racist despite their insistence to the contrary, and demonstrate a simply baffling degree of ignorance. It would be hilarious if it also weren’t so terribly sad.

It’s as though they’re completely oblivious of their lacking in cultural sophistication. Perhaps that’s just the problem.

The public hearings into Bill 60 have apparently provided an outlet for every bigot in the province to come out and express themselves freely. In the video the opposition critic (representing the Liberal Party of Quebec) encourages one of the witnesses to continue talking, aware of just how poorly this will reflect on the PQ.

This article was originally published by Forget the Box – read it here.

***

Provincial Democratic Institutions Minister Bernard Drainville commenced public hearings into the proposed Charter of Quebec Values by asking that the impending debate remain respectful.

Respectful?

The charter is disrespectful in and of itself. That the separatists are wasting precious public funds to have a public debate only adds insult to injury. It reminds of me of when Ahmadinejad would convene conferences denying the existence of the Holocaust.

It’s the premise that’s fucked.

The problem the charter intends to solve doesn’t really exist. The culture of Québec is not threatened, never was, least of all by a few members of various religious minorities with public-sector jobs. That this charter will result in people, citizens, taxpayers, having to choose between their faith and their jobs, all the while entrenching ‘overt public displays’ of Catholicism as an apparently crucial component of Québec’s cultural identity is incredibly hypocritical. It’s obscene.

Moreover, it’s unnecessary. All Canadians are already protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Charter specifically states we have the right to be free of religious persecution. Telling civil servants they can’t keep their jobs if they continue to wear a hijab, a turban or a yarmulke is religious persecution. Telling the people their culture is more-or-less doomed to extinction unless everyone blindly goes along with a plan to institutionalize racism is damn near fascistic. Suffice it to say I can’t imagine the charter in its current form would survive a Supreme Court challenge…

But therein lies the rub.

After it’s ruled as unconstitutional, the péquistes in government can invoke the notwithstanding clause and go ahead with it anyways. That or the PQ will simply say that because Lévesque stubbornly refused to sign the Constitution Act they’re not bound by it anyways and can do as they please.

Meanwhile, unemployment continues to rise, Northern economic development is stillborn, infrastructure crumbles and the people of Québec are asked, as we’ve grown accustomed, to do more with less and settle into a lower standard of living. The charter hearings serve merely to distract the public from the PQ’s consistently reprehensible economic and social records. Not to say the Quebec Liberals are much of a better option, but at least they generally have the sense not to stir up trouble for short-term political gains. In any event, an election is expected this year, and you better believe the PQ is going to do just about everything they can to keep attention focused on the problems they’ve created or invented.

It’s gutter politics really – a party acts as spokesperson for a vaguely defined ‘silent majority’ whose core values are threatened simply because they say so. This majority for whom the party speaks is silent for a reason – it is an ultimately the illusion of an exclusive club, and the message is always party, not people, driven. The message is always the same: the minorities are a threat to the sanctity of the majority’s identity and something in turn must be done.

In Israel, far-right anti-immigrant parties hold rallies where hysterical women wail at the microphone about how they fear being raped ‘by packs of wild Africans’, or relate completely groundless anecdotes to the same point. Members of this party, if you can believe it, actually favour rounding up all African immigrants in Israel and sticking them in concentration camps.

In Eastern Europe, far-right ultra-nationalist parties preaching even more violent means of eliminating undesirable ethnic minorities (notably the Roma) use much the same rhetoric as their Israeli counterparts to justify their own hate and prejudice.

Granted, Bill 60 isn’t as bad as all that, but the it’s rooted in the same kind of hate, ignorance and shitty populism.

The PQ defines who is and who isn’t Québécois, and they only ever represent the Québécois who fit their narrow description. Anyone who questions the legitimacy of the party or its purpose, anyone who criticizes the leadership, anyone who refuses to support needlessly divisive legislation such as Bill 60 – these people are not Québécois in the PQ’s eyes, they are obstacles on the road to independence.

When ethno-nationalist governments run out of any kind of political legitimacy they create social panics concerning a potential loss of cultural identity, typically resulting in punitive social policy that aims to further marginalize minorities while claiming they represent a clear and present public danger.

Québec, in this particular case, is very much like a host of small, impotent, nations driven pointlessly into national (but not economic) sovereignty as a consequence of invented ethno-nationalist panics. As a proud Québécois, I want my ‘nation’ to aspire to be greater than Serbia, Croatia or Uzbekistan.

What’s particularly onerous is that the bill, ostensibly designed in part to protect women from various abuses (real and imagined) in conservative, male-dominated religiously observant households, will in fact put working women out of their jobs. Nurses, doctors, teachers, social workers, early childhood educators, government employees of all kinds – and all these precisely the kinds of jobs that can help entrench a family in the local middle class. It’s hard enough to integrate into Québécois society and culture; what does it say of the PQ when they’re proposing we ‘respectfully’ discuss throwing religious minorities out of their rightfully earned jobs?

I’ll have none of it.

I want out of this discussion because I fail to see any reason to have it in the first place. The proposal is flawed, politically expedient by appealing to base populism and motivated by a desire to define the forthcoming election in terms of whose better suited to protect Québécois against the threats dreamt up by the PQ.

I can’t respectfully abide any of this. I don’t think we’ve seen obscenely manipulative politics like this in our province since the Duplessis Era.

Share this:

  • Share
  • Email
  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
Bernard DrainvilleBill 60Bill 60 Public ConsultationsCanadian politicsCharter of Quebec ValuesInstitutionalized RacismQuébecQuébec PoliticsQuebec Secularism CharterQuebec social valuesRacism in Quebec

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to taylornoakes.com and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 38 other subscribers

Calendar

January 2014
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Dec   Feb »

Chronology

  • February 2018 (1)
  • June 2016 (2)
  • May 2016 (1)
  • April 2016 (6)
  • March 2016 (5)
  • February 2016 (3)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (2)
  • November 2015 (4)
  • October 2015 (2)
  • September 2015 (1)
  • August 2015 (5)
  • July 2015 (4)
  • June 2015 (3)
  • May 2015 (3)
  • April 2015 (8)
  • March 2015 (3)
  • February 2015 (3)
  • January 2015 (3)
  • November 2014 (2)
  • June 2014 (1)
  • May 2014 (4)
  • April 2014 (10)
  • March 2014 (11)
  • February 2014 (7)
  • January 2014 (11)
  • December 2013 (6)
  • November 2013 (7)
  • October 2013 (8)
  • September 2013 (6)
  • August 2013 (7)
  • July 2013 (8)
  • June 2013 (9)
  • May 2013 (6)
  • April 2013 (11)
  • March 2013 (11)
  • February 2013 (5)
  • January 2013 (6)
  • December 2012 (9)
  • November 2012 (4)
  • October 2012 (8)
  • September 2012 (7)
  • August 2012 (4)
  • July 2012 (6)
  • June 2012 (5)
  • May 2012 (5)
  • April 2012 (8)
  • March 2012 (8)
  • February 2012 (10)
  • January 2012 (14)
  • December 2011 (12)
  • November 2011 (23)
  • October 2011 (17)
  • September 2011 (34)
  • August 2011 (25)
  • July 2011 (23)
  • June 2011 (12)
  • May 2011 (15)
  • April 2011 (12)
  • March 2011 (9)
  • February 2011 (12)
  • January 2011 (10)
  • December 2010 (24)
  • November 2010 (30)
  • October 2010 (4)

Follow on Twitter

My Tweets
Proudly powered by WordPress