Tag Archives: Bill 60

A Montreal Drive-By

Greene Ave at what is now Boul. de Maisonneuve, circa 1905
Greene Ave at what is now Boul. de Maisonneuve, circa 1905

So here’s the scene.

I’m standing with a friend while she waits for her lift on Greene Avenue in Westmount a few days back. We’re across from the entrance to Westmount Square, about half way between Saint Catherine’s and de Maisonneuve. As we’re chatting we notice a jaunty little tune is coming from somewhere. I figure it’s outdoor speakers at the new Cinq Saisons epicerie just up the way, but it’s getting louder.

We look up the annoyingly empty avenue and see a brilliant light coming our way and into focus.

It’s a rented U-haul pickup truck with a boom-box strapped to the hood and a gigantic menorah protruding from the flat in the rear, all lit up with lightbulbs.

As it rolled to a stop next to us, we saw two young Hasidic men in the cab, smiling from ear to ear.

They rolled down the window and wished us a Happy Hanukkah.

We smiled and returned the sentiment. And then they drove off, just like that.

A Montreal Drive-By…

***

I suppose some might be offended by such a thing, though this certainly wasn’t the case for either of us, regardless of the fact that neither of us are Jewish. Who cares? It was, fundamentally, an expression of good wishes between strangers. It is human to want another to feel good on a day that’s significant to them. How is it any different from wishing someone a happy birthday, or anniversary?

I’m not a Christian, but I won’t take offence if someone wishes me a Merry Christmas. And simple common sense and politesse dictates one return the sentiment as you receive it. I’m not going out of my way to respond with a Happy Holidays to a Merry Christmas, that’s just silly.

Some people in this province, in this city, would take a great offence at the scene I witnessed. I fear some would have responded angrily. Perhaps there’s a reason they were cruising down a deserted Greene Avenue instead of Pie-IX or Parthenais. Regardless, though it may have been an ‘ostentatious display’ of a religion, it caused no harm whatsoever. Contextually, it made sense (inasmuch as it was an appreciably quirky occurrence), it was the last day of Hanukkah.

It was nice. It was pleasant. It’s a story to tell.

And as you might imagine, it brought my mind back to thinking about the broad implications of the proposed (and inappropriately named) Charter of Quebec Values, let alone what it actually says about the society we live in. Bill 60 is nothing but an attempt by the separatists to re-cast Québec society in their image, and according to their often incoherent set of values.

It is an act to institutionalize racism. What would Madiba have thought of this? The great institutions of the province, and of this city in particular, are lining up to defy the law in its entirety.

Perhaps even more importantly, the mayors of Montreal and Québec City, Denis Coderre and Régis Labeaume, are indicating a rapprochement of sorts, and both seem to be asking for ‘special status’ vis-a-vis the proposed legislation, in addition to a general devolution of powers from the provincial government to the province’s two largest cities. This is a particularly interesting political development – a bloc against the PQ representing the interests of about 2.3 million Québécois – and two cities where the majority of the population is opposed to the divisive and thoroughly unnecessary charter. I’m in total agreement with Jack Jedwab; when Premiere Marois says there’s a majority of Québécois who support the charter, she is only referring to Francophones. As far as she’s concerned, the Anglophone and Allophone populations aren’t ‘real Québécois’ anyways.

It’s vile, disgusting, scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel nationalist-populist politics. Gutter politics, the foulest of the foul.

The péquistes, inasmuch as the people of Québec (all of us), need to realize this fundamental point:

Neither the French language nor French Canadian culture is in any way, shape or from threatened. There are ten million French Canadians living in North America and seven million living in Canada, the overwhelming majority of whom live in Québec. The Franco-Québécois community is growing and has been growing ever since the colonial period of the 17th and 18th centuries. There are more French-speaking people in Canada than there have ever been before, but by contrast, the Anglophone community of Québec is shrinking and has shrunk considerably. There are fewer Anglophones in Québec than there were forty years ago, and of those who’ve stayed, they largely learned how to speak French and got better integrated into Québec society.

And as to the immigrants, the first generation Québécois, they too have learned French, and are integrating into our society at their own pace. They’re of a naturally independent disposition, as are the Anglophones of the province, and they’ve formed bonds in their combined efforts to integrate into the broader society and culture.

And as you might imagine, nothing burns the ass of a dyed-in-the-wool separatist more than realizing the fundamental raison-d’etre for their political existence simply no longer exists.

There was once much less integration. There was once serious racial strife. There were once abuses and institutionalized racism of a different kind. There was ecclesiastical and existential oppression, there were (and still are) class struggles.

But people evolve and things change.

René Lévesque never wanted a political party. He wanted the PQ to be a simple political movement, uniting all Québécois in an effort to solidify greater provincial autonomy and bring the provinces and federal government together to re-negotiate the constitution. What he got, he did not expect. Lévesque believed things would not change, but Trudeau proved not only that things could change for the better, but further, that the independent and progressive mentality of Québec could ultimately be integrated into Canada as a whole. That’s why he won. Lévesque didn’t anticipate Trudeau would succeed in repatriating the constitution, ratifying it without Lévesque’s personal endorsement, and then further develop the Charter. Lévesque strengthened Canadian federalism inasmuch as he pushed a serious cultural reformation in Québec, one that would have the (again) unintended consequence of making Anglophones and Allophones better integrated in Québec society.

This is why we’re now dealing with Bill 60, a proposed law that would have been laughed out of any other self-respecting legislative body.

The péquistes know there’s nothing more that can be done on the language front – there’s no threat. This is why Bill 14 was dropped entirely.

So now it’s culture and this idiotic idea that hijabs, yarmulkes and turbans are somehow threats to the stability, sanctity and perhaps even vitality of Québec’s culture and society. Bill 60 is more punitive than Bill 101, and has the potential to put many more people out of work. Crucial people too – doctors, teachers, nurses, early-childhood education specialists and all manner of social and civil-sector workers. Middle class jobs, with good benefits, denied to those who dare to wear a religious symbol, regardless of how subtle and harmless it may be.

There is fear, easily-stoked, of a Muslim invasion, of foreigners fundamentally changing who we are. There’s no empirical evidence, there never is when the PQ asserts a danger, just rhetoric bordering on hate speech and the kind of easy panic you associate with poorly educated backwoods types and siege-mentality suburbanites.

Well to hell with them.

Let the fearful be afraid, let the ignorant remain in the cave.

I’m hopeful the entente cordiale between the mayors Coderre and Lebeaume leads to something really meaningful. They have the power to either make the bill completely unpopular and impossible to make into law, or, barring that, gain the special status our cities’ deserve.

***

I’m reading The Watch That Ends the Night, an impossibly brilliant book by the late, great Hugh MacLennan. In it, he describes Montreal in the early 1950s as follows:

‘In the West End are the old English families, and in the East End there are the old French families. And in between them a no man’s land of international people with international concerns. They occupy the centre of the city, and don’t have much to do with either of the other communities.’

There’s still a lot of truth here, though I would argue that in the last sixty years, the biggest thing to change is that the cosmopolitan middle ground has extended quite a bit in all directions away from the centre of the city, and at least on this island, the French and English camps that really were once two solitudes have integrated, at the very least, into the cosmopolitan aesthetic so popularized by those living in the ‘no man’s land’. And none of this has made us any less culturally whole, nor any less socially distinct.

We are what we are, as we are and have always been, so why are our politicians trying to forcibly change us?

I hope we’ve got some fight in us left, this bill cannot pass.

How to Beat Bill 60

Excellent retro shot of the Jewish General Hospital before it began it's multi-phase expansion - I'm guessing 1984
Excellent retro shot of the Jewish General Hospital before it began it’s multi-phase expansion – I’m guessing 1984

Defy it.

With extreme prejudice…

A tip of the hat is owed to Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg, head of the prestigious Montreal Jewish General Hospital, for firing the opening salvo in the people’s defiance of Bill 60, the proposed charter on state secularism in Québec.

Among other things the bill stipulates all public-sector employees would be banned from ‘ostentatious displays of religion’ including wearing a yarmulke, hijab or turban while on the job. The ubiquitous displays of Catholicism in every conceivable aspect of daily life in Québec gets to stay as these are deemed to be of ‘historical and cultural value’, though apparently, the historical and cultural value of our ethno-cultural minorities constitute some kind of threat to middle-class, mainstream Québécois society. This means the large glow-in-the-dark cross atop Mount Royal, inasmuch as the crucifix behind the speaker’s chair in the National Assembly, will not be removed, but some Sikh surgeon will have to remove his turban if he wants to keep his job.

I’m an atheist, a socialist and a progressive. But I’m also a libertarian, though not in any contemporary American sense. I believe an individual ought to be free from religious persecution, insofar as their religious practice neither harms themselves, their relations or their community, nor places an inconvenience on the society at large. This thought is not my own – from my understanding this is the law of the land. Freedom from religious persecution is in the Charter of Rights and Responsibilities.

The Canadian Charter of Values.

I’m with Tom Mulcair on this one, the proposed Bill-60 is nothing but politically-motivated, state-sponsored discrimination.

I believe an argument can be made in which it is in the state’s interest to propose a dress code in the public service, especially in the domains of health and education. Certain religious garments, such as the niqab or burqa, would present an inconvenience to the public interest – the face is covered, and it’s as simple as that. These kinds of face coverings present an unnecessary communication barrier; it’s completely impractical throughout the entirety of the public service.

But let’s put this aside for a moment and ask ourselves a question – is it even worth formalizing such an objection of these particular garments? How many Muslim Québécoises who wear these particular garments are actually applying to the provincial civil service each year? Do we have to make fundamental alterations to our province’s legal and political foundations or can this simply be an edit to some kind of internal HR manual?

It reminds me of Herouxville passing laws against women being stoned to death or burned with acid. It was an amazingly insane instance of unencumbered small-town ‘multi-culturalism panic’.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but is this not already covered by the Criminal Code? Do we not have laws against murder and assault? And do we not already have a secular judiciary, one that is blind to religious consideration so as to liberate the state from such an incumbrance?

pauline-marois

This kind of panicky, irrational fear was unfortunately poorly articulated by none other than Québec uber-vedette Celine Dion. As Jack Jedwab of the Association for Canadian Studies points out, her concerns that she thinks justifies the charter’s implementation are ludicrous – no one’s taking down any goddam Christmas trees. Ms. Dion’s comments are a perfect representation of the kind of misguided thinking that has become troublingly prevalent amongst an a swath of the Québécois middle-class (though it’s by no means a Québec phenomenon; you could make the argument that Québec is following France’s example too closely, and that both share similarities with a host of xenophobic laws passed throughout the United States in the past decade).

The bill is hypocritical to the core and is, in essence, a method by which the PQ can sew its values into the provincial political fabric at a moment when a referendum is out of the question and the grip on power tenuous at best. The PQ knows it has an election somewhere on the horizon and as long as its economic record remains what it is – which is shitty – the Québec Liberals have a real shot at regaining power at some point in the next six months. Since the Marois government can’t do much else it is going into a perpetual campaign mode, and Bill 60 is their attempt to shore up their political base. They’ve spun it every which way – it’s pro-women, it’s modernizing – but it’s also, fundamentally, unfair and its unnecessary, punitive implications are too large to ignore.

The grim reality is that if this bill goes into law, a great many people, almost all of whom live and work in the Greater Montreal region, are suddenly going to find themselves in a position in which they have to choose between their jobs and their faith; religious minorities will be officially persecuted in the province of Québec. And who will bare the brunt of this new legislation? Why women of course; thousands of working moms who live in Montreal. Here’s a fantastic argument by Anne-France Goldwater as to why this so-called charter of values is a blatant attack on working first-generation Québécoises, a state-sponsored attempt to deny recent-immigrants access to the lucrative pool of civil service and public sector jobs.

In Québec’s political context Montreal is a prize and power base for one party and a liability, an inconvenience for another. Multiculturalism works in Montreal, and I would argue it evolves into a special kind of interculturalism all on its own, without government interference. But this flies in the face of the PQ stands for, and their vision of Québec. The PQ views itself as Québec incarnate, in much the same way that Tea Party Republicans view themselves as ‘real Americans’, and both are using the same fundamental tactic to achieve diverse goals – they define terms and tone first. The PQ has been doing this for years; Bill 101 established that there was a threat to the French language and culture in Québec and the bill was the response to it. Today it’s a fundamental component of our laws and most accept that this is the case, regardless that current statistical and demographic information is telling us the complete opposite.

This is Bill 101 2.0

Much like its linguistic forebear, Bill 60 places economic and socio-political limitations on minority populations. It is a ghettoization measure, and may result, much like the ‘Anglo Exodus’ of a generation ago, in a minority exodus of a kind.

So how do we, the free-thinking, address such Draconian laws?

We must defy them.

Director General of the hospital, Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg put it best “Since the bill is inherently prejudicial, there is no point in taking advantage of any clause that would grant us temporary, short-term relief” when referring to five-year implementation delays specifically designed for institutions such as the Jewish.

He went on to say that if the bill ever becomes law, the hospital will simply ignore it outright.

Right on.

Well that was disappointing…

La Grande Jatte Moderne - Mount Royal, Autumn 2013

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to digest the results, here are some thoughts on the 2013 Montreal municipal election.

Ideas didn’t matter. The election was entirely personality-driven and, once again to our detriment, over-focused on the person who would become mayor of the city, and not the representative at the district or borough level. In four boroughs – Outremont, Anjou, LaSalle and Lachine – parties that were borough-focused swept both the councillor and borough mayor positions. They have since indicated they will not form any kind of alliance with the mayor-elect. Independent borough parties now represent approx. 185,000 ‘Montrealers’. This represents about 11% of the city’s population who may be, for entirely political reasons, disconnected from the central administration. The three independents are all formerly of Union Montreal (insert obvious joke here…)

Voter participation came in at 43%, or 477,000 people in a city with 1,102,000 eligible voters. This means about 625,000 people who could have voted did not. 57% absolute disengagement (no participation), and an unknown degree of partial disengagement among those who did vote as a consequence of widespread political illiteracy vis-a-vis the design and function of our local electoral system. That the top two candidates managed to gain as many votes as they did, some 273,000 split between them, representing 57% of the votes cast, without any kind of grassroots local representatives or party architecture in place. The two mayoral candidates that represented parties РCot̩ and Bergeron representing a Union-Vision coalition and Projet Montr̩al respectively Рonly took in 178,000 votes between them, or 37% of the 477,000 cast.

Mélanie Joly declared herself to be something of the ‘real winner’, indicating it was “mission accomplished” vis-a-vis her mayoral campaign, this despite the fact that she lost the mayoralty with 129,000 votes to Coderre’s 150,000 (indicating 27% and 32% of the votes cast, respectively, though only 18% and 14% of the voting population). She says she’ll be sticking around and will make a run at the mayoralty in 2017, but I have a strong suspicion this was a test run for an entry into federal politics, likely as a star Quebec candidate designed to appeal broadly to Quebec women, youth, urbanites etc. (and that’s not a half bad mix either – it’s NDP territory, presently). Certainly Alexandre Trudeau’s out-of-nowhere endorsement helped what should be lauded as a truly brilliant campaign, but what kills me is that it may not really have been to lead this city in the first place. I’m not comfortable with the idea that my city’s municipal election, and a crucial one at that, is merely a tool for which political legitimacy can be tested and polling data gathered. What about actually choosing people to solve our problems and make tomorrow brighter than yesterday?

Equally disconcerting was how little the race really changed from day one. Denis Coderre came out ahead in the first poll and it was accepted as a fait-accompli that he would be mayor. Also disturbing, the boroughs with the lowest participation rate (running from 25% to about 42%), which included Cote-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grace, the Sud-Ouest, Ville-Marie, Pierrefonds-Roxboro and Saint-Laurent, represent about 483,000 people, or 29% of the city’s population.

I suspect Coderre’s ultimate appeal is that, perhaps some, feel he’s particularly well-suited to defend our interests against the PQ while maintaining a crucial link to the Federal Liberals. Should Justin Trudeau be elected in 2015, Mr. Coderre’s relationship with the party could come in handy and potentially result is some newfound federal interest and investment in our city.

But that’s a best case scenario.

Mr. Coderre is a career politician and that should be taken into consideration. He goes which way the wind blows.

But he’ll also soon be tested. The imbecilic Parti Québécois has decided to introduce the possibly unconstitutional, draconian, punitive and politically-motivated Charter of Values, ostensibly designed to defend the equality of the sexes and the secularism of the state while in actuality accomplishing nothing more than to sew needless rifts in Quebec society. Coderre said he won’t tolerate the proposed Bill 60, but it remains to be seen what he can and/or will do about it.

The only real light at the end of this mess was that Richard Bergeron would not be the last leader of Projet Montréal, that within one to two years a new party leader will be chosen, and lead the party in the 2017 municipal election. I’m not happy to see him gone, he has every reason to stay on and try again. After all, he built the party from nothing to 28 councillors, and that’s not too shabby, especially given he did it in three elections. But what matters is that Projet Montréal will live to fight again. It’s the most legitimate political organization this city has, and I’m glad it’ll stick around.

Francois Cardinal, an optimist, suggests that Denis Coderre should offer Bergeron the job of STM president (in addition to other interesting job opportunities). I couldn’t agree more.

Final thought: in order to avoid the myriad problems caused by widespread (and politically manipulative) disengagement, we should endeavour to secure a compulsory voting act for the city before the next election. I’d like to see what kind of civic administration we’d have with near 100% participation.