With the Charter, Quebec risks closing its mind – The Globe and Mail

Louise Arbour in the Globe on the Quebec Values Charter:

In short, we are called upon to choose the kind of world in which we want to live. All this talk about secularism, the neutrality of the state, tolerance or the specificity of Quebec should not obscure the fact that this is not about affirming values, but it’s about promoting and implementing them.

We have avoided the pathologies of nationalisms that feed the far right and all other forms of extremism. Quebec society is modern, open to the world and until now inclusive. In that setting, the proposed charter of secularism is a siren song. It evokes images of a homogeneous Catho-secular society where “our” religious symbols are innocuous, since we have voided them of their purely religious content, but where the religious symbols of “others” are a perpetual menace to us all.

In reality Quebec has succeeded remarkably well in absorbing immigration into a tightly knit society. Fear is always a bad adviser. Rather, social cohesion comes from a generous and welcoming spirit that induces others to integrate. This is, in fact, what newcomers have always done.

With the Charter, Quebec risks closing its mind – The Globe and Mail.

On a (relatively) positive note, the Mayor of Quebec city manages to find a balance between tolerance and his discomfort with more fundamentalist Muslim women:

« Y’a des gens qui pourraient être tentés de blâmer ces femmes-là. Je voudrais dire à ceux qui pourraient être tentés de faire ça à Québec de ne pas le faire. De surtout avoir beaucoup de compassion pour ces femmes-là qui sont obligées de s’attriquer de cette façon-là à cause de préceptes religieux, à cause d’interprétations d’une religion qui, quant à moi, sont fausses. »

M. Labeaume a par ailleurs indiqué qu’il n’avait aucun problème à laisser ces femmes porter de tels maillots. « De toute façon, des nageurs professionnels ont à peu près le même », a-t-il dit.

Il n’a pas caché par ailleurs qu’il les plaignait beaucoup et espérait qu’elles « se révoltent un jour ».

Port du burkini: ​appel à la «compassion»

Fatima Houda-Pépin, excluded from the Liberal Party of Quebec caucus, tabled her own version of laicité, narrower that the proposed Charter coverage but including the creation of an organization to monitor religious fundamentalists. Needless to say, the PQ government is delighted with this, both on substantive and political terms:

Houda-Pepin revient hanter Couillard