Don’t Overreact, Canada – Patriquin

2014/11/10 Leave a comment

Martin Patriquin on the risks of over-reaction:

Canadians need only look to the south to see how attacks on individuals and establishments can’t usually be prevented by increased surveillance of a country’s civilians. The United States arguably is home to the world’s largest and most sophisticated intelligence-gathering network, the excesses of which have been documented by leaks from the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.

Yet none of this prevented the breach of the White House in September, in which an Iraq war veteran scaled the White House fence and made it to within feet of where the president and his family live before being apprehended. Nor has surveillance hindered the ability of various gunmen to inflict mass murder on innocents throughout the years. As the former Vice President Al Gore noted last year, in a speech decrying the folly of such mass intelligence gathering, “When you are looking for a needle in a haystack, it’s not always wise to pile more hay on the haystack.”

Theoretically, it would be possible for the Canadian government to legislate itself the powers to prevent all such attacks. Yet the trade-off — constant surveillance, criminalization of dissent, restriction of free movement and the economy — would make the country unlivable. It would be a travesty if the actions of two troubled individuals moved the country closer to that possibility.

Don’t Overreact, Canada – NYTimes.com.

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Court loss on refugee health cuts may still be Conservative win

2014/07/10 Leave a comment

I am not sure that it is as much of a win as Patriquin suggests, given that most commentary on both the left and right, has been against the Government (online comments and Sun Media excepted).

It’s like anything, the bumper sticker slogan works (in either direction) until human examples come out, making the issue more complex than the slogan or stereotype, sometimes changing public opinion:

It’s a stretch to say the Conservatives built laws specifically to fail in court, but their failure doesn’t hurt the brand nearly as much as some might think. Rather, the Conservative operative would say that the party has instead garnered crucial talking points for the coming election. By thwarting Conservative laws, the various courts—whose judges are as unelected as your local senator, remember—have essentially shown themselves to be the liberal and Liberal friend to every pot-smoking, drug-injecting, prostitute-loving, refugee-coddling softie out there. Each judicial decision against the Conservatives reaffirms a collective belief, and reinforces a handy stereotype.

In the most recent Federal Court case regarding refugees, the government isn’t quite clear on what constitutes a “bogus” claim. I asked, and the ministry sent a list of rejected, abandoned and withdrawn claims so far in 2014. The inference, I guess, is that every denied or dropped claim is inherently bogus. The number of refugee claimants doesn’t suggest a surge in abuse: as this chart shows, there were roughly 34,000 accepted refugee claimants in 2011, down from 2003’s 25-year high of 42,400.

In the end, though, it doesn’t much matter, because Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives scored a double whammy. Having spent years making the case that Canada’s refugee system is replete with “bogus” claims, they can now claim the courts are in favour of immigrant hoards leeching off the Canadian dream. Even in loss they win.

Court loss on refugee health cuts may still be Conservative win.

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The charter may be gone, but Quebecs identify crisis remains – Patriquin

2014/06/14 Leave a comment

Foreshadowing the fall debates? Managing this will be challenging. What will be interesting to see is whether the PQ tries again to use this as a wedge issue (despite limited traction during the election) or try to build back the more inclusive PQ of the past):

Having returned to power, the Liberals will soon unveil new legislation regarding the wearing of religious garb in the public sector. As with all issues relating to identity, the party will do so begrudgingly, if only to stave off another “reasonable accommodations” debacle it can only lose, and to starve the opposition PQ of a potent talking point. In all likelihood, that legislation will be some version of Bill 94.

And that could well be a problem.Any legislation of this nature stands a good chance of provoking another divisive spleen-venting within Quebec society—if not a court challenge. Flashpoints are easy to come by. Among them were the frosted windows at a Montreal YMCA. In 2007, the community centre agreed to partially cover their street-level windows, so that little Jewish boys would be spared the sight of naked, sweaty flesh.

Fanned by the Journal’s tabloidy outrage, this agreement made between a group of citizens and a private enterprise was quickly and wrongly spun into a cautionary tale of “immigrants” the Hasidim have actually been here for over half a century asking too much of the state. Then there was the outrage over the cabane à sucre that dared offer its Muslim clients a prayer space and pork-free baked beans.

A reaction to this faux-debate, Bill 94 was cursed with some decidedly flighty language. The bit about having one’s face uncovered while giving or receiving a government service wasn’t actually a rule but a “practice.” It made no mention of what would happen if someone deviated from this practice by, say, wearing a niqab to school. Further, any requested exemption from the “practice” would be denied if it meant compromising “security, communication or identification”—a broad stroke far too open to interpretation.

“Bill 94, sensibly interpreted, did not lead to a general prohibition against having a covered face,” McGill constitutional law professor Robert Leckey points out. “What I worry about, though, is that even adopting such legislation, passing into law the ‘practice’ of showing the face, might lead some officials to think that they should refuse accommodations as a matter of course.”

Finally, there’s the matter of the media, the Journal in particular, which will probably frame Liberal legislation as “Bill 60 lite,” as Leckey says. It’s an uncomfortable truth: wretched as it may have been, the Charter was popular in Quebec—particularly amongst the vote-rich Baby Boomer generation. The Liberals know this. In trying to appease Quebecers’ insecurity, one can only hope even pray the government doesn’t stoke their irrational fears once again.

The charter may be gone, but Quebecs identify crisis remains – Macleans.ca.

Filed under Charte de la laïcité, Charte des valeurs québécoise, Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Changes to McGill faculty of medicine admissions pay off – ICYMI

2014/05/29 Leave a comment

Another example of historical bias and exclusion (‘check your privilege’) and McGill’s effort to address it:

History and tradition dictate that this person is probably white, well-moneyed and English-speaking. As such, he has had the run of McGill’s medical school for the quasi-entirety of the faculty’s existence. It is the stuff of cliché: One of the most exclusive degrees from one of the country’s best institutions has been the chattel of fathers and sons of rich anglophones, to the exclusion of nearly everyone else. It took a few brave female souls and nearly a century to chip away enough of that hardened privilege so as to allow women entrance into this rarefied club…..

Nevertheless, the reaction was equal parts swift and outraged. “The English community that has supported McGill for 150 years is being stabbed in the back,” Debra Finestone, a McGill professor and emergency room physician whose daughter was recently denied a spot in the school, told the Montreal Gazette. Dr. Finestone provided the most quotable bit of pith-and-vinegar emanating from what the Gazette quaintly called “McGill’s traditional stakeholders,” and epitomized this group’s overriding sense of entitlement. We supported you, so you owe us something—like a spot in your school for my kid. It’s interesting that much of the noise seems to come from physicians associated with McGill whose progeny was similarly rejected. And you thought universities were meant to be a respite from this sort of tribalism….

What has changed is competition. Thanks to McGill’s initiatives, the number of successful French-only applicants is up by two percentage points, to seven per cent, between 2009 and 2013. The number of bilingual medical students is up six percentage points, to 66 per cent, during the same time period. Meanwhile, the percentage of students from families earning more than $100,000 decreased from 64 to 52 per cent between 2010 and 2013. (All statistics come from the faculty’s admissions office.) Slowly, steadily, McGill’s medical school is starting to resemble the population beyond its walls.

Changes to McGill faculty of medicine admissions pay off.

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How Change.org amplified the act of protest

2014/05/16 Leave a comment

For those interested in social media campaigns, an interesting article on change.org and what makes a successful campaign:

Started in 2007 as an online activism platform by Ben Rattray, a Californian educated at Stanford and the London School of Economics, Change.org transitioned to a petition-only platform in 2011. The site made world headlines when a Change.org petition started by the parents of murdered teen Trayvon Martin helped secure charges against George Zimmerman, his killer. That earned Rattray a spot on Time’s 100 most influential people of 2012. Today, the site has offices in 18 countries—and nearly 70 million users across the globe.

The site is an often-cacophonous clearing house for petitions calling for some sort of action in just about every imaginable domain. In Canada alone, there are petitions to “add women from Canadian history to Canadian bank notes”; to have fluoride removed from tap water; to have fluoride added to tap water; to have a “fully independent investigation” into the Senate scandal; to reverse Canada Post’s decision to end home delivery; to have Prime Minister Stephen Harper stop “using Sir Paul [McCartney’s] beautiful music to humanize his evil robot-man public image.” Some are successes. Most aren’t.

Successful campaigns “have two things,” Rattray says. “It has to be specific, for one, and there needs to be good reason to think that a sufficient amount of public attention around an issue can convince a decision-maker to make the choice to change.” David and Goliath narratives seem to work best, which might explain why Garrett’s petition was so successful. It spiked the contentious issue of animal rights with a dose of celebrity (Barenaked Ladies) and pitted both against a large, faceless corporate entity. Not coincidentally, animal rights is also one of 10 “cause areas”—criminal justice, environment and immigration are among the others—Change.org tends to promote on its site. In Garrett’s case, Change.org staff contacted him to help in the PR push for the petition, and emailed the petition to site users who had signed animal rights petitions in the past.

“We look at things that are most popular, that are trending, that people are interested in, and some things that are already taking off in the media or that have an appeal to a wide audience that the media might want to cover,” says Rattray. “Those are the ones where we’ll reach out to the petition creator and make sure that they’re using the tool most effectively.”

How Change.org amplified the act of protest.

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Why the Quebec values charter hasn’t been a runaway success, PKP interview

2014/04/05 Leave a comment

Martin Patriquin’s analysis of why the Charter has not worked out the way the PQ hoped for:

Yet for a variety of reasons, the charter hasn’t been nearly the electoral success the PQ thought it would be. Durand calls the charter support “weak and volatile”, largely because the PQ lost nearly as much support as it gained. For PQ strategists, minister Bernard Drainville in particular, it must be a vexing question: why would a piece of legislation tailor-made to exploit the deep fears felt by French Quebecers be only a mitigated success?

One answer may be Quebecers aren’t as obsessed about language and identity as they once were. For all the charter’s sound and fury, the charter barely registers on Quebecers’ radar of priorities. They are far more preoccupied with the meat-and-potato issues of government spending, taxes and corruption, according to a L’Actualité poll conducted following the charter’s introduction. The charter was 10th out of a list off 11 priorities. The 11th priority? A sovereignist government.

There’s another reason why Quebecers might not be so peachy keen on the charter, one teased out in a telling Léger Marketing poll from January. Support for the charter, at 57 per cent amongst Francophones, plummeted by 17 points when Léger raised the spectre that people might lose their jobs as a result of what’s on their head or around their neck.

Why the Quebec values charter hasn’t been a runaway success.

And an interesting interview with Pierre Karl Peladeau, the star candidate for the PQ and media mogul who sent the PQ campaign off-message with his strong independence messaging at the beginning of the campaign:

C’est beau tout ça, vous parlez en tant qu’actionnaire de contrôle de Québecor, mais vous êtes en politique, M. Péladeau. Comment allez-vous faire pour éviter les conflits d’intérêts là-dessus si vous êtes au gouvernement ? Vous ne pourrez pas participer aux décisions sur le sport professionnel, la culture, la politique de prix unique du livre…

« J’espère que je vais pouvoir continuer à en parler, au contraire, ce sont des sujets sur lesquels je pense avoir une grande expertise », répond-il, insensible aux critiques. Certains ont même comparé Pierre Karl Péladeau à Berlusconi, l’ancien président et magnat de la presse en Italie. Il s’en fout : « Andrew Coyne a dit que j’étais devenu un oligarque russe et Lysiane Gagnon a dit que j’étais d’extrême droite. Allez-y, en termes de comparaison, tout est permis. »

Un café avec PKP

Filed under Charte des valeurs québécoise, Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Quebec’s Tea Party Moment – NYTimes.com

2013/11/13 Leave a comment

While their is ongoing debate within Quebec and Canada about the degree to which criticism of the Charter within Canada is helpful or not to Quebec debates (conventional wisdom is that it falls into the PQ strategy of increasing the contrast and polarization between Quebec and Canada), an article in the New York Times, by Maclean’s analyst Martin Patriquin, (Patriquin has been consistent in his views for a long time), raises the stakes somewhat:

In catering to this white, populist rural vote, the left-of-center Parti Québécois has seemingly ventured into Tea Party territory. Janette Bertrand, the 88-year-old leader of a pro-charter group, recently told a newspaper that she would be “scared” to be served by a veiled doctor, because Muslims let women “die faster.” She wasn’t joking.

Anti-immigrant sentiment exists across Canada. Yet Quebec is the only province with a political party willing to exploit that sentiment for political gain. Will it work? Probably not, if only because winning any future referendum on Quebec’s separation from Canada would mean putting the question to each and every Quebecer — including the very people the Parti Québécois is scaring and scapegoating today.

Quebec’s Tea Party Moment – NYTimes.com.

Sure enough, the Quebec Minister responsible for the Bill felt compelled to respond to the critique , reverting to the time-honoured technique of attacking the messenger:

«Or ce n’est pas du journalisme, a commenté Bernard Drainville. C’est de l’opinion. D’ailleurs, M. Patriquin n’en est pas à ses premières frasques. Il a déjà dit que la corruption faisait partie de l’ADN des Québécois», a-t-il rappelé au sujet de ce qu’avait publié le magazine anglophone Maclean’s, en 2010. (an ironic reference, given the current hearings on corruption in Quebec’s construction industry)

La Charte des valeurs, digne du Tea Party? Bof! répond Drainville | Michel Corbeil | Politique

And in minor Charter news, François Legault, the leader of the CAQ distances itself from the comments mentioned yesterday by the former leader of its predecessor, the ADQ, cited yesterday («L’islam, une religion de violence», selon le fondateur de l’ADQ), reflecting how Quebec discussions on multiculturalism and interculturalism have evolved over the years:

Charte: François Legault se distancie de Jean Allaire | Denis Lessard | Politique québécoise

And the Liberal Party of Quebec, while considering legislation limiting the wearing of the niqab or burqa (Le PLQ prépare un projet de loi contre l’intégrisme religious), nevertheless is open – at least in theory – to potential LPQ candidates wearing the chador (in practice, hard to see how any candidate wearing a chador would be nominated a candidate, let alone win, but the party is being consistent that the dividing line is being able to see the face):

PLQ: les candidates portant le tchador seront bienvenues | Jocelyne Richer | Politique québécoise

And lastly, Lysiane Gagnon on the PQ political strategy:

If it wins a majority, Premier Pauline Marois’s government will unfold the second part of the strategy, hoping that its identity legislation will inflame the political climate, provoke an angry backlash in the rest of Canada and eventually push a majority of francophones to react by voting Yes to another sovereignty referendum. The sovereigntists will argue that “English Canada” and the federal government are imposing values alien to Quebec (multiculturalism, for instance) and depriving Quebec of the right to adopt the policies it needs for its cultural survival.

 PQ’s charter madness has a method 

Filed under Charte des valeurs québécoise, Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Quebec Values Charter – Analysis of Strategy

2013/11/08 2 Comments

A few good pieces of analysis of the PQ strategy in tabling a more doctrinaire and rigid version of the Quebec Values Charter, starting with Terrence McKenna of the CBC:

The political strategy behind Quebec’s values charter – Canada – CBC News.

And Martin Patriquin of Macleans,

There are evident risks to this strategy. Successive polls (like this one) suggest Quebecers are far less worried about what’s on a woman’s head than what the mobster is stuffing into his sock. As Parizeau’s sortie demonstrates, the charter has divided the sovereignist movement itself. There are inevitable court challenges should the proposed bill become law. And though Drainville et al. are loath to talk about it, there is the sticky matter of enforcement: what happens when, not if, a Muslim, Sikh, Jew, Christian refuses to remove his or her religious accoutrement?

But these are logical considerations, and logic has no place in pride. In one form or another, CALVDLEDNRDLEAQDEELFELHEELDDA (the French an acronym) is now a political inevitability in Quebec. God help us all.

Why the PQ won’t back down – Blog Central, Martin Patriquin – Macleans.ca

Lastly, Bernard Descoteaux of Le Devoir, on the electoral and political risks:

Il est certain, si le gouvernement Marois maintient la ligne dure, que le projet de loi 60 ne pourra être adopté tant qu’il est en situation minoritaire. Pour peu que l’appui populaire que recueille la Charte des valeurs se maintienne, il aurait là l’argument qui le justifierait à demander aux Québécois un mandat majoritaire. Le pari est risqué. Sous un gouvernement libéral, ce projet de loi 60, comme d’autres qui sont actuellement en plan, notamment le projet de loi 14 amendant la Charte de la langue française, sera enterré pour longtemps. Une telle approche est un quitte ou double dangereux. Inutile aussi puisque la Coalition avenir Québec est ouverte au dialogue.

Avec son appui, le gouvernement pourrait faire adopter l’essentiel de ce projet. Il y aurait des compromis, mais ce serait mieux que rien du tout. L’objectif de ce projet est d’assurer « la diversité de la société québécoise dans l’harmonie », nous dit la première ministre Marois. Pour cela, est-il indispensable de tout régir dans le moindre détail ? Bien sûr que non.

Projet de loi 60 – Un quitte ou double? | Le Devoir

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Quebec’s “war” on religion – Charter Round-Up

2013/09/21 Leave a comment

Some good commentary and analysis in both English and French media today, starting with Martin Patriquin in MacLean’s, laying out the issues and politics, an opinion piece by  Emma Teitel (“spice of life”) theme, and an analysis of the Quebec heartland and the Charter in the Globe, suggesting the reality may be more complex:

Quebec’s war on religion – Canada, Editor’s Picks – Macleans.ca.

Prejudice and the PQ

How is the controversial charter of values going over in the Quebec heartland?

In French media, good piece on the poor political handling by the PQ of the proposed Charter by Bernard Descôteaux in Le Devoir. Better in many ways to have this than good political handling:

Charte des valeurs québécoises – Les maladresses

And a good nuanced picture of integration by David Desjardins in Le Devoir, ending up very close to Canadian multiculturalism:

Tout l’enjeu est là, au fond. Délicat, tissé de mille sensibilités. L’intégration est affaire d’apprivoisement mutuel. C’est tendre la main à l’autre sans avoir le sentiment qu’on s’excuse d’exister.

L’intégration

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