After Quebec’s secularism law, Muslim women gather to figure out, ‘What can we do now?’

2019/06/26 Leave a comment

Interesting vignettes:

The women hold one hand to their chest and the other to their stomach as they’re told to breathe in and then out.

The workshop started with a guided meditation and a short discussion about how to cope emotionally with Quebec’s new secularism law, which bars them from wearing religious symbols at certain jobs. But it’s clear the 20 or so Muslim women here aren’t ready to relax.

A short time later, they’re at the edge of their seats shooting questions at lawyer William Korbatly about the law’s ins and outs.

What they really want to know is how to fight it.

“What is this law? What can we do now?” one woman lets out, shaking her head. “It’s ridiculous. I want us to end this law. It’s unjust.”

Considering social media campaigns — or self-defence

The women begin pitching ideas. Can they go around the law? Are there different ways they can hide their hair, perhaps?

“You put a wig on top of your hijab,” says Mejda Mouaffak, an elementary school teacher, with a laugh.

A social media campaign uniting different faiths (Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Christianity) in solidarity against the law is pitched. Another campaign, to make fun of the law, is suggested. Self-defence workshops are another idea, ones that also touch on verbal attacks and how to react.

The workshop in an empty community centre in a northwestern Montreal neighbourhood ends up lasting nearly two hours longer than planned. The discussions are as nuanced and diverse as its participants, who hail from different backgrounds and ages and practice a range of professions.

Most of them wear a hijab.

‘We can be Muslim and feminist’

The gathering was organized for Muslim women to regroup after Quebec’s new CAQ government pushed through two key pieces of legislation, both affecting people of colour in the province, during a marathon weekend in the National Assembly the week before.

The new secularism law forbids certain groups of public servants — including teachers, police officers and government lawyers — from wearing religious symbols on the job. Critics say it impedes people’s right to practice their religion, and disproportionately targets Muslim women who wear a headscarf.

Participant Sara Hassanien wants to connect with Quebec feminists, a group that has been vocal in favour of the law, particularly in French media.

“I’m trying to tell them that unlike what you’ve always thought … we can be Muslim and feminist,” she said, noting there are about as many reasons women wear the hijab as there are women who do.

‘I totally understand what Quebec has been through’

Hassanien says, on the other hand, it’s important for her community to know the history of Quebec’s difficult relationship with the Catholic church.

“I totally empathize with you,” Hassanien told CBC later, as if addressing Quebec feminists.

“I totally understand what Quebec has been through. I understand that your mothers, your grandmothers, fought so hard for women’s liberation and I support that. I am here to comfort them, to reassure them that we are not ever going to call for going back.”

At the same time, Hassanien says she is tired of feeling like she has to speak for her entire community in spaces where it is under-represented.

‘The consquences can only be absurd’

Korbatly agreed with the women pointing out contradictions they see in the law: that the definition of “religious symbol” is vague and applies more to the Christian cross than the hijab, which they say is more of a practice.

He explained how disrespecting the law could lead to people being fired.

“When you have an absurd law, the consequences can only be absurd,” Korbatly told the group.

He hopes the legal challenge to the law launched last week, which argues Quebec can’t bypass Canadians’ right to religious freedom, will be successful.

Law effectively prevents a teacher’s promotion

Afterward, he told CBC News though the law does not affect him directly — he is Muslim, but does not wear religious garb — he felt it was his duty “to be there, present and give moral and legal support to the community.”

During the discussion he called himself a feminist “through and through.”

Amina B., who wished to withhold her last name because of fear it would affect her employment, is a substitute teacher.

The law effectively prevents her from being promoted to any other public education role in the province. It includes a grandfather clause that protects people hired before March 28, but as soon as they are promoted or access another position covered by the law, it applies.

‘This is shaking me to the core’

Amina had signed up for a two-year online teacher program at the University of Ottawa, but she’s not sure she’ll complete it now.

“If that means I will always have to be a substitute teacher, and that I can’t evolve, what’s the point?”

She came to the workshop because “when you get involved, maybe, you can make things change.”

Hassanien is an ESL teacher for a private company. She says it was important for her to join, too, because “I started to feel helpless about what’s happening on a daily basis to me as a veiled woman in Montreal.”

She says her trips on public transit now fill her with anxiety and fear that she will be harassed. Even strange looks are a cause of stress.

“This is shaking me to the core,” she said.

Spike in public harassment

The event was organized by Hanadi Saad, who founded Justice Femme after the first attempt by a Quebec government to legislate religious garb, when it was led by the Parti Québécois in 2013, to offer legal and psychological support to Muslim women who face harassment.

Since Bill 21, the current law, was introduced in May, her group has seen a spike in the public harassment of Muslim women in Quebec.

“It’s like we opened the door: ‘Now, you can go ahead and discriminate,'” Saad said, calling the law “violent.”‘I feel like they are taking a part of me’

Saad immigrated to Canada with her family 30 years ago during the Lebanese Civil War and has lived in Quebec for 18 years. She says Quebec has been her true home ever since.

But she’ll be visiting Lebanon for the second time in those years this summer and wonders if it’ll feel more like home this time.

“I feel like they are taking a part of me, of my existence,” said Saad, who no longer wears a headscarf. She said it was a decision that took her months.

“To ask these women to take their hijab off, it’s like asking you to take your T-shirt off.”

Saad sees a silver lining, though.

“Now what has to be done, it’s to stand up for our rights as women. We are appropriating our cause; it’s women’s cause. So I will thank this government for what he’s creating, because he’s forcing us to come together.”

Source: After Quebec’s secularism law, Muslim women gather to figure out, ‘What can we do now?’

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Singh in a bind as NDP must win over Quebecers that support new secularism law

2019/06/25 Leave a comment

Good column by Patriquin on Singh’s Quebec dilemna:

Were he a teacher in Quebec and not a politician based in Ottawa, Jagmeet Singh would find it difficult to work.

Thanks to Quebec’s “laicity bill,” which became law Sunday, Singh wouldn’t today be able to secure a teaching position with a turban on his head. Had he held this position prior to March 28, the law’s retroactive date of enforcement, he’d be stuck in grandfather-clause purgatory, allowed to wear his turban and kirpan—but lose this right should he be promoted, demoted or transferred to another position. It’s a cruel and confounding position for Singh. As leader of the NDP, he has significant support in Canada’s second-largest province. Yet he couldn’t so much as teach a Grade 4 class in the province, much less join a Quebec police force, guard prisoners in a Quebec jail or be a judge in a Quebec court. He couldn’t even serve as a liquor inspector.

Oddly, the NDP has been remarkably quiet about the demonstrable impingement of its leader’s fundamental rights. The party issued no press release following the judgment. NDP MPs, Quebec and otherwise, were largely and conspicuously silent on the issue. In 2013, the Parti Québécois of the day introduced its “Quebec values charter,” which would have had a similar negative effect on Singh’s ability to work in Quebec. At the time, the NDP called it “state-mandated discrimination,” with then-NDP leader Tom Mulcair vowing to “fight it all the way.” Yet the current incarnation of the NDP met the newly-minted Quebec law with a volley of crickets. There were no promises from the NDP to mount a challenge of the law should it form a government in October. Dissent was limited to Singh himself, who tweeted and otherwise expressed his “sadness” at its passing.

Unfortunately, there is method to the NDP’s silence. Quebec’s new secularism law is an onerous and cynical piece of legislation that tramples on rights secured by both the Canadian and Quebec charter. As a particularly mean-spirited solution for a non-existent problem—that of creeping religiosity in Quebec society—it serves no other purpose than to prop up the nationalist bona fides of Premier François Legault and his Coalition Avenir Québec government. And yet as grievous as it is, the law is remarkably popular amongst the very people Singh and the NDP must court if they wish to have any chance in the looming October election. In short, denouncing Quebec’s law is tantamount to political suicide, for all parties. That silence you hear from the NDP is the noise of political expediency.

How popular is the new law? Nearly three quarters of Quebecers polled believe judges, prosecutors, police and prison guards shouldn’t be allowed to wear religious symbols, according to a Léger Marketing poll for the CAQ government. (Other polls, notably Angus Reid and CROP, reflect similar levels of support.) In fact, according to the Léger poll, nearly 70 per cent of respondents believed the restriction should go even further to include preschool and kindergarten teachers as well. Here, we must acknowledge a bit of political brilliance, however cynical, on the part of Legault. By not including preschool and kindergarten teachers in the religious symbols ban, the premier has sold the law as a demonstration of restraint and compromise. The law “could have gone further,” he said the other day. “There are people who are a little racist and don’t want to see religious symbols anywhere in public.”

The NDP’s relative silence extends to the Conservative Party. While Conservative leader Andrew Scheer gave Quebec’s secularism bill a light spanking last March, the party made no similar overture upon the bill’s passing into law this week. If anything, the Conservative situation in Quebec is even more fraught than that of the NDP: Scheer is courting voters in the province’s exurbs and hinterland, where support for the law is highest (and, not coincidentally, the presence of actual religious minorities is at its lowest.) Scheer is further hampered by another political reality: laws such as the one passed in Quebec have remarkable support in the rest of the country. It is of no coincidence that former prime minister Stephen Harper, with his campaign-era “barbaric cultural practices” snitch line, wasn’t below a bit of Legault-style demagoguery.

And this silence has infected the Liberals as well, albeit to a lesser extent. In 2013, the mere hint of the PQ’s Quebec values charter provoked Justin Trudeau into writing 600 angry words in the Globe and Mail. This time around, it took being asked by a reporter for Justin Trudeau to denounce Quebec’s law.

In keeping relatively quiet on the political excesses of the current Quebec government, perhaps the NDP and others are simply learning from history. At a French-language debate during the 2015 election campaign, NDP leader Mulcair offered by far the loudest critique of Harper’s anti-niqab stance—and the PQ’s values charter by extension. “No one here is pro-niqab. We realize that we live in a society where we must have confidence in the authority of the tribunals, even if the practice is uncomfortable to us,” Mulcair said.

Mulcair’s was a righteous, nuanced and altogether sensible critique of the very type of identity-based politics practised by Harper then and Legault now. It also doomed the NDP, with Mulcair’s support diving at almost the exact moment he uttered the words. No wonder the current crop of federal leaders are so scared to say anything.

Source: Singh in a bind as NDP must win over Quebecers that support new secularism law

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Loi 21: Trudeau dénonce, sans plus

2019/06/21 Leave a comment

Of note (see Andrew Coyne: Will leaders tolerate religious segregation just because it’s Quebec?):

La loi québécoise sur la laïcité a rattrapé Justin Trudeau sur le toit de l’ambassade canadienne à Washington, jeudi.

Mais le premier ministre s’est, une fois de plus, contenté de dénoncer la loi du gouvernement Legault, sans dire ce qu’il ferait pour la contrer.

La question est venue en toute fin de point de presse, après une journée à rencontrer le président Donald Trump et des politiciens américains pour discuter de la ratification du nouvel ALENA.

Pourquoi M. Trudeau n’a rien dit depuis l’adoption à Québec du projet de loi 21 ?

« Ma perspective et mes opinions là-dessus ont toujours été très claires », s’est défendu le premier ministre.

« Je suis évidemment préoccupé par une atteinte aux droits fondamentaux des Canadiens », a-t-il ajouté.

Mais pas plus que ses ministres, cette semaine à Ottawa, n’a-t-il voulu dire ce que son gouvernement ferait concrètement pour répondre à cette « atteinte aux droits fondamentaux ».

Lorsque le projet de loi était débattu à Québec, on refusait à Ottawa de dire si on songeait à se joindre à un recours devant les tribunaux pour l’attaquer. On disait attendre de voir le contenu final de la loi une fois adoptée.

Au lendemain de l’adoption de la loi, le ministre fédéral de la Justice, David Lametti, n’avait toujours rien à dire de plus.

« On va regarder ce qui se passe sur le terrain. Aussi on va prendre le temps pour étudier les amendements qui ont été ajoutés à la loi. Et on va agir d’une façon prudente », disait le ministre Lametti lundi.

Il refusait toutefois d’exclure une intervention éventuelle de son gouvernement devant les tribunaux.

« Nous allons sûrement nous assurer que nos opinions soient bien connues et nous continuerons à défendre les droits des Canadiens », a répété, de son côté, M. Trudeau à Washington, jeudi.

Le journaliste lui a alors demandé s’il était temps de faire disparaître la clause dérogatoire.

Le premier ministre a préféré ne pas répondre à cette question.

Source: Loi 21: Trudeau dénonce, sans plus

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Andrew Coyne: Will leaders tolerate religious segregation just because it’s Quebec?

2019/06/19 Leave a comment

Typical trenchant Coyne column:

According to the premier of Quebec, it’s all about pride. Quebecers, Francois Legault claims, are forever stopping him in the street to tell him “‘Mr. Legault we are happy.’ I say why and they say ‘it’s because we are proud.’… To feel this regained pride among our people, who are standing up, advancing, makes me the happiest man in the world to be their premier.”

And what is this miraculous thing that has restored Quebecers’ sense of pride to them? What has prompted ordinary Quebecers to buttonhole the premier to tell him how happy — and proud — they are? A bill that prohibits those in “positions of authority” in the civil service, including not only judges and police officers but teachers, from wearing religious symbols on the job.

Which is to say, that prohibits those whose faith obliges them to wear such symbols from working in those positions. Or if we are really being frank, that bars them to observant Muslims — also Sikhs and some Jews, but really Muslims.

That, according to the premier, is what has caused Quebecers to walk erect again: Bill 21, “An act respecting the laicity of the state,” passed in a special weekend sitting of the legislature, with the help of closure.

The bill will of course face a raft of court challenges, its prophylactic invocation of the notwithstanding clause, er, notwithstanding. The clause may save the law from judicial invalidation on the grounds of its manifest violations of Charter guarantees of equality or religious freedom, but it does not shield it from judicial scrutiny on other grounds: as a possible violation of the division of powers, say, or of women’s rights, or indeed as an improper use of the clause itself.

Whether the courts will be willing to go to such novel lengths remains in doubt. So we are faced with a question I raised some months ago: is this a state of affairs the country can tolerate? On the evidence, it would seem we can. The government of the second-largest province in the country has just passed a law forbidding the province’s religious minorities from working in much of the public service  — and when we say religious minorities, we are typically also talking of racial minorities — and the reaction elsewhere is … silence. No federal leader issued a statement in response. No other premier spoke up.

Oh, there was some perfunctory criticism from both quarters when the bill was introduced, though in curiously muted language. Justin Trudeau ventured, indirectly, that he didn’t think “that a lot of people feel that … we should be legitimizing discrimination of our citizens based on religion.” Andrew Scheer noted, vaguely, that “a society based on fundamental freedoms and openness must always protect fundamental individual rights and should not in any way impede people from expressing themselves.” Even Jagmeet Singh, whose turban would preclude his employment as a cop or teacher in Quebec, confined himself to observing that “this law that is being proposed is something that divides the population… instead of bringing people together.”

But now even that is apparently too much. Whether or not one thinks some sort of federal action is required — I do not see why it is any less legitimate for the federal government to use its constitutional power to “disallow” provincial legislation than for the Supreme Court to do so, but neither is that the only means at the feds’ disposal — it is extraordinary that it should not even be considered worthy of comment.

If this had been tried in any other province — well, why proceed? It wouldn’t be tried in any other province. But if it were, the feds, the media and the rest of the great and the good would descend on the offending province like Moses from Mount Sinai, full of fiery denunciations of the bigotry that presumably inspired it. But because it is Quebec — and, one suspects, because there’s an election in the offing — we are invited, as ever, to understand, or at any rate to shut up.

We have to avoid the temptation to abstraction. This is not merely an “intrusion on religious freedom” or “incompatible with religious equality” or “a misunderstanding of religious neutrality.” It is a religious hiring bar. Its effect, if not its aim, is to enforce a kind of segregation over much of the public sector.

To be sure, it applies only to some jobs, and not the whole of the civil service, as the Parti Québécois had previously proposed in its “charter of values.” And the government has partially exempted existing employees: while they would not be fired from their current jobs — no tearful scenes for the networks — neither could they move to a new location, take a new job, or accept a promotion within the areas prohibited to them.

But this is small comfort to those Quebecers who might aspire to work as teachers, police officers, judges and so on, whose government has essentially told them: No Muslims (or Sikhs, or orthodox Jews) need apply. Even existing employees who profess these faiths must surely see how limited a future the government has in mind for them. Over time, they may be expected to take the hint, and leave.

We are surely past the stage now where some tenured idiot will attempt to justify this in the name of French concepts of secularism or Quebecers’ scarred memories of their Church-dominated past, but just in case: it is probably no coincidence that Bill 21 should have been passed on the same weekend as Bill 9, another law of dubious constitutionality that would impose a “values test” on immigrants to the province. This is about putting the province’s minorities — religious, racial and otherwise — in their place.

Which leaves the rest of us with a decision to make. Sixty-odd years ago the United States decided it was not prepared to tolerate racial segregation in its schools in the name of “states’ rights.” Will we tolerate religious segregation in the public service on the principle that “what happens in Quebec stays in Quebec”?

Source: Andrew Coyne: Will leaders tolerate religious segregation just because it’s Quebec?

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Maxime Bernier présente ses candidats québécois

2019/06/17 Leave a comment

Four women out of 31 (13 percent). Haven’t had time to look at immigrant and visible minority numbers:

Maxime Bernier a présenté vendredi à Montréal 31 candidats qui brigueront les suffrages pour le Parti populaire du Canada au Québec. Parmi eux, aucune figure connue, peu d’expérience politique et seulement quatre femmes.

«Le plus important pour nous ce n’est pas le sexe (des candidats): c’est que les gens partagent la plateforme et les valeurs du parti», s’est défendu le chef du Parti populaire du Canada (PPC), Maxime Bernier. Il présentait les candidats des circonscriptions de Montréal, Montérégie Ouest, Laval, Laurentides, et de l’Outaouais.

Les candidats sont issus des milieux des affaires ou des relations publiques, certains sont étudiants, ostéopathes, pasteurs, militaires, promoteurs immobiliers, avocats, etc. Ce panel hétéroclite a tout de même un point en commun: une vision d’un État aux pouvoirs restreints pour davantage de libertés individuelles.

Fort de ces candidatures, Maxime Bernier espère toujours participer au débat des chefs. Pour être éligible, puisque le PPC a été créé il y a neuf mois, le chef doit présenter des candidats dans au moins 304 des 388 circonscriptions. Ces candidats doivent aussi avoir «une véritable possibilité» d’être élus. Pour l’instant, il en a présenté 260. Selon le chef du PPC, il devrait de toute façon avoir sa place au débat, car il participe déjà chaque mardi aux côtés de représentants des autres partis politiques à l’émission Power Play, animée par Don Martin à CTV News.

Les «bons» changements climatiques

Maxime Bernier a réitéré l’opposition de son parti aux objectifs de l’accord Paris, puisqu’il croit «que c’est normal que le climat change» et «qu’il y a plus de 12 000 ans le Canada était sous la glace et que c’est grâce aux changements climatiques si le Canada est ce qu’il est aujourd’hui», ce qui a bien fait rire ses candidats. Il a ensuite affirmé vouloir dépolluer les lacs et les rivières pour qu’il soit possible d’y pêcher et de s’y baigner.

Maxime Bernier avait assuré que ses candidats pourraient prendre la position qu’ils désiraient dans le débat sur l’avortement. La candidate dans la circonscription de Shefford, Marriam Sabbagh, est pro-vie, tout comme celle dans Saint-Léonard-Saint-Michel, Tina Di Serio. «Je suis pro-vie, mais je respecte le choix des autres», a expliqué Mme Di Serio.

Pour le chef populiste, la catastrophe de Lac-Mégantic prouve par ailleurs qu’un oléoduc transnational est la solution la plus sécuritaire pour le transport du pétrole au pays. Si son parti remporte les élections, même en l’absence d’acceptabilité sociale, il imposerait ce pipeline.

Maxime Bernier a rappelé d’autres grandes lignes de son programme: fin de la gestion de l’offre en agriculture, réduction des seuils d’immigration, réforme du financement de Radio-Canada et de CBC, réduction de l’aide financière internationale et, entre autres, abolition du Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications canadiennes (CRTC).

Source: Maxime Bernier présente ses candidats québécois

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Québec définit ce qu’est un «signe religieux»

2019/06/13 Leave a comment

I have pity for the public servants who were tasked with the drafting what appears to be a fairly restrictive definition, given no mention of size (e.g., small pendants of the Cross, Star of David):

Le gouvernement Legault fait volte-face et consent finalement à définir ce que représente à ses yeux un « signe religieux » dans son projet de loi 21 sur la laïcité de l’État.

Depuis le dépôt du projet de loi controversé, le ministre responsable, Simon Jolin-Barrette, avait toujours refusé jusqu’à maintenant, malgré les pressions venant de toutes parts, de définir ce qu’il entendait par l’expression « signe religieux », qui est au coeur du document.

Mardi, en soirée, coup de théâtre à l’Assemblée nationale où son projet de loi est passé au peigne fin : le ministre Jolin-Barrette a déposé un amendement précisant aux nombreux employés de l’État visés par la loi ce qu’ils n’auront plus le droit de porter dans l’exercice de leurs fonctions.

Le libellé de l’amendement à l’article 6 démontre l’intention du gouvernement de ratisser large.

Ainsi, aux yeux du gouvernement, « tout objet, notamment un vêtement, un symbole, un bijou, une parure, un accessoire ou un couvre-chef » sera considéré comme étant un « signe religieux », s’il est porté « en lien avec une conviction ou une croyance religieuse » ou s’il est « raisonnablement considéré comme référant à une appartenance religieuse ».

Il n’y a aucune mention visant la taille de l’objet en question : minuscule ou ostentatoire, le signe religieux sera donc prohibé.

Le gouvernement Legault tient mordicus à faire adopter deux de ses projets de loi avant l’ajournement des travaux, prévu ce vendredi 14 juin : le projet de loi 9 sur l’immigration et le projet de loi 21 sur la laïcité de l’État.

Les deux législations sont pilotées par le ministre Jolin-Barrette.

Le projet de loi 21 en est rendu à l’étape de l’étude détaillée article par article.

Il prévoit interdire à plusieurs catégories d’employés de l’État – policiers, gardiens de prison, procureurs de la Couronne, enseignants et directeurs d’école des niveaux primaire et secondaire du secteur public, notamment – de porter tout signe religieux dans l’exercice de leurs fonctions.

Les employés actuels auraient un droit acquis (« clause grand-père »).

Durant la consultation menée sur le projet de loi, certains des témoins entendus avaient fait valoir que le document était beaucoup trop vague, sans définition précise de ce qui serait interdit ou pas, donc difficile à appliquer.

Source: Québec définit ce qu’est un «signe religieux»

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Hier les italophones, aujourd’hui les musulmans

2019/06/13 Leave a comment

On the politics of anti-immigration sentiment and a reminder that earlier waves also were affected:

Avec la marginalisation du Parti québécois et le remplacement du Parti libéral par la CAQ, nous assistons à un cycle politique caractérisé par l’alternance sans réelle alternative, en conformité avec l’ordre néolibéral. Ce gouvernement nationaliste de droite élu par 25 % de l’électorat, si l’on tient compte des abstentions, a recours à une recette éprouvée pour, à la fois, consolider et légitimer son pouvoir : détermination d’un problème réel ou imaginaire (la laïcité), élaboration d’une rhétorique alarmiste (retour du religieux) et désignation des responsables du problème (les musulmans). Les stratèges de François Legault n’ont rien inventé. Il y a une cinquantaine d’années, le mouvement nationaliste de l’époque s’est servi de la même recette mais avec d’autres ingrédients : la langue française, l’anglicisation et les italophones.

Il a fallu près d’une décennie pour que le psychodrame linguistique, se déroulant aux dépens des Québécois d’origine italienne, se dénoue enfin par l’adoption de la loi 101. Les relations entre ces derniers et les francophones se détériorèrent à tel point, et pendant si longtemps, que la méfiance et le ressentiment eurent raison de Giuseppe Sciortino, candidat péquiste dans Mercier, lors de l’élection précédant le dernier référendum. Il fut obligé, in extremis, de céder la place à un francophone d’ascendance canadienne-française à la suite de manoeuvres douteuses. Récemment, Michel David, chroniqueur au Devoir, écrivait que la présence de Sciortino, avocat éminemment ministrable au sein du futur gouvernement Parizeau, aurait probablement apporté au camp souverainiste les 45 000 voix qui lui manquaient pour remporter le référendum de 1995. Le nationalisme mesquin et revanchard est parfois suicidaire.

Aujourd’hui, ce sont les musulmans, en particulier les musulmanes, qui ont le mauvais rôle. Pourtant, il y a une vingtaine d’années, près des deux tiers des Québécois étaient contre l’interdiction du voile islamique. Selon un sondage récent, ils sont maintenant au moins autant à vouloir l’interdire. Pourquoi ce revirement ? Nul besoin d’être un exégète de Gramsci pour savoir que l’adhésion à un projet politique ou de société (ou perçu comme tel) est précédée par une longue période de propagation des idées et d’imprégnation des esprits auxquelles contribuent, consciemment ou non, de nombreux acteurs sociaux. En France (source d’inspiration pour certains Québécois) comme ici, politiques, chroniqueurs et essayistes se sont employés avec autant de ferveur que de constance à élaborer une rhétorique hostile à l’immigration et à la diversité culturelle — assimilée au multiculturalisme trudeauiste pour mieux la dénoncer — tout en souscrivant au mythe du choc des civilisations : une idéologie servant, entre autres, à dénigrer l’islam. Partout en Occident, l’islam est devenu l’ennemi à abattre. Le Québec ne fait pas exception. Il faut être d’une grande naïveté pour croire que le projet de loi 21 existerait sans la présence des musulmans.

Nationalistes conservateurs

Ce discours n’aurait pas eu autant de succès sans la contribution, depuis le tournant du millénaire, de nationalistes conservateurs, défenseurs d’une nation ethnoculturelle qui, craignant sans raison valable « la tyrannie des minorités » et « le reniement de soi », poursuivent, tout en le niant, la chimère d’un Québec assimilationniste et homogène. Il y a de cela aussi dans l’interdiction du port du foulard musulman. Ces hérauts d’un temps révolu, aux accents groulciens, doivent nous expliquer pourquoi l’assimilation que les francophones d’Amérique ont combattue avec autant de détermination serait souhaitable pour les immigrants.

Mais pourquoi la laïcité est-elle devenue la priorité de ce gouvernement, auquel on a dû rappeler l’importance de l’environnement, alors que deux millions et demi de Québécois ont un revenu inférieur à 25 000 $, que le système scolaire est le plus inégalitaire au Canada en raison de sa double ségrégation sociale et ethnique, et que les Québécois francophones sont sous-scolarisés par rapport aux immigrants (21 % contre 39 % de diplômés universitaires) et aux anglophones ? L’hégémonie néolibérale est telle, en Occident, que les partis de gouvernement, et non pas les formations politiques marginales, ne se distinguent presque plus sur les questions fondamentales et cherchent à tout prix à se différencier sur des questions secondaires ou fallacieuses, comme la laïcité ici ou l’islamisation et d’autres mythes ailleurs. C’est l’alternance sans véritable alternative. Ceux qui doutent de l’emprise, sur ce gouvernement, de cette rationalité mortifère, fondée principalement sur la concurrence généralisée, n’ont qu’à penser à la mise en concurrence de l’industrie du taxi avec Uber, aux immigrants réguliers avec les travailleurs temporaires et aux maternelles quatre ans avec les CPE.

Mais, au-delà de ce qui précède, il y a une réponse très simple à cette question : la laïcité est devenue une priorité parce que s’en prendre aux immigrants est politiquement rentable, comme partout en Occident. Le psychodrame d’il y a cinquante ans nous a peut-être coûté la souveraineté. Quel prix paierons-nous pour celui qui se déroule maintenant aux dépens des musulmans ?

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Douglas Todd: Quebec gets four times as much as B.C. to settle immigrants

2019/06/12 Leave a comment

A perennial but untouchable issue. Makes it difficult to have sympathy for the costs incurred by the irregular asylum seekers:

It’s one of the most lopsided distributions of federal money in memory.

Quebec gets roughly four times as many taxpayer dollars from Ottawa to settle each of its immigrants as B.C., Ontario and several other provinces get.

What’s worse, the one-sided gap is growing bigger each year.

That’s because of a deal called the Canada-Quebec immigration accord, which prime minister Brian Mulroney signed in 1991 to give unique immigration powers to francophone provinces, mainly to appease a surging sovereigntist movement.

As a result, Quebec this year is receiving more than $11,600 for each immigrant and refugee it takes in, with the money meant to provide settlements services such as language and job training.

B.C. receives only about $2,400 for each new immigrant or refugee. Saskatchewan gets about $2,500, Ontario receives about $2,600 and Alberta gets about $3,300.

The disparity between Quebec and the other provinces is soon going to grow even more egregious.

That’s in part because the new premier of Quebec, Francois Legault, elected last year, is carrying through on his promise to cut immigration levels to his province by 10,000 newcomers annually. That means Quebec’s immigrant intake will drop to roughly the same as that of B.C. — about 40,000 a year.

Despite Quebec chopping its immigration levels by 20 per cent, the province will continue to get more money based on the generous financial mechanisms built into the Canada-Quebec accord.

It includes an escalator clause, which dictates that Canada is obliged in most years to give more money to Quebec to settle its new permanent residents, but never less than in a previous year.

What it adds up to is that Quebec will get $559 million for 2019-20, while B.C. will get a paltry $100 million — while needing to provide services to virtually the same number of new immigrants and refugees as Quebec.

Ontario, which accepts about 130,000 immigrants a year (by far the largest of any province), will get $340 million. Alberta, which usually takes about the same number as B.C., will receive $129 million.

It is an amazing sweetheart deal for Quebec. And few Canadians realize it, since the subject is virtually taboo among politicians.

“If Quebec takes in one immigrant or 50,000 immigrants, it still gets the same amount of money under the Canada-Quebec accord,” says Stephan Reichholt, who heads the umbrella organization that oversees 150 different settlement agencies in Quebec.

As one of Quebec’s foremost specialists on immigrants and refugees, Reichholt says the vast majority of Canadians have no idea the unbalanced funding is occurring — mainly because the federal government doesn’t want a fight with Quebec and its voters, and because it’s too embarrassed to draw attention to the huge gaps.

“It drives the feds crazy. But they can’t do anything about it. Most Canadians don’t understand the mechanism (of the accord). They don’t know what’s going on in Quebec,” said Reichhold, director general of the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes.

“Meanwhile, the federal government is ashamed. It’s basically a taboo subject.”

To put it mildly, Quebec has little incentive to call attention to its golden financial immigration goose.

“I’m happy Quebec gets all the money. Eighty per cent of it normally goes into general revenue,” said Reichholt, adding an undetermined portion, which may be about to increase, is distributed to settlement agencies.

The imbalanced payments go back more than 25 years, to when Mulroney was trying to get Quebec premier Robert Bourassa to sign the Meech Lake accord, which was intended to persuade Quebec and other provinces to adopt  constitutional changes. Quebec never signed the Meech Lake deal.

Instead, it agreed to the offer made by Mulroney and then-immigration minister Barbara McDougall to give Quebec more control of its own immigration policy, even as Ottawa promised to foot the bill for the costs.

Mulroney’s deal committed Canadian taxpayers to giving Quebec a proportion of all federal spending, which would escalate when spending rises — and would never go down.  That “incredible formula,” as Reichholt called it, continues no matter how many immigrants Quebec chooses to accept.

Vancouver-based Chris Friesen, who is chair of the umbrella body overseeing all settlement services in Canada, said the Canada-Quebec immigration accord is a “lopsided” agreement that basically cannot be renegotiated.

“What we have is the new premier of Quebec being elected by calling for 10,000 fewer immigrants. Meanwhile he gets more money to settle them. Where do you sign me up (for such a deal)?” said Friesen, who chairs the national Canadian Immigrant Sector Alliance and is also settlement director for the Immigrant Services Society of B.C.

The federal government was meant to encourage nation building, Friesen said, by equitably distributing money to the provinces to support their immigrant and refugee settlement programs, which help newcomers learn English or French, obtain jobs and access social services. But that goal has become skewed by the one-sided accord with Quebec.

This is not the only profitable arrangement Quebec has with Ottawa on immigration. There is also the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program, which attracts nine out of 10 of its millionaire applicants from Asia, mostly China. Each must inject a $1.2 million loan into Quebec’s coffers.

But only one in 10 of the well-to-do migrants who take advantage of Quebec’s investor program choose to live there. Instead, most of the roughly 5,000 migrants a year who exploit the buy-a-passport program immediately move to Metro Vancouver and Toronto.

Legault, the new premier of Quebec, was elected in part on his promise to make sure newcomers to the province better integrate. The premier will now have a chance to show that he intends to make that happen, said Reichholt, by funnelling more money from Ottawa into the province’s settlement programs for immigrants and refugees.

Since Reichholt is tasked with overseeing Quebec’s settlement programs, he expects each agency will receive double or triple the funding this year. He also expects the premier to direct some of the settlement money received through the Canada-Quebec immigration accord into public education, health care and to support temporary foreign workers and international students — something the other provinces are not allowed to do.

“Quebec’s immigration program is unique in the world” in the way the province’s politicians can almost entirely call their own shots, while being generously supported by federal tax dollars, said Reichholt.

“But that’s not necessarily fair for you in B.C.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Quebec gets four times as much as B.C. to settle immigrants

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The Legault government is dividing Quebec: Excluding Montreal and Millenials

2019/06/07 Leave a comment

A bit of a rant but some merit to the distinction between Montreal and the rest of Quebec as well as millennials and older generations:

For the first time in the history of Quebec, the provincial government has no senior ministers and only two elected representatives from the island of Montreal, and it shows.

Nothing makes this more evident than Bill 21, the secularism law proposed by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government that is especially contentious for banning certain public workers from wearing religious symbols. Notable among them are teachers and school principals, police officers, judges, Crown prosecutors and prison guards.

In an attempt to pre-empt litigation, the government has invoked the notwithstanding clause that allows the Government of Quebec to override portions of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Putting a lid on debate on the bill, the CAQ limited public hearings to six days, ending May 16, 2019. The CAQ indicated it would use closure to limit debate in the legislature, in hopes of speedy adoption by June 15th at the latest.

On April 15, 2019, Montreal City Council in rare unanimity adopted a resolution condemning Bill 21. The resolution was introduced by Lionel Perez, who wears a kippa and is the leader of the opposition Ensemble Montreal. Perez said he is as Québécois as any other resident of Quebec and was warmly applauded by council members. Shortly before the meeting, Mayor Valérie Plante and Perez held a joint press conference to present their common position.

Proposed law generating tensions

Testifying at legislative hearings on May 14, 2019, Plante made a passionate plea on grounds the law stigmatizes the most vulnerable women in society. She noted that unemployment among female immigrants in Quebec is twice that of other women. She said the bill generates tensions in the province. Plante also said the law would be difficult to apply because it is unclear what is meant by religious symbols. She argued against using the notwithstanding clause, saying the law should be solid enough to withstand challenges in the courts.

Montreal’s largest and most multicultural francophone school board in Quebec, Commission scolaire de Montréal (CSDM), produced a report implying Bill 21 cannot be implemented without creating an unmanageable administrative burden that could not be justified. The board declared that the bill doesn’t correspond with reality in that it has many employees who are not teachers and would not be subject to the legislation. Among them are specialists in learning disabilities and day care service providers. That was echoed at the legislative hearings by Alain Fortier of the Fédération des commissions scolaires du Québec, (Quebec school board federation).

Jean-Claude Hébert, a criminal lawyer and a familiar face in Quebec francophone media, indicated that jurisprudence is such that the proposed law would be the object of many court battles despite the notwithstanding clause.

Pierre Bosset, a jurist from the Université du Québec à Montréal, noted that while changes to the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms have been based on substantive research and unanimous or near unanimous support in the National Assembly, such is not the case with Bill 21.

At the hearings on May 8, Gérald Bouchard, who co-presided over the 2007 hearings on Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodations, concurred with the City of Montreal that CAQ had not justified the use of the notwithstanding clause. Bouchard argued that the government had offered absolutely no evidence to support assertions by Premier François Legault and Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister of inclusion, diversity and immigration, that the wearing of religious symbols by teachers constitutes religious indoctrination on impressionable children.

Settling accounts with a bygone era

In a response to Bouchard’s testimony at the Parliamentary hearings, Guy Rocher, a 95-year-old sociologist who is well-known in Quebec, insisted that permitting religious symbols in schools would lead to a return to the era of the defunct confessional school systems. In that era school boards were based on either the Catholic or Protestant religions, rather than language, as they are today.

Rocher claimed that Quebec, having experienced an era when highly visible Catholic religious symbols were worn by teachers, must not risk having a dictatorship of minority religions imposed on the majority. But Rocher did not offer any evidence to support his conclusions, saying the methodology and data on this matter do not exist.

Yet many in Quebec’s francophone community share this fear, having had the Church-ridden era embedded in their psyche the way residential schools are ingrained in the memories of Canada’s Aboriginal communities. For many older francophones, Bill 21 is a matter of settling accounts with a bygone Catholic monopoly on the francophone school system. A perverse impact of Bill 21 could be more children going to private confessional schools where the legislation does not apply, despite public subsidies.

Bouchard said the notwithstanding clause should only be used for exceptional situations to better protect rights, such as the language legislation to assure the survival of French as the language of the majority in Quebec, in the North American context. Bill 21 suppresses rights, thus portraying Quebec as disrespectful of a decent democratic society, he said. Evidence of a tarnished international portrait of Quebec is in reports by the New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian. Bouchard projected that the bill would cultivate tensions between francophone and non-francophone communities.

Bouchard’s analyses of tensions are reflected in an Angus-Reid survey showing that while 64 per cent of Quebecers support the proposed bill, 57 per cent don’t think the ban should be applied to someone wearing a crucifix. By contrast, only seven per cent think that a hijab should be exempt from a ban. This Islamophobia indicator was confirmed by Charles Taylor, of the above noted Bouchard-Taylor Commission and professor emeritus at McGill University. He said Bill 21 has fueled toxic comments about Muslims in social media and warned that studies show hate incidents were encouraged by election campaigns based on ethnic restrictions in France, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Geographical and generational divides

Also, differences in levels of xenophobia are inter-generational, in addition to reflecting a divide between Montreal and other regions of the province.

The Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), one of the largest unions in Québec, expressed opposition at the legislative hearings to applying Bill 21 to teachers. When questioned as to why the CSN supported the 2013 Parti Québécois proposed secular legislation, the Charter of Values, CSN president Jacques Létourneau said it is a generational thing, the new wave of CSN people having replaced older activists. A CROP survey supports this analysis, with support for Bill 21 restrictions on teachers at 55-56 per cent of those older than 55, much higher than the 28 per cent among respondents aged 18-34.

On a May 6 segment of Le Téléjournal, the Radio-Canada equivalent to the CBC national news, the views of multicultural adolescents in a Montreal francophone school were compared with those of a francophone school in the small municipalitiy of Matane in Eastern Quebec. The Montreal students totally opposed Bill 21 application to teachers while the Matane students were divided. Those against Bill 21 in the Matane group conveyed it is an inter-generational difference of opinion, the older generation fearing a return of confessional schools while the current generation of students have no such fears.

A poll showed differences among the non-francophone minority and the francophone majority. Inclusion of teachers in the religious symbol ban is supported by 69 per cent of francophones but only 22-23 per cent of non-francophones. Only 22 per cent of francophones has a positive opinion on wearing the hijab, whereas 46 per cent of anglophones and 52 of allophones (groups other than francophones and anglophones) share a positive opinion.

A contributing factor to the linguistic contrast is that most of Quebec’s regions are nearly entirely francophone with very few immigrants, while Montreal is multicultural. It is important to make a linguistic clarification here in that francophones in multicultural Montreal are not necessarily aligned with francophones in regions, as is evident in the City of Montreal’s unanimous resolution, by francophone and non-francophone representatives alike, opposing Bill 21.

At the hearings on May 14, the Quebec English School Boards Association (QESBA) pledged to contest the legislation based on a 1990 Supreme Court of Canada decision in Mahé v. Alberta. The court ruled that minority education rights are such that, French-language schools in Alberta had full authority to recruit and assign teachers and other personnel, as they see fit. The QESBA argued that the Bill 21 notwithstanding clause would not hold up to article 23 on minority rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This could be a Pandora’s Box that would bring down the law.

Ironically, the law would encourage new arrivals to associate with the anglophone community where they would be more readily accepted as equals. That is, the consequences of implementing Bill 21 could undermine the goals of Quebec parties of all stripes to make Quebec as much a multicultural francophone society where French is the common language of use in a mixed mother-tongue context, as English is the common language of use in multicultural English Canada.

Immigration quotas compound divisions

Compounding the divisiveness, the CAQ wants to reduce the quota of new immigrants received per year by 20 per cent, which Mayor Plante strongly opposes. She highlighted Quebec’s shortage of employees to fill vacant positions as an impediment to economic development. The vast majority of new immigrants to Quebec, 90 per cent, take up residence in the Montreal area. But Labour Minister Jean Boulet prefers to address the matter with incentives for those aged 60 and older, to stay at their job, or return to work from retirement.

Plante is at odds with the CAQ government on transportation too. The first CAQ budget allocated 70 per cent of transport financing to road construction and 30 per cent to public transit. Plante’s position is this ratio should be inverted, similar to that in Ontario. CAQ’s priority is to widen and prolong major highways and add a third link across the St. Lawrence River between Quebec and its southern suburb Lévis.

Regarding the expansion of a planned 67 kilometre light train network, Réseau Express Montréal (REM), the CAQ administration said it will have the last word. The government prefers expansion to the suburbs where CAQ candidates won seats, instead of adhering to a long-term plan of the Montreal regional transport organization made up of elected representatives, l’Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM).

The government position is that the ARTM should have an advisory role only. Plante wants the ARTM to be in charge, having indicated that the CAQ plans would increase overcrowding on the subway network. In her election campaign, Plante proposed a Métro Pink Line, from a station in northwest Montreal to Lachine in the southwest, to relieve saturation on a line from suburban Laval to downtown. Premier Legault dismissed this option, although CAQ may be softening its stance by committing $5 million to study solutions to congestion during peak hours on the eastern Orange Line.

Combining CAQ transport and immigration dividing lines, under Bill 17, CAQ plans to allow anyone to provide a taxi service in Quebec. This initiative would bring an abrupt end to the system of taxi permits which controls the supply of taxis to assure Quebec’s taxi drivers, particularly in Montreal, can make a decent living. As it happens, many Montreal taxi drivers are immigrants.

The Bureau de Taxi de Montréal and the City of Montreal are on the same wavelength against Bill 17, but Quebec Transport Minister François Bonnardel wants the free market to prevail. And similar to the scenario with Bill 21 on secularism, CAQ offered no evidence to substantiate its position while the government’s own preliminary report concluded Bill 17 would spell the demise of the industry.

When one puts pieces of the puzzle together, it is clear that the CAQ wants to impose its own inward-looking nationalism, dividing Quebec as never before, with multicultural Montreal and millennials to suffer the consequences.

Source: The Legault government is dividing Quebec: Excluding Montreal and Millenials

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Quebec: Crimes haineux: «On ne voit que la pointe de l’iceberg»

2019/06/03 Leave a comment

Not unique to Quebec:

Les crimes et incidents haineux comptabilisés au Québec ne sont que la « pointe de l’iceberg » d’un phénomène beaucoup plus large, selon un chercheur rattaché au Centre de prévention de la radicalisation menant à la violence.

« C’est difficile à évaluer précisément, mais mon impression est qu’il y a quasiment 90 % du phénomène qui n’est pas mesuré », affirme Benjamin Ducol, responsable de la recherche pour le centre. Selon lui, cette sous-estimation fait en sorte qu’il est impossible de se fier aux statistiques pour comprendre l’évolution des crimes haineux au Québec, a fortiori pour intervenir efficacement pour les contrer et protéger les victimes.

Deux indices font dire à Benjamin Ducol que les crimes haineux sont massivement sous-estimés au Québec. Le premier est qu’il y a eu 489 crimes haineux rapportés à la police au Québec en 2017, ce qui veut dire qu’ils ne toucheraient que 0,006 % de la population. Or, en Angleterre et au pays de Galles, on a rapporté la même année 94 098 crimes haineux pour une population de 59 millions d’habitants, soit un taux de 0,16 %. C’est 27 fois plus que chez nous.

« Soit nos amis britanniques sont extrêmement haineux, soit on a un problème de mesure chez nous. » – Benjamin Ducol, chercheur rattaché au Centre de la prévention de la radicalisation menant à la violence

Pour en avoir le coeur net, son groupe de recherche a mené un sondage auprès de 1843 Québécois formant un échantillon représentatif de l’ensemble de la population. Résultat : 0,7 % des Québécois ont rapporté avoir subi un tel crime, un taux 100 fois plus élevé que ne le disent les statistiques officielles.

Sous-déclaration, sous-enregistrement

Que se passe-t-il ? M. Ducol estime que deux phénomènes sont à l’oeuvre. Le premier est le sous-signalement des crimes haineux. Pour toutes sortes de raisons, qui vont de la crainte de ne pas être cru à de mauvaises expériences passées avec la police, bien des victimes préféreraient se taire plutôt que d’aller cogner à la porte des policiers pour rapporter un crime.

« On sait qu’à Montréal, une des populations particulièrement ciblées par les incidents haineux est les travailleurs du sexe trans, illustre M. Duclos. Or, ce sont des gens qui ont énormément de conflits avec les autorités policières. On comprend qu’ils n’auront pas tendance à aller signaler une victimisation auprès de ces autorités », dit-il.

Les incidents haineux – des actes comme des insultes ou des graffitis haineux, mais qui ne correspondent pas à la définition de crimes – sont sans doute encore plus sous-déclarés, de nombreuses victimes jugeant qu’il ne vaut pas la peine de les rapporter. Le fait qu’une partie de ces actes se produisent en ligne les rend aussi plus difficiles à cerner.

Le deuxième problème est le sous-enregistrement. Lorsqu’une plainte est bel et bien déposée, il est loin d’être sûr que les policiers la catégoriseront comme un acte haineux.

« Il y a des pratiques variables, par exemple entre deux policiers qui n’ont pas la même sensibilité ou qui n’ont pas été formés de la même manière », avance M. Ducol.

Le Royaume-Uni s’attaque au problème

Le chercheur affirme que le Royaume-Uni est l’un des seuls endroits où on s’est rendu compte que les crimes haineux échappaient au radar des autorités et où on s’est attaqué au problème. Les policiers ont été formés et des campagnes publiques ont été lancées pour inciter les victimes à déclarer les actes.

Benjamin Ducol estime qu’il est urgent de faire la même chose ici. Il soupçonne toutefois que la volonté politique de le faire est faible.

« Un truc qui bloque certaines villes ou certaines institutions à mieux mesurer, c’est qu’elles ont peur qu’on vienne ensuite leur dire qu’il y a une hausse. » – Benjamin Ducol

« Imaginez qu’on commence à mieux mesurer [le phénomène] au Québec et qu’on trouve beaucoup plus de crimes haineux. Les gens vont dire : “Ah, le Québec ! C’est incroyable comme les gens sont plus racistes !” Alors que ça voudra peut-être seulement dire que la province a été meilleure, collectivement, à mesurer ces actes. »

Devant les vrais chiffres, serait-il plus difficile de soutenir qu’il n’y a pas d’islamophobie au Québec, comme l’ont affirmé par exemple le premier ministre François Legault et d’autres commentateurs ?

« C’est vrai qu’actuellement, on peut dire tout et n’importe quoi, tellement les chiffres sont mineurs », dit-il. Benjamin Ducol soutient par ailleurs qu’on ne peut pas non plus se fier aux statistiques qui montrent que les crimes et incidents haineux sont en forte hausse au Québec depuis quelques années (184 crimes rapportés en 2013, contre 489 en 2017).

« L’échantillon de base est tellement minime que ça ne veut rien dire, dit-il. La hausse, à mon avis, montre seulement un meilleur enregistrement des crimes haineux ». Selon lui, il est « presque absurde de publier des données quand on sait qu’elles ne sont pas représentatives ».

Le chercheur soutient qu’au bout du compte, de meilleures mesures des crimes haineux serviraient les victimes. « Prendre toute la réalité du phénomène permettrait concrètement de réfléchir à des mesures politiques et institutionnelles, dit-il. Notre sondage, par exemple, montre qu’une grande partie des actes a lieu dans l’espace public. Mon hypothèse est que le métro est propice à ce genre d’incidents. Si on le confirme, on peut alors faire des campagnes avec la STM, du genre : les crimes haineux dans le métro, c’est non. On peut cibler les actions. »

Source: Crimes haineux: «On ne voit que la pointe de l’iceberg»

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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