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March 28, 2007
A sad day for Québec
Monday cannot be seen but as a sad day for Québec and for Canada. What was once Canada's most progressive and visionary province - the land of $7-a-day child care, affordable tuition, cheap public transit, and the Caisse de dépôt et placement - is slowly turning into one of its most backward and reactionary.
A pivotal moment in the campaign was the tabloid-fuelled furor over the totally bogus charge that the province was going to exempt Muslim women from showing their faces at the election booths. In fact, Québec law does not forbid anyone from covering their face at a booth, whether with a niqab or a hockey mask. But anti-immigrant hysteria will not stop and listen to anything that contradicts its narrative - that these backward, primitive darkies are coming in and destroying "our" values. So, at the last minute, the province actually introduced a double standard - Muslim women, and only Muslim women, would be required to show their faces, everyone else would not.
Mario Dumont campaigned on a platform of conservatism at its ugliest. Fortunately he did not obtain the premiership, but if he did he might well be the most anti-union, anti-immigrant, right-wing leader Québec has had since Maurice Duplessis. Indeed, there is nothing new about the Action Démocratique party, it is simply the old Union Nationale reborn. Québec is turning its back on the Quiet Revolution.
Dumont's entire career has been peppered with kooky ideas. The ADQ was founded in 1990 based on the Allaire Report, where, embittered by the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, Jean Allaire called for Québec to remain in Canada but with Ottawa reduced to licking postage stamps. At one time or another, Dumont has demanded a 20 percent flat tax, two-tier medicine, charter schools, emasculation of unions, and simultaneous cuts for business taxes and social programs.
For an explanation of Dumont's victory, one has to go no further than the town of Hérouxville. Its now-famous resolution proclaimed that practices such as stoning and genital mutilation - which have never been reported in Canada - were not welcome among immigrants to the town. This is merely a sly way of saying that immigrants tend to be barbarians who engage in such practices, and that they, themselves, are not welcome in the heartland. They are to stay in Montréal, or better yet exit the province entirely. And let them not dare to wear a headscarf at a soccer game.
Nor was there much solace to be found in the other parties. André Boisclair revealed himself to be the worst leader in the history of the Parti Québécois. In no other province could a party leader have openly goftten away with dissing Asians as "slanty-eyed immigrants". And Jean Charest was reduced to minority status not for his right-wing agenda, but for not going far enough.
The PLQ can save itself simply by adopting much of the ADQ's agenda - for, after all, the ADQ started out as a splinter movement from the PLQ. Whether it works or not remains to be seen. If it happens, Québec will have come full circle. The party of Jean Lesage will have become the party of Maurice Duplessis.
Posted by Tyrone at March 28, 2007 10:42 AM
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Comments
Hérouxville actually learned a lot from its excursion into xenophobia, since the town council met with representatives of immigrant groups and everyone apparently thought the meeting improved Hérouxvillois' understanding of other cultures as well as their own. Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, eh? And Boisclair didn't call immigrants slanty-eyed, he said they had yeux bridés, which apparently is not considered offensive in French; maybe it should be, but at any rate the big Asian organizations said they weren't offended. The chief electoral officer panicked on the veil issue; I think everyone was happy in the end. About the ADQ, though, I'm afraid you're right. One benefit that may come out of this, though, is that the separation of Quebec nationalism from a particular political position may force the federal government to have real negotiations about Quebec's status in the federation; sending people to Montreal to wave flags probably isn't going to seem like the best option any more.
Posted by: P. Brain at April 9, 2007 09:55 AM