The information
contained in this article is common knowledge for francophone Québec but is
rarely available in English and as such virtually unknown to English Canada. This leads to many misunderstandings, often
referred to as the two solitudes.
La Charte des
valeurs: A Cocktail Which Appeals to Many Progressives and Feminists as well as
Regressives, but for Different Reasons
Contrary to what many
in English Canada may think, the debate in Quebec about La Charte des valeurs
(Charter of Values) represents a cocktail of factors.
One of the main components
of the cocktail has to do with the Québec dark years known as "la grande
noirceur", the years during which
the Québec francophone community lived under draconian Catholic Church rule, a
Church which censured music and films, sent women who had sexual relations
prior marriage into the streets, and abducted children born outside marriage to
be put in Church orphanages. One might
say that these dark years are now looked upon by the majority of Québécois as being
as reprehensible as residential schools are for members of Canada's First
Nations.
Accordingly, the
sentiment to separate religion from the state is a several notches stronger in
Quebec than in the rest of Canada.
Add to these elements
of the cocktail, that, for women, these dark years included the classification
of woman in a male controlled inferior zone.
Consequently, many in the feminist movement want to make sure that
religious symbols of inferiorization, worn on one's body or otherwise, are
banned from the public sector.
Yet another component
of the cocktail is the Duplessis years, 1936-1039 and 1944-1959, the years
during which late Premier Duplessis had a pact with the Catholic Church to
control the people. Under the pact, the
Church would run the Catholic schools, the hospitals and civil society in
general, as long as the Catholic Church kept the people docile under the
Duplessis economic development formula entailing cheap labour and
union/communist busting features. In
honour of this pact, in 1936 Premier Duplessis had a crucifix placed over the
Speaker's chair in the National Assembly.
Pauline Marois
Calculated Targeting of Markets, Similar to the Harper Model: The December 2013
Election Plan that Failed
Pauline Marois, like
Stephen Harper, wants to be in full control and consequently detests minority
governments -- her government is a minority government. But because her first year in power has been
one of a seemingly endless series of incoherent improvisations, she had lost
control of public opinion. -- In that sense, her government is not all that
different than the Charest Liberal government that preceded the PQ.
While she had promised
she would eliminate the heath tax during her election campaign, her first
budget included a health tax of $200 for those earning $42,000 to
$100,000. Another election promise
entailed addressing the absurdly low royalties and taxes paid by Quebec's
mining industry, but once in power she backed down to the industry lobby. She had promised to migrate Quebec to a green
economy but so far she seems okay with the two pipeline proposals to transport
tar sands oil into, and crossing over, Quebec, and is not ruling out exploiting
potential local oil reserves.
All this added up to
widespread dissatisfaction with the Marois government and poor prospects for
pursuing a majority government. This is
where La Charte comes in.
In early Fall 2013, figuring
her government could position the PQ for a majority government by creating a
perceived crisis among québécois to the effect Quebec had an epidemic of new religious
immigrants who were imposing religious accommodations on the majority
population, Pauline Marois introduced the Charte.
This Fall 2013 game
plan entailed calling an election for December 2013, while La Charte was a hot
topic, and cut into the Québec homogenous outlying regions' right wing
nationalist vote -- a game plan to foster a migration of Coalition pour
l'avenir du Québec (CAQ) vote over to the PQ.
That made "political sense" in that CAQ support is declining.
This election game plan
also counted on the feminist movement.
Accordingly, as did Harper when he placed "correct thinking"
people on the Board of Rights and Democracy, Marois appointed 4 new "correct
thinking" members to the Conseil du statut de la femme (Council on the
Status of Women). But it backfired when
the President of the Conseil, Julie Miville-Dechêne, publicly denounced this
political interference. The reality is
that the woman's movement in Québec is divided on the issue.
Montreal Municipal
Elections: November 3, 2013
During this same Fall
2013 period, all four of the main candidates for Mayor of Montreal for the November 3, 2013 elections came out
against the Charte.
On November 3, Denis
Coderre, former federal Liberal Cabinet minister, the very in the box unimaginative
candidate for Mayor with a very sparse and vague platform - he actually thinks
more parking spaces downtown is a solution for Montreal, Canada's most
congested city- became the city's new Mayor with 32% of the vote. On La Charte, Coderre had said in one of the
election debates that he would contest La Charte in the courts if it included
the ban on religious symbols in the public sector.
For those in BC, it
may be also interesting to note that innovative visionary candidate for Mayor,
Richard Bergeron of Projet Montréal, often referred to Vancouver as a model for
urban densification and a green city. He
came in second with 25.6%.
Others Adding their
Voices Against La Charte: Provincial Election Bluff Called Off
Concurrent with the
municipal election campaigning, others condemning the La Charte elements pertaining
to the wearing of religious symbols were Quebec's hospitals' association,
universities, a teachers' union, a private daycare centres' association and
many more.
Adding his voice to
this opposition, the President of La Commission des droits de la
personne et des droits de la jeunesse (human rights and
youth rights commission), Jacques Frémont, went public to say La Charte would
not pass the test of either the Quebec Charter of Rights or the Canadian
Charter of Rights in the event of a legal challenge. Either the PQ would have to modify the
proposed Charte or revert to the "Notwithstanding clause."
In effect, it has
become very clear that it would be impossible to apply La Charte in the
Montreal Statistics Canada census area, which attracts 87% of Québec immigrants
and which represents over 45% of the population of Québec.
But all these obstacles
did not deter the PQ.
Rather, the factor
that changed Pauline Marois's mind about going into a December 2013 election
with the highly emotional Charte as a wedge issue, was the fact that the polls did
not deliver the hoped for support. As
a result, as of October 27, 2013, the December 2013 election hype has been
called off.
Swinging Further to
the Right
Cultivating the right
nationalist vote for La Charte, is not, unfortunately an isolated incident.
Shortly after coming
into power, the Marois government appointed Pierre Karl Péladeau -- controlling
shareholder of Quebecor and The Sun Media and well-known for his support of
right wing causes -- to sit on the Board of Hydro-Québec. Péladeau has since attended at least two
Marois Cabinet meetings.
His spouse, Julie Snyder,
host of the popular Star Académie (Québec equivalent to American Idol), is one
of the members of the Janette movement, a women's movement in support of La
Charte. Julie Snyder is also involved in
the development of a television production on a favourable portrait of Pauline
Marois to be aired on TVA, a TV network owned by the Pierre Karl Péladeau media
empire.
Which brings us back
to what Pauline Marois said when she became the leader of the PQ. At the time she said she would modernize
social democracy. She never explained
what she meant, but after a year in power, it is becoming clearer as to what
she had in mind -- go after the right wing nationalist vote to put sovereignty
over the top. Fortunately for Canada,
the game plan is not working.
