Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘reasonable accommodation’

So Louise Beaudoin says out loud what most of the PQ has been saying – openly or not-so-openly – for years: We only care about one culture, and that’s pure laine quebecois, and everyone else can shape up or get out.

Okay, not in so many words, but that was the gist of the Pequiste leader’s remarks to the press after a group of Sikhs were denied entrance to the National Assembly. They were there to speak out against Bill 94, a racist piece of claptrap that would deny services to Muslim women wearing face coverings, for instance, and is supported by an overwhelming 95% of Quebecers. This law as written won’t impact the Sikh community specifically, but the people who came out to speak up were there to represent the 5% of people who disapprove of the Quebec government’s attempt to further infringe on religious freedom for xenophobic reasons.

Now, there is a very legitimate question about the kirpan, and whether any kind of weapon – ceremonial or otherwise – should be permitted past security screening at the National Assembly. Beaudoin could have taken the high road, saying “we would like to hear from all Quebecers, and we invite the views of the Sikh community on this issue, and we regret that security concerns did not allow us to admit them” or something to that effect. It wouldn’t have solved the tricky kirpan debate, but it would have signalled an openness to at least discuss it.

But Beaudoin chose the low road. Specifically, she said that:

“Religious freedom exists, but there are other values,” she added. “Multiculturalism may be a Canadian value. But it is not a Quebec one.

“And we haven’t signed the constitution of Canada because it contains this notion of multiculturalism.

“I think we can be different.”

If by “different”, she means “more xenophobic”, then she’s hit the nail on the head. At least there’s no hypocricy in Beaudoin’s position. It’s getting harder to call racism one of Quebec’s “dirty little secrets” when it’s being promoted so openly. Quebec has never wanted to be pluralistic, accepting or tolerant. If the disastrous reasonable accommodation debates showed us anything, it’s that most people in Quebec would prefer us to turn into France and do away with religious freedom altogether.

Meanwhile, the Liberals missed an opportunity to take a strong position against Beaudoin and company. Charest’s team waffled on the issue, staying quiet and basically stumbling through an attempt to walk the fine line between not pissing anyone off and not pissing anyone off. All of that to cover the dirty little secret that, if it weren’t for the fact that the Liberals rely on the “ethnic vote” to get elected, most of them would be as opposed to multicultural values as their Pequiste compatriots. That’s some strong leadership we’ve got in Quebec City, folks.

My logical follow-up question to Louise Beaudoin is therefore this: If multiculturalism isn’t a Quebec value, how can we change that and turn it into one?

While most eyes look westward to Vancouver, back at home, Quebec is in a tizzy over former PQ leader Lucien Bouchard’s public comments against his old party, accusing them of narrow-mindedness and saying that sovereignty is no longer achievable:

M. Bouchard est persuadé qu’il ne verra pas un autre référendum sur la souveraineté de son vivant. L’ancien chef péquiste est toujours souverainiste, mais la souveraineté est devenue une question hypothétique; elle n’est donc pas une solution aux problèmes du Québec.

Bouchard also blasted the PQ for intolerance towards religious minorities, claiming that they were fishing for votes among former ADQ supporters and that the debate around reasonable accommodation was really nothing more than thinly-disguised racism.

Predictably, Bouchard’s comments have caused a stir. Gilles Duceppe is playing spin doctor. Jean Charest is cozying up to his former rival and colleague. And Pauline Marois reacted to Bouchard’s racism charges by opposing a Liberal plan to allow Jewish schools to teach on Sundays. Way to prove Bouchard’s point for him nicely, there, Pauline.

Even in the worst divisive moments of the lead-up to the 1995 referendum, Bouchard still commanded respect among federalists, in a way that the bumbling buffoonery of the Jacques Parizeau set never did. I can’t and won’t ever agree with Lucien Bouchard on his politics. However, since leaving political life, he has shown that he isn’t afraid to speak the unpopular truths, whether it was speaking out for Israel at the 2003 Yom Ha’atzmaut rally (to a staunchly federalist crowd, no less), or calling for a “Québec lucide” in 2005. It’s ironic, perhaps, that the man responsible for bringing Canada to the brink of breakup has somehow emerged as something of a voice of conscience of the sovereignty movement.

With the PQ in opposition and sovereignty off the radar of most Quebecers, Bouchard’s comments may actually have an opposite effect, stirring the pot and re-igniting a dormant debate. And he’s shrewd enough that you have to wonder if that was his intent. Although, I’m more inclined to believe that he meant what he said, and that he’s calling for some soul-searching in a movement where intolerance has always been one of the dirty little secrets. When Bouchard speaks, people still listen, though what difference it will make is anyone’s guess.

There are so many things wrong with this that I hardly know where to begin. At the beginning, I suppose…

The Quebec government today announced several measures to help immigrants better integrate into Quebec society.

Immigrants will now be able to take free French courses before they leave their home country – either online or at an Alliance Française.

Well, okay, free French classes aren’t the worst idea in the world. But it doesn’t stop there.

Starting next January, all immigrants coming to Quebec will have to sign a declaration saying they will respect Quebec’s common values.

They must promise to learn French and respect the fact that Quebec is a secular society where men and women have equal rights.

The declaration will be included in the application to immigrate to Quebec and anyone who refuses to sign it will not be permitted to move here.

Right, as if forcing people to sign a declaration that is nothing but a formality, completely unenforceable, and utterly lacking in context in most of their home societies is in any way relevant. And since when did we start legislating people’s thoughts and opinions, anyway?

“Coming to Quebec is a privilege, not a right,” Immigration Minister Yolande James said yesterday at a press conference.

Apparently, now, so is freedom of expression.

The province also plans to favour immigrants who have the job skills that the Quebec labour market needs.

Except in refugee cases, most governments do this to an extent, so there’s nothing new here. But what about all those foreign-trained doctors who are currently driving taxicabs? Our problem isn’t in attracting skilled immigrants; it’s in getting rid of the yards of red tape that prevent those immigrants from actually using their skills.

Once they arrive in Quebec, the government will ask immigrants to attend seminars on adapting to life here and will increase the amount of support it gives to immigrants who are having trouble finding work.

For more on the folly that is these seminars, see Yannic’s blog.

James said the government also wants to persuade businesses to hire more minorities and said the public service must also hire more minorities.

At present, minorities make up 19 per cent of the public service. The government’s goal is to reach 25 per cent.

Yes, because quotas always work so well, don’t they? Well, it’s a chance for new immigrants to learn a few quintessentially Quebecois values, like tokenism, and hiring based on ethnicity instead of based on merit.

Many of the measures announced today were suggested by the Bouchard-Taylor commission on reasonable accommodation.

That explains a lot, actually.

That’s what most Quebecers will tell you, anyway. But the recent “reasonable accommodation” hearings have shed some light on the dirty little secret of xenophobia that keeps creeping up here.

And now, we have some new poll results on antisemitism with discouraging, though not altogether surprising, results:

According to the poll results, 41 per cent of Quebecers agreed, and another 41 per cent disagreed, with the idea that “Jews want to impose their customs and traditions on others.” By comparison, only 11 per cent agreed and 74 per cent disagreed in the rest of Canada. The average nationwide was 19 per cent agreeing and 64 per cent disagreeing.

To another statement – “Jews want to participate fully in society” – 41 per cent of Quebecers disagreed and 31 per cent agreed, compared with a mere eight per cent disagreeing and 72 per cent agreeing among other Canadians. The national average was 16 per cent disagreeing and 63 per cent agreeing.

On the idea that “Jews have made an important contribution to society,” 35 per cent of Quebecers disagreed and 41 per cent agreed, compared with only 10 per cent disagreeing and 74 per cent agreeing in the rest of Canada. The Canadian average was 16 per cent disagreeing and 65 per cent agreeing.

As a cegep student, I naively wrote a research paper on the history of antisemitism in Quebec. A product of the Jewish school system bubble, I was genuinely surprised when my Quebecois professor was less-than-thrilled with my choice of subject and my treatment of it, and graded the paper accordingly. Not that I’m claiming bias; I freely admit that the paper was graded poorly because, well, it wasn’t much good. But I was still rather taken aback at the prof’s personal reaction, and his subsequent coldness to me.

What I didn’t really “get”, as a naive 18-year-old, was that people don’t much like being accused of racism, and that accusing an entire group of people of racism is a form of racism in and of itself.

All this to say that polls like this one are double-edged swords. If people use these results merely to finger-point, then not much gets solved. “Quebec nationalism is xenophobic” is a statement with some elements of truth, a lot of elements of falsehood, and ultimately one that gets us nowhere.

But it won’t do to hide the truth under a cachet of hearts and flowers, either. If there is genuinely a distance between Quebec and the ROC in attitudes towards Jews, or minorities in general – and admittedly, there is – then it’s time to identify what we can do to help make things better.

To understand Quebec antisemitism, we need to understand the different political, cultural and historical factors that have led to Quebec nationalism, because there are a lot of tie-ins. Knee-jerk anti-Americanism is higher in Quebec than elsewhere. Defensiveness about language and culture, the perception that Quebec is a French island fighting a rising tide from a sea of English surrounding it, and a generally more left-wing, socialist, collectivist political bent (despite our strong support for private sector healthcare involvement) are a few of Quebec’s quirks.

I know this sounds like it has nothing to do with Quebec antisemitism, but it does. Despite the large francophone Sephardic Jewish community in Quebec, antisemitism here is largely tied in with the perception of many that the Jews are part of “the English”, the oppressor, the Other. The historical archetype of the rich English business owner exploiting the poor French worker is ingrained in the mindset of the province, even if it no longer reflects modern realities. It’s part of the psyche of many in Quebec.

On a one-on-one level, particularly in multiculturual Montreal, people in Quebec are mostly open, genuine and accepting. They just express it differently. Outside of Montreal, many people do not encounter many minorities in their daily lives. When they do, they generally approach them with an open – if sometimes uninformed – attitude. People who move from les régions to Montreal often find themselves, for the first time, making friends with different religions, skin colours and backgrounds, and I’ve found that they are more than willing to ask questions, approach people as individuals, and work together. Like with the language issue, when the politicians stay out of the game, the people, for the most part, do a pretty good job of getting along.

But there are the ugly incidents. From Lionel Groulx’s rampant antisemitism to Jacques Parizeau blaming the 1995 referendum defeat on “money and the ethnic vote”, the stories are many and not so far between. Not to mention the powerful alliance between Quebec’s labour unions and the antisemitism on the left, particularly from the anti-Israel crowd. The recent reasonable accommodation hearings were only the icing on that particularly unsavoury cake.

So which model is true? Quebec as the closed, defensive, xenophobic and racist society? Or Quebec as the open, tolerant, welcoming and progressive society? Well, both, actually. It seems like a logical impossibility, but in this “distinct society”, it makes perfect sense.

Someone I know well (if you’re reading this, you know who you are) often likes to say that to illustrate that democracy is flawed, all you’d have to do is call a vote in Quebec asking people if they believed that the Jews should pay twice the amount of tax as everyone else.

That vote, he claims, would pass in a landslide… and therein lies the problem with democracy: The people, quite often, are stupid.

Well, this isn’t quite the same thing… but it’s close:

Marois’s proposed Quebec Identity Act, with its loyalty oaths and French tests for office seekers, is cynically demagogic as well as discriminatory and demeaning. It has little chance of being adopted, and would probably be found unconstitutional if it were.

[. . . ]

And as with Bill 101 30 years ago, it seems everybody opposes the identity bill but the people.

Results of the latest monthly CROP-La Presse poll, published last week, suggest that the PQ has pulled into first place in popularity among the parties, with the ADQ slipping farther back into third.

And another poll commissioned by the strategist behind Marois’s bill, Jean-François Lisée, indicates overwhelming support for the bill.

In fact, it seems that most Quebecers would be willing to go even farther. Lisée tested the idea of requiring a “minimal knowledge” of French not only to run for office, but even to vote.

Seventy-two per cent of Quebecers were in favour of the requirement for future immigrants, and 65 per cent for people from other Canadian provinces moving to Quebec.

Yes, and in a lifeboat, two drowning people may vote to throw the third one overboard. That doesn’t make it right.

If the reasonable accommodation debate has only served to expose the deep-rooted xenophobia and racism of the vast majority of Quebec’s population, the proper response isn’t to cater to it, or to pass laws to enshrine it.

No, the proper response is to start working to change those attitudes. It won’t happen overnight. But at least it would be going in the right direction – something we don’t seem to be doing much of, lately.

What do you get when you mix two of my pet peeves: Quebec unions, and the “healthy” reasonable accommodation hearings? Plenty of religious intolerance to go around:

No public servant – including Muslim teachers and judges – should be allowed to wear anything at work that shows what religion they belong to, leaders of Quebec’s two biggest trade union federations and a civil-servants union told the Bouchard-Taylor commission yesterday.

“We think that teachers shouldn’t wear any religious symbols – same thing for a judge in court, or a minister in the

National Assembly, or a policeman – certainly not,” said René Roy, secretary-general of the 500,000-member Quebec Federation of Labour.

“The wearing of any religious symbol should be forbidden in the workplace of the civil service … in order to ensure the secular character of the state,” said Lucie Grandmont, vice-president of the 40,000-member Syndicat de la fonction publique du Québec.

Dress codes that ban religious expression should be part of a new “charter of secularism” – akin to the Charter of the French Language – that the Quebec government should adopt, said Claudette Carbonneau, president of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux.

Such a charter is needed “to avoid anarchy, to avoid treating (reasonable-accommodation) cases one by one,” Carbonneau said yesterday, presenting a brief on behalf of the federation’s 300,000 members at the commission’s hearing at the Palais des congrès.

Same point of view at the 150,000-member Centrale des syndicats du Québec, which includes 100,000 who work in the school system, the commission heard.

Quebec needs a “fundamental law” akin to the Charter of Rights that sets out clearly that public institutions, laws and the state are all neutral when it comes to religion, said Centrale president Réjean Parent. The new law would also “define (people’s) rights and duties … in other words, the rules of living together.”

Nobody should be too surprised that our unions would like to see us turn into… well, France. And by dressing it up as an anti-Muslim initiative, playing into people’s hatreds and stereotypes, they may just succeed in drumming up enough support for this asinine idea.

The “reasonable accommodation” hearings really ought to have been renamed long ago. My vote is for “Forum to allow all pissed-off, intolerant, inbred and otherwise racist idiots to vent their stereotypes and prejudices in public”. Okay, maybe it doesn’t quite have that nice ring to it. But it’s a lot more accurate.

The province-wide racist rant-fest, under its guise of “reasonable accommodation” hearings, continues – this time, with some charming remarks from the folks in St-Jerome:

“It’s really a mentality that’s separate,” St. Hippolyte resident Lise Casavant said of the Hasidism, adding that immigrants should sign a new Quebec citizenship charter “or choose another province,” a sentiment several other speakers also evoked.

John Saywell, of Argenteuil, said when he hears a Hasidic Jewish leader speaking only in English on the TV news, he thinks it’s wrong. The community should make the effort to speak French, he said.

And Lise Provencher, of St. Jerome, said immigrants are “buying their way in” to Quebec and that Jews are the worst because they’re “the most powerful. … It’s always been said that the Jews are the trampoline of money in the world.” After she spoke, the crowd applauded.

It’s useful to remember, at times like these, that – despite the vast quantities of media coverage seemingly indicating the contrary – the small subset of people who actually show up to these sorts of forums to spew their hatred are not representative of the population at large. Thankfully.

But then, if that’s the case, what exactly is the province spending all the money on these hearings for, anyway?

Update: Michaelle Jean thinks this debate is “healthy”.

The endless squabbling between the Hasidic Jewish Community and the general population in Outremont/Mile End has a new chapter.

In the past, they’ve argued about the right to build succahs, to put up an eruv, and even to run a bus service to New York.

The latest issue? The right to work out:

It was an unlikely confrontation in an alley behind the Park Ave. YMCA.

On one side, Renee Lavaillante, sun-loving pilates practitioner; on the other, Abraham Perlmutter, member of the Hasidic congregation of Yetev Lev, who believes those women in tights are corrupting young boys at the synagogue across the street.

The clash between the two came to a head yesterday over the YMCA’s new frosted windows, which block out the sun – and the tights.

It’s tempting to write this off as just another example of the wider community’s intolerance towards the Hasidic population. But in this case, it’s actually backwards:

In all the above examples, the community was attempting to curtail the rights of the Hasidim. In this case, the Hasidim are attempting to curtail the rights of the community.

Part of living in a free society means that you’re entitled to your own beliefs, standards and values, but you can’t go imposing them on anyone else as long as they’re not breaking the law or hurting anyone. The Hasidic community may not like the fact that women in Montreal have the right to walk around – or work out – in tights and sleeveless tops, but the fact remains that they do. And, like it or not, the Hasidic community can’t go around throwing stones at people who walk the streets in shorts, either. This isn’t Meah Shearim, and I don’t condone it when they do it there, either.

The Hasidic community has a right to its feelings on the matter, but doesn’t have a right to impose those feelings on anyone else. We will all get along better when we recognize this.

Religious Jews will be allowed to build succahs, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, who ruled against their condo association that was trying to limit them from doing so:

In a 5-4 decision, the justices said the state can’t regulate personal religious beliefs.

“A claimant need not show some sort of objective religious obligation, requirement or precept to invoke freedom of religion,” Justice Franck Iacobucci wrote for the majority.

“It is the religious or spiritual essence of an action, not any mandatory or perceived-as-mandatory nature of its observance, that attracts protection.

“The state is in no position to be, nor should it become, the arbiter of religious dogma.”

B’nai Brith, which intervened in this case, had the following reaction:

Allan Adel, National Chair of B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights, reacting to the news, stated: “We are satisfied with the decision of the Supreme Court, which has applied a broad interpretation to the Charter guarantee of freedom of religion and believe it to be in the best interests of all Canadians. The Succah ruling is an important, groundbreaking case that champions the cause of religious freedom in Canada and will have important ramifications well beyond the immediate facts of the case.”

Personally, I agree. While not religious, I tend to think that anyone should have the right and freedom to practice a religious belief that doesn’t harm or infringe upon the rights of someone else. The condo association had no real reason to ban the succahs, and people want to build them on their own private property. There are a lot of fine lines and open questions when it comes to religious freedoms, but this ruling makes sense.

There’s more conflict between the Hasidic Jewish community and a group of bigoted xenophobes in Outremont. First, they opposed the Eruv on the grounds that the wire is visible and it bothers them or something similar. Then, they lobbied against a zoning change that would have allowed a synagogue to expand. Now, they’re opposing a bus service between Montreal and New York that is geared towards the Hasidic community, many of whom have friends and relatives in New York and make the trip regularly:

Even more important than convenience – the bus made three stops in Outremont, picking up people almost from their doorsteps – is that the bus service offers kosher food, separate seating for men and women, and prayer time, Werzberger said.

The bus service has existed for about 30 years, he said, and nobody had complained about it until a small group of residents started lobbying council.

“There is a small group of people in Outremont who have made it their raison d’être to make life difficult for the Hasidic community. They come and bang in at the councillors and sometimes you just cave in to this kind of pressure.”

The credibility of the residents who keep complaining about the Hasidic community is long gone. The only question is, will the borough council cave into their pressure?