After Quebec’s Minister for Democratic Institutions and Citizen Participation, Bernard Drainville, unveiled (no play on words intended) the Marois government’s long-awaited “secularism charter,” the Harper government sent senior cabinet minister Jason Kenney to the microphones to respond.
Kenney said that the right to freedom of religion does not include freedom from religion — which sounds good, but may be a bit beside the point.
The NDP’s Thomas Mulcair and Quebec Solidaire’s Françoise David were probably closer to the nub of the matter when they worried aloud about the profoundly negative impact the proposed charter would have on women, especially Muslim women.
Whatever the merits of his argument, however, in one sense Kenney was the right man to take on Drainville.
Both politicians have proven themselves to be masters of the art of “dog whistle” politics.
During his tenure as Immigration Minister, Kenney railed against “bogus refugees” and “queue jumpers who only want to take advantage of high-quality Canadian health care and generous Canadian welfare.”
That was his way of whistling to all the folks out there who really believe Canada’s leaky lifeboat cannot take on any more passengers.
High rhetoric and appeals to fear of difference
The Parti Québecois’ Drainville did his own dog whistle when he took the stage to promote “Quebec values” on Tuesday.
The former Radio-Canada reporter talked about Quebec’s evolving secular and inclusive values. At the same time he made a not-too-subtle appeal to all those who are just not too comfortable with “difference.” A good many of those uncomfortable folks have a near paranoid fear of the ominous “Muslim threat.”
That “threat,” in its most fearsome manifestation, apparently takes the shape of head scarves which uncannily resemble nothing so much as the Jackie Kennedy look of the 1960s.
Drainvillle tried on Tuesday to cloak his secularism charter in high-sounding rhetoric about Quebec’s long struggle to shed itself of church domination.
He evoked Quebec’s journey, since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, toward an increasingly secular collective identity.
And he dug even deeper into history to boast about how Quebec was the first corner of the British Empire to extend political rights to Jews.
In the midst of questions and answers about hijabs and yarmulkes, Drainville brought up the nearly forgotten name of Trios-Rivières Jewish merchant Ezekiel Hart who, in 1807, got himself elected to the Lower Canada legislative assembly.
Hart only occupied his seat for a few days, because on two occasions the Assembly voted to expel him.
But his election led, several decades later, to the 1832 Emancipation Act, which granted full rights to the Jews, long before they enjoyed such rights elsewhere in the British Empire.
Quebec (like the rest of Canada) has come a long way since Ezekiel Hart’s time.
It took decades to ‘secularize’ education
In Quebec, there has, indeed, been a long, if at times painfully slow, march toward something resembling a secular society.
Over the past half century that march took place largely within the boundaries of the school system.
The Parti Québecois government of René Levesque passed the French Language Charter, Law 101, in 1977. That Charter made French the official language of work and public spaces, and the “default” language of all public education.
One of Law 101’s lesser-known consequences was to open the doors of French language schools to non-francophones who had previously felt unwelcome, when they were not outright barred.
After Law 101, non-francophone Quebec children started streaming into French Quebec schools in great numbers. But when they got there they found crucifixes everywhere, indoors and outside, and more than a few teachers who believed that the schools were still primarily for Roman Catholics. The newcomers, the “others” — “les autres” — were, in the eyes of many, attending French and Catholic schools only on sufferance.
In those days, non-Catholic parents had to sign request forms for exemption from religious instruction. When the time for “catechism” class came for the majority of children, the exempted kids would be marched out of class to receive “non-confessional” moral instruction.
Many non-Catholic parents, especially recent immigrants, chose not to sign the exemption forms.
They preferred not to rock the boat and their children took their lessons in miracles and other heady matters of theological dogma together with the majority.
The leaders of the then-marginal “mouvement laïque” (secularism movement) noted this troubling anomaly.
One rhetorically asked about the government’s true purpose in directing immigrant children to French language schools. Was that purpose, in fact, to convert them to Christianity?
It took more than a generation for Quebec to deal with this anomaly.
The first major step was the elimination of “confessional” (or denominational) school boards, via a constitutional amendment that only came two decades after Law 101, in 1997.
And it was only after the turn of the millennium that all Quebec public schools finally became fully secular.
When it came to getting out from under the yoke of the Church, the policy of successive Quebec governments was slow and steady as she goes.
But when it comes to making the “face” of the Quebec State purely secular, and unadulterated by anything that might be construed as religious, the current Quebec government seems to be in an unholy rush to act.
On Tuesday one reporter asked Drainville what sort of transition period he envisioned for the new secularism charter. The Minister averred that he did not foresee any such period at all.
The provisions of the Charter, including the prohibition of religious garb, would come into effect, Drainville shrugged, the day the new law passed.
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