Ding dong the witch is dead – Democracy shows it’s alive and kicking in Quebec

Pauline Marois planned to fire Jews, Musims and Sikhs,

but on election night, she was the one who got the boot.

Seeing the PQ crushed in the recent Quebec election made me feel like dancing in the streets. 

More than two-thirds of Quebecers voted for federalist parties and against the separatists. And it’s not just that they voted against sovereignty; they voted against the PQ because they don’t even want to talk about sovereignty anymore.

Just as wonderful, we no longer have to look forward to the spectacle of a Canadian provincial government firing people from their jobs because of their religion. The PQ had hoped to ride a wave of xenophobia to a majority government and it didn’t work. Compared to the threat of having to go through another referendum, Quebecers just didn’t care that much about whether people wore hats or hijabs, lids or kippas. 

It’s possible that in the end, the PQ’s “values charter” actually worked against them. For one thing, Quebecers realized that doctors, daycare workers and teachers were actually going to get fired if they refused to remove their kippas, hijabs or turbans.

Incredibly, for weeks, Quebec media let the PQ get away without admitting this – until a PQ candidate came out and proclaimed that of course they’d be firing people. And then Pauline Marois, the PQ leader, admitted it, too: Really, how else can you ban religious symbols unless you’re going to fire people who refuse to take them off?

Once this sank in many Quebecers realized that the whole thing had gone a step too far. Sure, many small town Quebecers are suspicious of people who wear funny hats and won't eat pork, but firing them for this? That's not nice.

Also, Quebecers realized that the PQ could have brought in most of their charter of values without an election at all; that the only point of the election was to get a majority; and then the purpose of values charter would be to force a showdown with Ottawa as a prelude to a referendum. And does Quebec want another crisis? Non, non, non!

Possibly the most significant outcome of the Quebec election was the voter turnout: 72%. That’s huge – much larger than voter turnout for most elections in Canada. Of course, that’s great because it makes the rejection of Quebec independence and of the PQ's xenophobic charter of values even more decisive.  But it also shows that democracy is alive and kicking in Canada.

We hear much hand-wringing about how fewer and fewer people vote. Pundits continually suggest it’s because people believe politicians are all equally terrible. That low voter turnouts show a fundamental flaw in our democracy.

This is mostly nonsense. People don’t vote because Canada works well. Countries where almost everyone votes are the countries in the biggest mess. Usually, people are turning out in huge numbers because some recently deposed dictator has been denying them their right to choose their own leaders for decades. Or people turn out in droves because their country is in crisis.

Canada is precisely the opposite. On voting day many people can’t be bothered to go out to the polls because it doesn’t matter enough. Regardless of who gets elected, they’re not going to screw things up too much.

But in Quebec, this formula for voter indifference broke down. The vote did matter. Quebecers decided the PQ was going to create a national crisis (again). So voters came out in great numbers. They crushed the PQ, and buried the nightmare of a sovereign Quebec under an avalanche of ballots.

Parti Quebecois candidate spreads neo-Nazi myth, PQ leader calls her "eloquent"

Noted bigot and PQ candidate Louise Mailloux

Parti Quebecois' candidate Louise Mailloux has been spreading a myth originally invented by the Klu Klux Klan and since adopted by numerous neo-Nazi groups. According to the PQ candidate and the neo-Nazis, Jews use kosher certificates to steal money from non-Jews and then use the cash to fund nefarious schemes.

Mailloux doesn’t spread vicious myths just about Jews. She doesn’t like Muslims or Christians, either. According to her, Muslims are running the same “rip-off” with hallal meat as the Jews with their kosher foods.

“This is a religious tax,” Ms. Mailloux said on a March 2012 edition of Bazzo.tv, a panel show on Tele-Quebec, “and it’s a tax we pay directly to mosques, to synagogues and to religious groups. It’s a theft.”

As for Christians, Mailloux says baptism is like rape. So is circumcision, according to Mailloux.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs called on the PQ to debunk the “urban legend of the kosher tax,” Instead, PQ Leader Pauline Marois endorsed her candidate, saying she’s a respected academic who has thought long and hard about these issues.

“Her writings are eloquent, I respect her point of view,” Ms. Marois said.

“The Parti Québécois is not an anti-Semitic party,” Pauline Marois declared to much chuckling.

No surprise there. In the current Quebec election, the PQ’s entire strategy is based on intolerance. The PQ is campaigning on its so-called secular charter. Aimed primarily against Muslims, the charter bans government employees and workers in hospitals, schools and day cares from wearing religious symbols such as a head scarf or Star of David.

Unfortunately, part of what makes Quebec distinct is that it’s always been less tolerant than the rest of Canada (see more here).  Mailloux isn’t just some nutcase (though she is that). She’s a professor of philosophy and a prominent Quebec feminist. And the PQ is tapping into a deep well of suspicion against Jews and Muslims.

Quebec newspapers and TV programs regularly run stories that detail how much of the food eaten in the province is certified kosher or halal – as if this is somehow a problem.

Under Quebec's secular charter, large, ostentatious crosses will not be allowed.

And the urban legend of a kosher tax has made the rounds in Quebec for years. Back in 2008, Quebec’s Bouchard-Taylor commission reported that among Quebecers “the most fanciful information is circulating” about kosher food. And then went on to debunk the myth of a kosher tax.

But while Jewish groups object to the PQ’s support for antisemitism, Quebec’s feminists have been silent about Mailloux’s trivialization of rape. Again, no real surprise. Mailloux is one of their own. Also, Quebec feminists tend to support the PQ and often share Mailloux’s hostility to religious groups.

Mailloux’s support of a myth spread by neo-Nazis and the KKK does raise a particular question: What does the PQ’s secular charter have to say about government employees dressing in white sheets?

According to rumour, the PQ leader has responded: “Of course, the white sheets are allowed. These are not religious symbols. But there must be no burning of crosses. Other symbols are okay. If they want to burn a swastika in someone’s front lawn, well that is not a religious symbol, is it?”

Radio Canada (the CBC in Quebec) chastised by Ombudsman for broadcasting Palestinian propaganda

Everyone interested in the issue has long recognized that the CBC is biased against Israel and in favour of the Palestinians. In English Canada, though, this bias has been less pronounced since Tony Burman, the former editor in chief, left the CBC to work for al-Jazeera, a network where Burman's bias is entirely at home.

Also, CBC journalists sometimes attempt to give even-handed reports on the middle east despite their bias. (Certainly the CBC does a better job of being even-handed than the Globe & Mail.)

But that's not the case in the CBC's French language service, Radio Canada, where anti-Israel reporting is simply the norm. Last summer, though, Radio Canada broadcast several reports that were so obviously and outrageously biased that the CBC's Ombudsman upheld a whole series of complaints. The Canadian Jewish News has the details....

Radio-Canada Ombudsman raps Middle East reporting
Janice Arnold

MONTREAL — The Radio-Canada ombudsman has upheld a series of complaints made by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) about the network’s Middle East coverage.


Most of the complaints concerned reporting by the French-language public broadcaster’s Middle East correspondent, Ginette Lamarche, between June 5 and 7 on the deadly clash at the Syrian border between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and the Israeli army.

Ombudsman Pierre Tourangeau concluded that two reports by Lamarche did not respect the network’s standards for impartiality and accuracy.

Most significantly to CIJA, she failed to report that the Israeli army had issued several warnings before opening fire and that the demonstrators were violent and attempting to force their way across the Israeli border.

CIJA’s predecessor organization, the Quebec-Israel Committee, objected to Lamarche’s reference to the Qalandia checkpoint as a “symbol of [the Palestinians’] daily humiliation,” not making clear that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is also considered a terrorist organization, that Ahmad Saadate was convicted of ordering the murder of an Israeli government minister, and that some information was from a non-corroborated Syrian source.

CIJA also objected to Lamarche’s reference that the Palestinians “tried to claim their right of return.” The ombudsman agreed that this “right,” while central to the conflict, has not been confirmed by the United Nations Security Council.

“On an issue as controversial as that of Israeli-Palestinian relations, the choice of words, the precision of the information given and the identification of its source takes on particular importance,” wrote Tourangeau, who became ombudsman on Nov. 14, replacing Julie Miville-Duchêne, who left in July.

Even though some of Lamarche’s reporting was live, which made it more difficult for her to verify the information, the journalist is still obligated to ensure “in a reasonable manner” that it is accurate.

The ombudsman also agreed with CIJA that a June 7 broadcast entitled “Des Juifs du Golan appuient l’attaque d’Israël contre les manifestants pacifiques” (“Golan Jews support Israel’s attack on the peaceful demonstrators”) didn’t meet Radio-Canada’s standards.

Specifically, Lamarche paraphrased an Israeli, identified only as Maurice, as saying: “The army maybe shot live bullets on the civilians who were demonstrating peacefully. If that is the case, it is only doing its duty.”

An audio recording of her interview with the man showed that her paraphrasing was not faithful to what he actually said, Tourangeau wrote.

The ombudsman also found that “this morally questionable attitude” was presented without sufficient grounds as being representative of the Jews of the Golan.

Finally, the ombudsman concluded that RDI, Radio-Canada’s news speciality channel, used erroneous maps March 19 on the program 24 heures en 60 minutes to illustrate the Arab-Israeli conflict. CIJA had termed the maps “propagandist.”

The maps were used to show what a guest described as the loss of Palestinian land between 1945 and 2000.

Tourangeau describes the maps as “erroneous, confusing and incomplete, whose source was not identified.”

RDI’s management admitted that the maps should never have been used, while the ombudsman recommended that a correction be made.

http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?q=node/88925

Our Quebecois Problem

Toronto, February 2007. A recent poll by Sun Media (Jan 2007) indicates that anti-Jewish feeling in Quebec is again on the rise. Thirty-six percent of Quebeckers have a bad opinion of Jews. That’s double the rate elsewhere in Canada.

In part this is no surprise - polls always show anti-Jewish feeling as higher in Quebec. But not this high, not for a long time.

As it happens, anti-Israel feeling is always much higher in Quebec, as well. To give one example: this past July at the outset of the Hezbollah War, a poll for CanWest News Service found that across the county two-thirds of Canadians supported Israel - except in Quebec where 62% condemned Israel’s response to the attack by Hezbollah.

Quebeckers who instantly disapprove of Israeli action aren’t all Israel haters. But many are. Their loathing for Israel is unstained by any tincture of rationality. They see Israel as having been conceived in sin, as evil in its very nature, criminal in its every action and deserving of any outrage committed against it.


People who put their faith in coincidence will see no relationship between the high incidence of anti-Jewish and of anti-Israel sentiment in Quebec. The rest of us, though, can point at a pair of surveys by the Association for Canadian studies.


In early July the ACS polled Canadians on their attitudes toward religious groups. The ACS found that Canadians held Christians and Jews in equally high regard, with 79% having a positive view of Jews and 81% having a positive view of Christians. Outside Quebec, only 6% had a negative view of Jews. In Quebec, the number was three times as high, at 18%.


In late August, the ACS conducted a second survey, asking identical questions, but this time only of Quebeckers. It turned out that in one month, anti-Jewish feeling in Quebec had jumped by a third - to 24%.


Why? Because in between the two surveys the Hezbollah War was fought.


Obviously many Quebeckers can’t distinguish between their hatred for Israel and animosity toward Jews. Frankly, I can’t tell the difference either.


We should of course keep in mind that nearly two-thirds of Quebeckers have no problem with Jews, and that Quebec isn’t the only source of bigotry - especially bigotry against Israel.


For example, although Hezbollah is a terror organization that preaches genocide against Jews, 90% of the delegates to the New Democratic Party policy convention this past September voted for a resolution that castigated Israel for the war initiated by Hezbollah and declared Hezbollah a legitimate political organization deserving a seat in any peace negotiations alongside the legal government of Lebanon.


Few NDP delegates come from Quebec.


Education is the usual antidote to prejudice, and indeed the ACS study found that Quebeckers with only primary education were the ones most likely to have a negative view of Jews. The Quebeckers most likely to spurn antisemitism, though, had only high school education, while university educated Quebeckers were more likely to view Jews negatively.


In 2001, Dr. Conrad Winn of COMPAS found an even odder result in a survey he conducted for B’nai Brith Canada. Rather than asking how Canadians felt about Jews as religious group as in the ACS study or about Jews as an ethnic group as in the Sun Media poll, Winn asked whether Jews have too much power - a question that’s been used to gauge levels of racism for fifty years and one with political overtones.


Winn found that in Quebec 26% of respondents perceived Jews as having too much power. Elsewhere in Canada only 10% shared this perception. This skewed response wasn’t a surprise. However, the distribution of antisemitic sentiment within Quebec was.


Winn found that among Francophones with high school education or less, the rate of anti-Jewish feeling had plummeted from 40% as measured in a 1986 survey to 21% in Winn’s 2001 survey. But among Quebeckers with higher education, levels of antisemitism had risen. Better educated Quebecers were now more likely to be prejudiced, with the level of anti-Jewish feeling now at 29% for college graduates and 30% for those with university degrees.


It appears Quebec’s old xenophobic antisemitism may be literally dying off. The new antisemitism, though, which expresses itself as hatred of Israel is a fashionable form of bigotry. It looks like the cure for this prejudice might be to keep kids out of university - especially in Quebec.

*

I'm just getting around to posting it on my own blog now, but a slightly shorter version of this article appeared in the February 8, 2007, Jewish Tribune, a community paper published weekly by B'nai Brith Canada. The article also appeared on the anti-racist blog, Engage. For a collection of my articles on Engage, see here.