Elections

Several people have asked me about the results of the April 7 Election results in Quebec. I was not going to write about it but given the numerous questions, I will give my take on it.

First I have to state that my family belongs to the Anciens Canadiens arriving in 1662 in Quebec City. The new elected Liberal Premier of Québec Dr. Philippe Couillard's family arrived in 1613 so we belong to the old stock. Now for a lot of people familiar with Quebec Politics this makes us ''pure laine'' but we cannot be called séparatiste, this is not the case. The majority are attached to the concept of Canada as one Nation. The rest can be best described as sentimentality with a dose of pragmatism.

First for myself and for many other belonging to the Old Stock families, the Province of Québec as we know it today is a modern invention dating from 1949. The borders have changed a lot since 1763 when Canada was ceded to England by France under the Ancien Régime in the Treaty of Paris ending the Seven Year War between England-Prussia vs France-Austria. In fact until the Treaty was signed some 4 years after the short battle (10 minutes) on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City in September 1759 it was not very clear to the troops of King George II if they were going to stay permanently or return to Europe.

France was tired of its territory in North America, too costly and did not bring anything in terms of revenue, England did not want New France, the war in North America had been nothing more than a diversion. When France offered in the peace talks to give away all of New France which was basically all of North America with the exception of the British 13 Colonies, the Prime Minister of England William Pitt Junior said NO!  In the end Pitt realized he had to accept, there was nothing else on offer. The King of England did by decree recognized and guaranteed protection for the French Language, religion RC and French Civil Code. In the Royal decree of 1791 women who owned land could also vote.

Fast forward to 1865 and all the talks about uniting the 4 Provinces against a possible American aggression. Here Quebec represented over 50% of the population of the New Canada under Confederation. The new National symbols all belong to pre-arrival in Canada of the so called English, the Feuille d'érable, the Castor, and the National Anthem O Canada,  a poem composed as a French-Canadian Nationalist Anthem for the St-Jean Baptiste Society, not exactly an English symbol.

Though to be fair, the English Elite (mostly Scots and some Brits) dominated the business sector and abused their position.  The French-Canadians, Irish,Welsh and a few Jews where not well treated at all. There was grievances and they were not always properly addressed. Though again French-Canadian Politicians dominated the political scene. One of the most famous Prime Ministers was Sir Wilfrid Laurier an icon of French Canada and a Saint of the Liberal Party.

So for me Canada or old Canada is this big land mass from l'Acadie (today's Maritime Provinces) to the Rockies out West and also a great big chunk of the USA where the Mississipi flows including many cities like Detroit, Chicago, Duluth, St-Louis all originally French settlements.

I cannot conceive of this idea that the Province of Quebec today would be my country and ignore the rest of Canada as irrelevant. I also do not buy into the long winded speeches of Politicians of the Parti Quebecois though they appeal to basic fundamental cultural heritage and language. Speech that mirror a very narrow vision of Ethnic Nationalism, remember Yugoslavia and Milosevic, very similar.

Today,

The situation in Quebec today (2014) is not that of 1968 when the Parti Québecois was created by René Lévesque. It is true that back then Quebec society was far more homogenous, so was Canada for that matter. There were some important social injustices and economic inequalities, there was none of the important financial institutions like the Caisse de dépôt or economic autonomy which exist today.

It was another world and another generation, that of my parents who were running the show. The Catholic Church which had been such a power for centuries was losing its grip. Society was becoming rapidly open and accepting of new ideas and concepts, in other words it was the era of the famous Quiet Revolution.

The PQ came to power for the first time in 1976, the year of the Olympic Games in Montreal. In their first mandate they certainly cleaned up the mess left behind by years of inept governments, they also established a framework on cultural identity and language, Bill 101. That was then and the past cannot be relived or brought back.

Today Quebec Society is diverse, multicultural and young. Quebec controls fully its Immigration something none of the other 9 provinces in Canada do, we have seen an important intake of French Speaking Africans, Haitians, Maghreb Muslim Arabs with others from Lebanon, Egypt and Syria.
The actual number of French citizens (France) coming to Quebec is fairly small and not stable since upwards of 40% leave after only a few years in Quebec.

The PQ was created in 1968 for one purpose alone Secession from Canada, its article 1 of the Party Charter. The raison d'être without it there is no reason for the PQ. The PQ lost by a slim margin the second and last referendum in 1995. Since then a long period of bitter recrimination amongst PQ loyalists has been simmering against the Federal Government in Ottawa and anyone like myself and others or 65% of the population of Quebec do not support them.

According to official PQ speak, the victory had been stolen by the Anglos and Ethnic voters in 1995. Foreigners were the problem and kept Quebec in a state of advanced Colonialism like what could be seen in Africa prior to 1960. The PQ speak is extremist and borders on known forms of extremist ethnic politics. If you do not speak French fluently you might not always understand the turn of phrases used.

Some 18 months ago in 2012, the Quebec government of Liberal Premier Jean Charest fell with the help of social unrest provoked by Pauline Marois and the PQ in their support of University students who were demanding Free Tuition for post secondary education.

The students looking at post-secondary education in some European countries where it is Free  demanded that the same standard be applied here. Premier Charest had 80% of public opinion on his side and refused to grant the request of the students claiming that there was no money for such a policy, which is quite true given that record numbers of young Quebecois going to University. However through well orchestrated public protests and riots in Montreal and elsewhere the government called an election on the question and lost and Premier Charest retired.

During this election Mme Marois promised the students that she would grant them Free Tuition, once elected she quickly forgot that promise and raised the tuition fee tying it to the inflation rate. Though her victory was far from complete, the Liberal won 31.2% of the vote the PQ won 31.95% of the vote Marois was in but had a minority government.

 Mme Marois wanted a majority government and to gain a majority she needed an issue, she found one by creating a false identity crisis based on a narrow ethnic definition of what a Quebecois is. No one was fooled, to fit the bill you have to be an Old Stock Family, White, Catholic, French. The Catholic part is bizarre since very few people are practicing Catholics.

The Quebec economy required attention and massive intervention but Marois and her PQ colleagues could not gain much traction on that topic given the PQ lack of policies and vision on investments, job creation, etc, high taxes in Quebec and the bloated Public Service and the enormous debt are a huge impediment. Not the sort of complicated issue you can win easily with when you have no plan.

Pauline Marois and her tchador (election humour)

So the issue of choice of Mme. Marois was the ''Foreigners'' in general, who undermine Quebec culture and the Muslims in particular with their Sharia, tchadors and violent ways, the Jews and religious Sikhs were also thrown in for good measure. The problem with this approach being that most if not all immigrants come either from Francophone Africa or the French Maghreb. So if the Foreigners are the problem why is Quebec Immigration concentrating on a specific region of the World?

Marois and her party orchestrated a Commission of Enquiry for the implementation of a Charter of Québecois Values to study the Muslim menace which promised to turn Quebec into an Islamic Caliphate in no time at all. The Charter had to be imposed to protect Quebec old stock identity and Christian civilisation. Again all this was extremely strange and bordered on the twilight zone of politics.

Some testimony at the commission was hilarious and downright dumb, like the one by this family who travelled to Morocco for the first time and came back with cartoonish impressions of strange Foreign practices we could not allow in Quebec.

On the other hand you had testimony by people like Jeannette Bertrand who is a retired talk show host, tv actress, public personality and an icon of 1970 Feminism ( a select club of white old women who see their values as the correct ones) Mme. Bertrand would like to correct young women today who do not understand that their brand of Feminism makes too many concessions to please those other foreign women wearing veils. Her friend Lise Payette also a former talk show host and a former PQ politician wrote articles sympathizing with her.

The whole Charter episode is a sorry one of ignorance, intolerance and prejudice, too many ugly things were said by people who should have known better given their status in Quebec Society.

The Charter debate in the media and public at large gave the impression to Mme Marois that she could easily have an electoral campaign based on cultural identity crisis and fear of the other. She firmly believed that this would be the magic trick to a majority government.

This was a false impression, the polls appeared to give her a majority government, they were wrong and her strategy backfired. She failed to understand that the Quebec population wanted to talk about the economy, jobs, the debt, investments, education and health care, not separation and not a referendum and the Charter embarrassed far too many people.

Clear polls showed that 85% of the Quebec population did not want a third referendum and did not want to hear about Sovereignty, Separation or any other items of the basic PQ platform. Mme Marois ignored those polls, it was her big mistake.

Then she allied herself with PKP or Pierre Karl Peladeau the son of Peladeau father the media baron who became rich by being tough with the little guy, a crude and unpleasant man. PKP is also known as being the enemy of the working man and for his hatred of labour unions. Suddenly this arch-conservative was a PQ star. It is important to note that the PQ has always been a leftist party closer to socialism and labour unions than capitalism. How could a party which stood for the lower classes and the blue collar workers suddenly become the Republican party? No one in the Quebec electorate understood that one, least of all staunch PQ old time leftist members, the die hard separatist branch of the party.

The debate on the Charter of Values created a malaise in Quebec society, most people think of themselves as open and socially progressive, Quebec is by far the most open and liberal society in terms of morals and attitudes in North America, if compared with any other part of Canada or the USA for that matter.

This Charter was not and is not a reflection of Quebec, Montreal a city of 4 million people is diverse, cosmopolitan and multicultural, how to impose such a backward notion of society on a city which is the economic motor of the Province.

So the result of this ill conceived campaign was a PQ defeat, the worst electoral results since its creation in 1970, gaining only 25% of the votes cast. The PQ still got 30 seats but just barely, in many cases wining by just a few hundred votes where just 18 months ago they had won by a large majority.
It was also the first time since 1921 that a sitting Premier (Marois) was defeated by a new incumbent (Couillard).

In many ways this defeat of the PQ is a third NO to the idea of a referendum and separation. Probably a final No to the basic tenet of the party. Mme Marois herself lost her seat to an unknown candidate and so did all other controversial candidates espousing narrow ethnic views like Mme Mailloux who spouted Nazi propaganda which Mme. Marois did not disavow. It was the worst campaign I had ever witnessed, showing how incompetent Mme Marois was and how detached from every day reality. It was also a vanity project, Mme. Marois saw herself as the first women to become President of a New Republic, she would succeed where men including the party founder René Levesque had failed. Born in a very poor and humble family, Marois rose to prominence and became a millionaire living in a Chateau on an island and wearing a lot of bling. How did this all happen, well that is another sorry story.

What is troubling now is how her lieutenants like Bernard Drainville and J.F. Lisée two senior PQ Ministers say they did not mean all the things they said and did not really support the Charter. Repudiating Mme Marois even before she steps down after Easter.

As for the PQ loyalist they blame again the Media, the Foreigners like the Muslims and all other Quebecois who do not support their vision for this defeat. Basically the majority 58% is wrong for not supporting the PQ. What is also sad is the continuous un-going monologue about how we as a people are in danger and how the forces of oppression (the bad anglos and the foreigners) are out to get us. The other country and its Parliament (Canada) is pure evil, we must save ourselves. Just read the chat lines and the opinion pieces in newspapers, pure lunacy. It remains as the Elected Premier Couillard said, an idea does not die, yes that is true and in Quebec the 30% die hard separatist will not let go. But the PQ as a party is in very serious trouble and may disappear all together in the coming years if it is unable to re-position itself. If the PQ abandons article 1 on separation then it has no purpose as such, if it does not then it is marginalized, other parties have taken up the space the PQ once occupied, this is how political commentators see the debate. It very much looks like the whole idea which led to the creation of the PQ was the project of one generation which is now passing. PQ support is amongst the 60 and older group.

I think it can be truthfully said that the Quebecois are Nationalist but not Separatist. Happy to remain in Canada and make the best of it as we have for the last 400 years.

La Charte des valeurs.

This week in the news and it has been the only item in the news, no it's not Syria or diplomatic moves between Russia and the USA, it is about the Charte des valeurs du Québec. It is being proposed by the current Provincial Government in Quebec City, which is a minority government led by Madame Pauline Marois as Premier. She is an old warrior of the Separatist cause and a veteran of controversial causes.

At this moment it is a project, the public in Quebec is being asked for opinions on this project of a Charter of Values. If this project becomes a bill to be tabled at the National Assembly ( Quebec's Parliament), the Charter would define was is called common values. It should be remembered that Quebec never signed on to the Canadian Constitutional agreement of 1982 and did not accept the Canadian Charter of Rights because Quebec had its own Charter of Rights voted in 1975.

It is also a battle between two visions of Canada, one is the Multicultural policy of the Federal Government adopted in 1976 and the other is the Integration (Melting Pot) approach of Quebec.

Quebec for many years has had an official policy of selecting it's immigrants from almost exclusively Maghreb countries of North Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and French Africa, with some ( a small number) immigrants from France and other French speaking countries. Most immigrants settle in Montreal who now has a population of about 3.5 million people.

This means that Montreal is French speaking and very cosmopolitan, many neighbourhoods have important diverse communities while the rest of Quebec is mostly made up of old French Canadian families with no or very little visible minorities. The proposed Charter would ban in the Public Service all religious symbols, including turbans for Sikhs, Islamic head or face coverings or veils for women, Jewish Kippah and Christian crosses worn around one's neck. What the Quebec Government is really targeting is Muslim women. Many in Quebec are offended by this face and head covering, all kinds of beliefs and stories circulate around such coverings. It is misunderstood and much of it comes from ignorance. It is believed that women who wear such covering do so not because of religious belief but because they wish to present themselves as different or are forced to wear such covering because they are forced to do so by their husbands. We already had incidents with Sikhs who wear turbans while playing on a sports team. Sports federations have banned such players on safety grounds amid great controversy. As for Jews, they are also targeted by this Charter project simply because the Charter claims to be universal in its ban of religious symbols in the public service. Though Jews have been present in Canada and Quebec and very much an integral part of society for at least 200 years. Same for the Sikhs who have been in Canada since 1898, Queen Victoria's last Jubilee, nothing new here with the colourful turbans.

Why this project now? Do we need it? Is there really a threat to French speaking culture in Quebec? What does common values mean in a modern pluralistic society?

I believe that this project was presented now because the Parti Québécois is in a minority government and needs a cause to rally the troops, the hardcore Nationalists who represent about 30% of the electorate. The economy in Quebec is in deep trouble, the debt is out of control, Quebec is often called the Greece of Canada, personal debt per capita at $21,000 is the highest by far in Canada. The solutions to economic problems would be very unpopular and not exactly made to win elections.  So this project of a Charter of Values is far easier to present and defend despite all the controversy it is creating.

Already well over 100 intellectuals who represent the Arts and Culture in Quebec, some very well known names have rejected this idea of a Charter. Some Indépendantiste politicians have also rejected the project to the dismay of the Parti Québecois. It has to be understood that the Nationalist ideas of the 1970's and 1980's are passé and Madame Marois and her Government represent the old guard. Quebec has a society has changed a great deal in the last 40 years and it is a far more diverse society composed of people from all over the world who came to join Quebec Society.  Lumberjacks now in the far North of Quebec are likely to be Africans from Cameroon or Senegal who speak French with the distinctive Quebec French Accent.  They are perfectly integrated into Quebec Society. As for the Maghreb Arabs they too are integrated same goes for many other groups including the Chinese. It is not the Quebec of old where the English and the French were at each others throats over language and economic issues.

There will always be amongst immigrants and new comers people who will not integrate and will be unhappy. It was revealed recently that immigrants from France do not do as well as Haitians or other ethnic groups. That should give pause to reflect on the reasons why one person integrates and another does not.

A threat to French language and culture, I do not think so. My family belongs to the pure laine, the old stock and when I go to Montreal my native City, I see it as my home, I may not like some of the urban developments around me but that is structural, it's not about people. I look at people like Maria Mourani a Member of Parliament in Ottawa, born in Côte d'Ivoire from a Christian Lebanese family who migrated to Canada and sat until yesterday as a Bloc Member, the party that represents the separatists in the Federal House of Commons. She was kicked out of the Party because she declared in a televised interview that she was against this idea of a Charter of Quebec Values, that this was tantamount to Ethnic Nationalism, I agree with her that is exactly what it is. It is also very insulting to all those people who have come to Quebec to build a new life who may be of a different religion than mine or a different culture. They are not a threat they simply have a different culture.

I had the good fortune to grow up in a Montreal at the time of the Universal Exhibition of 1967 and then in the Montreal of the Olympic Games of 1976. That Montreal does not exist anymore, it was very much a white city divided by an invisible East-West boundary between the English and the French. There were very few visible minorities then, except for the Chinese and a few Haitian mostly well educated professional people fleeing the Duvalier Regime. We lived in Snowdon, Hampstead and Côte Saint-Luc, a very Jewish area of the City. So from an early age I got to know all about the Jewish Holidays and traditions. Good business people who knew all about customer service. Our neighbourhood was a mix of English and French speaking people, this is were I learned English on the streets playing with the other kids. There were also Orthodox Jews with there great big fur hats, as a kid  I always wondered if they were not a bit hot on a muggy summer day. We knew quite a few Rabbis and prominent families like the Bronfman of Seagram fame. It was all part of our world, quite ordinary.

Later in school I had teachers who were from Morocco, they had fled unrest in their country, I had friends from Egypt whose family fled the Nasser Regime. We also had family friends who were Syrian and Lebanese.  An uncle of mine who was a priest had worked in Haiti in the 1950's so we knew Haitians. I never saw any of these people as a threat to Quebec or French Culture. They were just people, our neighbours and friends.

Then during my working career I live for 8 years in the Middle-East and North Africa, so I was living among the Muslims, I found them to be kind and cultured, courteous in an old world sense. I can honestly say that I never met a fundamentalist or un-pleasant Muslim. Not that they do not exist but through experience I found that most people are reasonable and easy to get along with.

The problems in Quebec are economic they are not based on identity, culture, language or ethnicity.
It is sad that the current government is so intent on this populist move, stirring up the boogyman of
cultural values. I can say that the Muslim, the Jew, the Sikh wants the same thing I want, I know that and I know it from certainty acquired through a life of experiences.

Unfortunately too many politicians like Madame Marois are cynical and really do not care as long as this gives them another electoral victory, because politics is all about winning otherwise what is the point.  What I fear now is the debates and opinions in the media and I know that this sort of debate will bring out all the extremists from both the Federal and Provincial camps. Many hateful things will be said and this is what Madame Marois is hoping for, she can build her case on such things. Hopefully her minority government can be brought down by a vote before things get too out of hand.

       Assemblée Nationale, Quebec City