Quebec reacts to Islamists
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Posted by Lorne Gunter on 15:36:10 2007/04/02
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/columnists/story.html?id=94222695-4784-4b7a-ac6d-0530a73e44e5
Monday » April 2 » 2007
Quebec's Pim Fortuyn
Lorne Gunter
National Post
Monday, April 02, 2007
Frankly, I think the success of Mario Dumont and his Action democratique du Quebec (ADQ) party in last Monday's Quebec election was due largely to voter fatigue with the other two choices: Jean Charest and his Liberals, and Andre Boisclair and the Parti Quebecois.
But it would be wrong to downplay the impact of the province's "reasonable accommodation" debate, too.
I suspect a lot of voters, particularly younger ones, are no longer animated to choose a party by the old federalism vs. separatism duality that has defined Quebec politics for decades.
They want Quebec to be free to choose its own course on social and language programs without Ottawa's centralizing interference, but mostly they want to make some money, enjoy themselves and raise their families without constantly being dragged back to the sovereignty issue.
The ADQ may very well have climbed from four seats in 2003 to 41 last week (and official Opposition status) based largely on the fact it isn't either of the old-guard parties.
But also, the ADQ's Dumont was the only leader to say plainly that Quebec's famously tolerant culture was already tolerant enough. It didn't need to make more concessions to the demands, desires and creeds of minorities and newcomers. Indeed, if it made more concessions, it might imperil its renowned tolerance. Most current minority demands are for illiberal rule changes, such as segregated male-female swim times at public pools to accommodate Muslim swimmers, or banning men from prenatal classes in order to avoid scandalizing Muslim mothers-to-be, or for only male police officers to be dispatched to disputes involving Hasidic men or only male motor-vehicles employees to administer driving tests to Hasids.
Boisclair's response to voters' rising disquiet over rampant multiculturalism was a legalistic explanation of the need for everyone to accommodate everyone else, which many Quebecois seemed to think meant they would be the ones doing all the accommodating of everyone else.
Charest, who comes late (and timidly) to nearly every issue, eventually responded by naming a pair of luminaries to study just what accommodations constituted reasonable ones.
I doubt that fooled anyone. What is the likelihood any such august investigation is going to conclude less accommodation is best? When they finally report next year, expect the two professors on the panel to recommend more money for state-sponsored propaganda designed to indoctrinate mainstream Quebecers on their obligation to acquiesce to minority demands.
Charest did eventually concede newcomers had an obligation to assimilate to Quebec society. "The Quebec nation has values," he intoned, "including the equality of women and men; the primacy of French; the separation between the state and religion ? They cannot be the object of any accommodation."
Still, his half-hearted, officialese gave Quebecers no comfort, unlike Dumont who pointedly stated "We can't defend the Quebecois identity with mushy words that no one understands. We can't defend the Quebecois identity with one knee on the ground."
For his bluntness, Dumont was branded "Quebec's Le Pen," a snide reference to the anti-immigrant French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. It was an unkind and inaccurate comparison.
Dumont is more like the murdered Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, killed during the 2002 elections in the Netherlands for advocating an aggressive policy of assimilating immigrants into the very liberal mainstream Dutch culture. A radical multiculturalist, determined that any attempt to place obligations on newcomers was an act of racism, shot Fortuyn outside a radio station after an interview, then later claimed he had done so to protect Muslims and other "vulnerable members of society."
Before his death, too, Fortuyn had been incorrectly compared to Le Pen. Yet like Dumont, Fortuyn was largely a defender of the existing liberality of his culture against the most extreme, restricting demands of newcomers.
A gay sociology professor who believed in legalized drug use, euthanasia and prostitution, gay rights and feminism, Fortuyn was nonetheless branded a fascist and racist by those in politics and the media who have never met a multicultural demand for which they were unprepared to sacrifice some Western ideal, who happily advance the cause of intolerant societies to prove their own personal commitment to tolerance.
The road to determining what accommodation of non-Western cultures is "reasonable" will be long and rocky, but at least Dumont understands what is at stake, and Quebec voters rewarded him for it.
Lgunter@shaw.ca
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