Bar fights, bigotry and Quebec bashing

Or: When hurt feelings matter more than affordable childcare

Sep 16, 2021

Editor’s Note: As I am a slave to tradition, I will make the Necessary Act of Contrition every anglophone must partake in before criticizing Quebec.
I am sorry for The Queen
(Gregorian chant)
And Mordecai Richler
(Bagpipes)
Leonard Cohen was okay
(Bird strumming guitar)
The Gazette burned down parliament once

*“O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space.” -Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.*

“Another fucking French Canadian, crying like they always do!”

I fired back without thinking: “Sit down and shut up. My mother is French Canadian.”

“Well then I guess your mother is fucked.”

It was the instinct to fight that jolted me from my barstool. And now, staring across the table from a man I knew could break me in half, it was the instinct to not have my teeth kicked in that had me praying for five or six people to get between us. They did.

Our argument started over hockey, drifted into francophone players and then — sure enough — it got much uglier. This wasn’t a stranger, it was a friend’s father, someone who raised a person I’m still close to. There was no grand resolution that night but it reminded me of my pride in this place, its language and my own confusing part in all of it.

I left the bar with a better understanding of how, sometimes, my English name means others will feel comfortable expressing their hatred of francophones around me. It had happened before and it’s happened since.

Even among the most tolerant Canadians, there’s a tendency to look down at Quebecers. People from out west will talk about us leeching off equalization payments. In Ontario you might hear about Quebec as a place of traitors who want to break our country apart. Even the word separatist always had an accusatory ring to it, as though Quebec sovereignty was less about self determination than spite.

And then there’s always the stereotypes; presenting us as dumb working class slobs who smoke too many cigarettes, drink too much liquor and who live without courage or a moral compass.

This sort of discrimination used to be systemic. Three generations ago, francophones here were cheap labour to toil away in American-owned mines and logging camps. Or as Premier François Legault might call them, the good old days.

My own grandfather, Arthur Lefebvre, spent time in a sanitarium where all the doctors were anglophones who couldn’t speak a lick of French. They enlisted him to translate on their behalf because the thought of them learning French in Quebec seemed vulgar.

But things are different now.

While the mean income for families in Quebec floats around $70,000 per year — placing us just below the Canadian average — subsidized childcare, nationalized hydroelectricity and access to affordable postsecondary education have allowed us to do something remarkable. Within just a few decades, Quebecers have seen their standards of living surpass those of most other provinces.

And though I might have my anglophone card revoked for admitting this, much of that progress is a direct result of the province’s sovereigntist movement. By trying to create a socially democratic, French-speaking nation, Parti Québécois governments enacted reforms that benefit young families, students and people struggling to make ends meet. And Bill 101, which some anglos still call draconian, has ensured that immigrants who chose to live in Quebec educate their kids in French. It helped create thousands of trilingual children and expanded the definition of québécois from one based in ethnicity to one based in a shared language and democratic values.

Of course, that progress comes with a huge asterisk.

The land from which we’ve derived so much wealth was never ours. The hydro dams that power our cities and put billions in state coffers were created by flooding vast swaths of Cree, Innu, Anishinaabe and Atikamekw territory. A great many of their dead lay beneath that flooded soil and our dams devastated the ecosystem that breathes life into northern Quebec. Ironically, many of these Indigenous communities don’t have access to the very hydroeletricity that was stolen from under them.

Canada plays a huge role in this but Quebec isn’t blameless.

People might point to the James Bay Agreement or other Quebec treaties that have helped generate wealth and self-governance on Cree territory. But that was less a matter of our government being benevolent than its lawyers being outmanoeuvred by the Cree.

And there’s another catch to all this progress. We’ve become numb to it. What’s worse, rather than learn from our own experiences with colonialism, we’re simply repackaging it against racial minorities and Indigenous people who live within our borders. More on that later.

This brings me to a shitty debate question that’s turned our nation within a nation upside down just a few days ahead of Canada’s 44th federal election.

Long story short, the moderator in the only English language debate opened with a rather, shall we say, pointed question about discrimination in Quebec. The implication was that Quebec systemically discriminates against religious and linguistic minorities.

Being a lapsed Catholic, I can’t speak to the first point. But I will say that, as an anglo, I don’t feel discriminated against in Quebec. I’m a white person who speaks English in North America. It’s the genetic jackpot.

Yes, we have a French Language Charter that makes it so that new arrivals — be they from another province or country — must send their kids to school in French. On a continent where 96 per cent of the population don’t speak our language, this is one of the only ways to make sure we aren’t swallowed whole. We might debate about whether revisions to that charter are excessive but I don’t think that should be something the rest of Canada participates in.

On the question of religious freedom, however, it is the literal truth that Quebec is discriminating against religious minorities and, let’s be real, mostly women of colour.

Before the pandemic, Premier Legault’s signature piece of legislation was preventing Muslim women from wearing a hijab if they teach at a public school. His vice premier, Genevieve Guilbault, was so determined to bring these women to heel that she said she’d call the police on teachers who refuse to take off their hijab. Armed men dragging women away from schoolchildren. Democracy!

Further eroding democratic norms, Legault’s government passed this law using constitutional witchcraft. By invoking the notwithstanding clause for just the 16th time in Canadian history, Quebec adopted a piece of legislation that transparently assaults the right to freedom of thought, belief and expression.

That’s not just a Bad Anglo from the ROC saying it. It’s Quebec’s own Superior Court, which called the law “morally repugnant” and one that disproportionately targets Muslims.

So I’d say that, yes, after a summer that saw a white terrorist target and kill a Muslim family in London, it’s fair to ask questions about religious discrimination. Anti Muslim hate is on the rise across Canada and Muslim families deserve to know why a politician thinks their rights should be up for discussion.

Of course, that one clumsy debate question placed Quebec bashing at the centre of an election that — while completely unnecessary and an obvious power grab by the Liberal Party of Canada — should be about something more than hurt feelings. By my count, this is the 349th column about The Question. And yes, it was a bad question. Because Canada is just as racist as Quebec and to frame it any other way implies that we’re somehow culturally predisposed to hate. Which is absurd.

But the opposite is also true. Quebec isn’t any less racist than the rest of Canada.

When Legault talks about Quebec bashing, he isn’t talking about the Muslims his legislation marginalizes or the “woke” left-leaning dissidents in the National Assembly. He’s talking about his base: white, Christian but not Christian, francophones who live in the suburbs and have grown tired of the old Liberal-PQ wars. Fair enough. These people deserve representation in Ottawa but they don’t get to monopolize the Québécois identity.

For some reason, another awful debate question went nearly unnoticed when it came up two weeks ago. During the first federal leaders debate, hosted by TVA Nouvelles, there was more time dedicated to a University of Ottawa professor who says awful things about Quebec than life or death issues involving Indigenous communities.

The question — which was something along the lines of “WHY CAN’T WE STOP ONE LOSER WITH A TWITTER ACCOUNT FROM HURTING MY BUM BUM” — came about 40 minutes into the two-hour program. A full hour later — after every federal leader got down on their knees and promised to free us for the tyranny of an Internet troll with tenure — one question was dedicated to Indigenous issues.

So by the time TVA Nouvelle’s moderator asked one question about 32 Indigenous communities without clean drinking water, no one was paying attention. He may as well of jammed it between re-runs of Watatow at 3:30 a.m. It would have actually gotten more traction that way.

Back to The Question.

The controversy over Quebec bashing has given a free pass to Yves-François Blanchet’s Bloc Québécois to return to parliament in even stronger numbers. His mandate? To be at Legault’s beck and call. If the Quebec premier wants to build a $10 billion commuter tunnel that goes against the Bloc’s environmentalist credo, Blanchet is happy to oblige. If Legault wants to fight Ottawa over the transfer of youth protection services to First Nations in Quebec (as he did in 2018), Blanchet is his man. And when the premier’s dry cleaning needs to be picked up, I’m confident Blanchet can get the job done. Even without the little ticket thingy. He’s that good.

Quebec voters will likely decide this election. The Conservatives and Liberals both need to make inroads in the province if they want to form a government. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have done that by writing a blank cheque for subsidized childcare while ignoring the “morally repugnant” aspects of Legault’s government. Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, for his part, has promised to crack down on asylum seekers who come into Quebec (another pet peeve of our premier’s).

Whether it was to spite Trudeau or because he actually believes in something other than power, Legault endorsed O’Toole last week. Maybe this was some sort of manoeuvre to have a strong Bloc Québécois in the House of Commons and all the dry cleaning he can handle. Regardless of why he endorsed O’Toole, Legault has given his blessing to a party that shelters climate change deniers and anti-abortion activists. He’s backing a man who opposes vaccine mandates during a once in a lifetime pandemic — one that’s killed 11,313 Quebecers.

Legault is playing this game of brinksmanship at the risk of losing out on Trudeau’s $6 billion pledge to help subsidize childcare in Quebec. And who needs subsidized daycare most of all? I mean, we all do. But disproportionately, it’s families of colour, it’s immigrants living on a modest income. Quebecers, in other words.

This isn’t an endorsement of the Liberal party. It’s just an examination of where Legault’s priorities are.

So while I abhor Quebec bashing, what I hate even more are actions that will hurt the most vulnerable among us. You’ll forgive me if I prioritize this over performative indignation.