Bouchard-Taylor: Everybody Just Calm the F*%$k Down

Being an outsider in a province with arguably one of the most distinct cultures in Canada does give me a unique perspective on the culture and politics out here, and I've been mulling over how to address the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Reasonable Accommodation since it started. And now that it has finally release it's report last week, I figured it was finally time for me to comment on it, although I'm opening a can of worms that will take several posts to properly cover.

While the whole circus Reasonable Accommodation had created certainly got everybody's panties in a knot, the final recommendations in the report were unsurprising to anyone with half a brain in their head (or at the very least a passing knowledge of the pedigree of its authors). "The foundations of collective life in Quebec are not in a critical situation," the authors wrote, which makes you wonder why the whole rigmarole got started in the first place. And the reasons are simultaneously complicated and simple.

The simple answer is of course Hérouxville, the municipality of 1,300 that in February of 2007 drafted a code of conduct for it's citizens that included, among other things, a ban against stoning women and the covering of their faces. A reactionary gesture, sure, but a reaction to what exactly? It wasn't as if Hérouxville had been the site of a recent influx of lady murdering Islamic extremists. In fact, the town apparent has exactly one immigrant family living withing it's limits, although the Wikipdeia article for Hérouxville maintains that they have none. It wants more-- needs more, if it is going to survive as a community, they just wanted to make sure they got the "right kind". Which of course sounds like code for "French, Catholic and White", which it could be, even if they don't realize it. Political correctness hasn't taken hold in Quebec the same way it has in other parts of Canada, and I've witnessed surprising casual racism from people I consider educated and aware.

It would be easy to label the whole Hérouxville incident as the result of uneducated, small town, small minded thinking. Except that it hit a nerve. The media went crazy. And the politicians jumped on a bandwagon that seemed to be gathering steam. The right leaning nationalist party, the ADQ, won some startling victories in the March 2007 provincial election to become the official opposition, fueled by populist anger at what they saw as the PQ's failure to protect Quebecois values.

Then, in fall of 2007, in Parti Quebequois leader Pauline Marois finally threw her hat into the whole ugly mess, tabling an "identity" bill that would require new arrivals to the province to swear an oath of loyalty as well as pass French and citizenships tests. The joke of course is that this was the second attempt at a Quebequois constitution the PQ had tabled in less than 6 months. A desperate attempt to stay relevant after being lambasted for suggesting that sovereignty would be on the back burner of her party's agenda after being sworn in earlier that month? The likely answer is yes, especially considering that this is also when the Bouchard-Taylor commission really started to heat up.

See, despite two failed Sovereignty referendums, Sovereignty is still a hot-button issue in Quebec. My own neighborhood has dozens of apartments with Quebec flag placards in their front windows. But let's face it, whipping the people of Quebec into enough of a frenzy to risk winning another referendum would take some serious cash, cahones and charisma and there isn't a party in Quebec with enough of any of these to make a serious stab at it. And so Sovereignty gets traded in for its ugly cousin: Nationalism. And while Sovereignty and Nationalism can seem like the same thing (it's got the word "Nation" in it), Nationalism becomes dangerous because it hinges on that thorny idea of Identity. And Identity is what leads to "Us" versus "Them" and the blatant insecurity that leads to things like the Hérouxville code.