{"id":16480,"date":"2012-08-16T07:56:18","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T11:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=16480"},"modified":"2017-04-17T12:42:52","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T16:42:52","slug":"kheiriddin-quebec-xenophobia-on-display-in-election-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/08\/16\/kheiriddin-quebec-xenophobia-on-display-in-election-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Kheiriddin: Quebec xenophobia on display in election campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In her <em>National Post<\/em> column, <a href=\"http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2012\/08\/16\/tasha-kheiriddin-in-quebec-xenophobia-is-alive-and-well\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tasha Kheiriddin<\/a> discusses the topic that most of the Canadian media is being ultra-careful about:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Racist or not? When it comes to the Quebec election campaign, remarks made this week by a variety of politicians provided considerable fodder for debate, and considerable distraction from the real issues \u2014 health, taxes and corruption \u2014 that voters actually want their elected officials to talk about.<\/p>\n<p>First, Coalition Avenir Qu\u00e9bec leader Fran\u00e7ois Legault lambasted young Quebecers for being interested in living \u201cthe good life,\u201d unlike children in Asia whose parents all want them to become engineers, and have to stop them from studying lest they make themselves sick. When he was attacked for this remarks, he retorted that the fault lies with Quebec parents, and that they should review the values they are transmitting to their children.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>His remarks pale in comparison, however, to the xenophobic tone of those made by Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois ledaer Pauline Marois, and worse yet, the mayor of Saguenay, Jean Tremblay.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, Ms. Marois unveiled her party\u2019s desire to implement a \u201cSecular Charter\u201d which would ban the wearing of any religious symbols by government employees. With, as my colleague Chris Selley tartly notes on these pages, one notable exception: Symbols of Christian faith, such as the cross which hangs over the Speakers\u2019 Chair in the National Assembly. In other words, a crucifix necklace, good: hijabs and yarmulkes, bad.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>Then on Wednesday, Mr. Tremblay took xenophobia one step further, when he launched a tirade against Djemila Benhabib, the Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois candidate in Trois Rivi\u00e8res. On a popular radio show, Mr. Tremblay let loose: \u201cI am shocked that we, the softies, the French Canadians, will be told how to behave, how to respect our culture by a person who comes from Algeria, and we can\u2019t even pronounce her name.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: Convenient timing suspects Don Macpherson.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/MacphersonGaz\/statuses\/236059349817122816<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In her National Post column, Tasha Kheiriddin discusses the topic that most of the Canadian media is being ultra-careful about: Racist or not? When it comes to the Quebec election campaign, remarks made this week by a variety of politicians provided considerable fodder for debate, and considerable distraction from the real issues \u2014 health, taxes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,53],"tags":[360,188,400,842,113,99,1122],"class_list":["post-16480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-liberty","category-politics","tag-christianity","tag-electionwatch","tag-language","tag-partiquebecois","tag-quebec","tag-racism","tag-xenophobia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4hO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16480"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16595,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16480\/revisions\/16595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}