{"id":22084,"date":"2013-09-12T08:23:39","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T13:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=22084"},"modified":"2013-09-12T08:24:46","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T13:24:46","slug":"stirring-up-opposition-to-the-charter-of-quebec-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/09\/12\/stirring-up-opposition-to-the-charter-of-quebec-values\/","title":{"rendered":"Stirring up opposition to the Charter of Quebec Values"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Maclean’s<\/em>, Paul Wells<\/a> gives a bit of sovereigntist history and brings us up to date on the proposed Charter of Quebec Values:<\/p>\n

When Bernard Drainville, another minister in today\u2019s post-cosmopolitain PQ government, released the text of his proposed Charter of Values \u2014 complete with handy wall charts showing the articles of clothing (Veil! Kippah!) that will heretofore be banished from public servants\u2019 bodies while at work \u2014 he had the handy effect of smoking out two federal party leaders who have been equivocal until now. The Liberal, Justin Trudeau, has opposed the charter since the PQ started putting up trial balloons nearly a month ago. The New Democrat, Thomas Mulcair, has most of his seats in Quebec, and had resisted comment until now. So, mostly, had the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, although he did tip his hand when asked about the PQ plan in Toronto: \u201cOur job is making all groups who come to this country, whatever their background, whatever their race, whatever their ethnicity, whatever their religion, feel home in this country and be Canadians. That\u2019s our job.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Tuesday the trial balloons became official government policy. The NDP and Conservatives came out unequivocally against the PQ. Speaking for the government, Jason Kenney suggested a possible federal court challenge.<\/p>\n

This, too, happens to be one of the tactical tricks Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lis\u00e9e cooked up during the long years before he entered electoral politics. In his 2000 book Sorti de secours<\/em>, Lis\u00e9e suggested the PQ cook up some scheme that would be rejected by the rest of the country, so Quebecers would feel insulted and want to secede.<\/p>\n

Such a plan would depend for its success on a clear distinction between Quebec public opinion and the actions of national parties. So far it\u2019s not going well for the PQ. Mulcair and Trudeau are Quebecers whose parties hold 66 of the province\u2019s 75 seats. The Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois did not hurry to embrace Marois\u2019s scheme. Every Montreal mayoral candidate opposes it, as does the Quebec Federation of Women.<\/p>\n

The inspiration for the PQ\u2019s decision to retrench is purely electoralist. It is a reaction to 30 years of failed efforts to make the sovereignty movement every Quebecer\u2019s fight. Forced generosity having failed the PQ, the party is falling back on cynicism and pettiness. It\u2019s make-or-break for the entire sovereignty movement, and I\u2019m pretty sure Marois, Lis\u00e9e and Drainville just broke it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Maclean’s, Paul Wells gives a bit of sovereigntist history and brings us up to date on the proposed Charter of Quebec Values: When Bernard Drainville, another minister in today\u2019s post-cosmopolitain PQ government, released the text of his proposed Charter of Values \u2014 complete with handy wall charts showing the articles of clothing (Veil! Kippah!) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":[6,7,53,11],"tags":[47,887,113,114,258,802],"class_list":["post-22084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-history","category-politics","category-religion","tag-islam","tag-justintrudeau","tag-quebec","tag-separatism","tag-stephenharper","tag-thomasmulcair"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5Kc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22084","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=22084"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22086,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22084\/revisions\/22086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}