{"id":52536,"date":"2019-11-08T03:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T08:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=52536"},"modified":"2019-11-07T15:10:13","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T20:10:13","slug":"dont-hold-your-breath-waiting-for-the-feds-to-tackle-quebecs-ongoing-repression-against-minorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/11\/08\/dont-hold-your-breath-waiting-for-the-feds-to-tackle-quebecs-ongoing-repression-against-minorities\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Feds to tackle Quebec’s ongoing repression against minorities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley<\/a> on the situation in Quebec, where first-class citizenship is only available to those who speak French and don’t expect their religious beliefs to be respected:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the fascinating things about Quebec politics is that it’s often impossible to predict which absurdities will become controversial and which will be accepted as reasonable. The province’s linguistic and more recently cultural debates operate in an atmosphere so divorced from normal reality that it’s impossible to know how any new idea or event might react to its unique and volatile mixture of gases.<\/p>\n

The classic example is Pastagate: An inspector from the Office qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois de la langue fran\u00e7aise<\/em> found an Italian restaurant’s menu was riddled with Italian \u2014 calamari, antipasti \u2014 and issued the appropriate cease-and-desist notice. At no point did anyone suggest he had misinterpreted the law. Despite universal scorn and worldwide mockery, at no point did anyone successfully explain why this inspector’s actions were obviously ultra vires<\/em>, while the OQLF’s other insane diktats<\/em> \u2014 say, forcing a bilingual community newspaper to segregate English-language and French-language content such that English-only advertising will never appear on the same page as a French-language article \u2014 were reasonable.<\/p>\n

As a result, Quebec politics is like a festival of trial balloons. Most recently we saw languages minister Simon Jolin-Barrette float the idea of banning merchants from greeting customers with “bonjour-hi” \u2014 a Downtown Montreal-ism that turns language hawks crimson with rage \u2014 only to have Premier Fran\u00e7ois Legault shoot it down a couple of days later amidst widespread ridicule.<\/p>\n

By contrast, we’re supposed to think it’s totally reasonable that the National Assembly voted merely to request that merchants use state-sanctioned greetings. Unanimously. Twice.<\/p>\n

Ban religious symbols for all civil servants, or only those “in a position of authority”? Which civil servants are “in a position of authority”? Should currently employed civil servants affected by Bill 21 be grandfathered in or not? You can poll all you like, but until any given idea goes through Quebec’s intense media ringer, no one knows how it’ll shake out. With fundamental rights at stake, the majoritarian randomness of it all is truly alarming.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley on the situation in Quebec, where first-class citizenship is only available to those who speak French and don’t expect their religious beliefs to be respected: One of the fascinating things about Quebec politics is that it’s often impossible to predict which absurdities will become controversial and which will be accepted as reasonable. The […]<\/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":[6,9,10,53],"tags":[262,400,113,217],"class_list":["post-52536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-law","category-liberty","category-politics","tag-culture","tag-language","tag-quebec","tag-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-dFm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52536","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=52536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52537,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52536\/revisions\/52537"}],"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=52536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}