Although a canard claiming that Valérie Plante demonstrated against Bill 21 last weekend has been widely circulated, it simply isn’t true. She isn’t even here. She’s in South America.
Updates from April, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Investigation has shown how some restaurants exploit young workers, keeping them handy but not paying them till needed. It’s illegal.
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Kate
Operators of calèches are to get $1000 per horse as the tradition comes to an end this year in Old Montreal. The city is promising the horses a peaceful retirement but is not offering anything beyond this to compensate people for losing their livelihood.
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Kate
A recent study shows that the impact of bus service cuts hit hardest in the poorest areas of town. The same study shows that the STM has stubbornly refused to adjust bus schedules to allow for road construction and other obstacles, which has led to schedules out of sync with reality – a fact that drivers have attempted before to convey to a frustrated ridership.
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Kate
Winter started early and is lingering late here, with snow and ice and power failures, mostly outside the city. Many off-island schools are closed and several Laval households have given themselves carbon monoxide poisoning by operating their barbecues inside.
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Kate
Hampstead mayor Bill Steinberg was quoted recently as saying Bill 21 equated to ethnic cleansing and when pressed to apologize for these words, restated them instead.
Some minority groups are pointing out that the CAQ’s flagship pieces of legislation have disproportionately targeted them: Bill 9, allowing Quebec to tighten up immigration (at a time of labour shortages), Bill 17 affecting taxi drivers, and Bill 21 on state secularity. Graphic from Le Revoir, a Facebook spoof page that’s been posting an excellent series of satires on government in general: I recommend it.
Update: Justin Trudeau has condemned Steinberg’s words and appealed for calm. Steinberg is still refusing to retract.
Another update: the Journal asks who William Steinberg is and the short answer is: son of the people who owned the grocery store chain.
walkerp
He is technically correct, it’s just that that specific term tends to make us think of short-term ethnic cleansing, i.e. genocide. But it is very clear that the CAQ and the PQ and to some degree even the Liberals are all responding to a fear-based desire to keep Quebec white and francophone (but Quebec style francophone). These laws will “clean” Quebec of other ethnic groups over time.
Tactically speaking, though, a poor choice of words, as it gives the defenders of this legislation the outrage upper hand for the moment.
joe stalin
There’s only one acceptable opinion on this subject. Be sure you have it!
Chris
walkerp, why do you think he’s ‘technically correct’? The OED definition is “the mass expulsion or killing of members of one ethnic or religious group in an area by those of another.” The wikipedia article also shows it needs to include violence. That’s not at all happening with Bill 21. Something like what China is currently doing to its Muslim Uyghurs is a much closer fit to the meaning.
We agree though that his hyperbolic exaggerated choice of words is probably hurting his cause.
walkerp
Oh I stand corrected then. I didn’t realize that it had an actual official definition, I was just taking the literal interpretation of the term.
Chris
walkerp, ah ok. Still, even if we took the words “ethnic cleansing” literally, it still doesn’t fit with Bill 21 because of the word “ethnic”. Bill 21 doesn’t include/exclude any ethnicity, it’s based on religion. Overlapping but distinct concepts. It would apply to black Christians, white Jews, Arab Muslims, Asian Muslims, and even Sinéad O’Connor should she decide to emigrate here and become a teacher.
walkerp
Well that’s the rub, isn’t it? Religion and culture overlap and this bill disproportionately impacts people whose religion/culture is more obvious and externally visible. And guess what, those people almost all have brown skin.
We went from Speak White pre-revolution to Dress White.
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Kate
The city hired more building inspectors, as promised, but it’s resulting in few fines even though three quarters of the buildings were discovered to have problems.
Update: CBC went into specific detail about one case, also explaining why fines are not necessarily the best way to handle the issue.
Chris 21:40 on 2019-04-10 Permalink
Facebook fake news strikes again! 🙁
I hadn’t noticed that it was Adil Charkaoui who organized that protest. That’s fuel for the fire too. After reading his whole Wikipedia bio, I don’t think he’s the kind of person the anti-Bill 21 lobby should want heading their protests.
david100 03:55 on 2019-04-11 Permalink
I really wonder what the internet is doing to us, in terms of segmenting our information sources. So, I read only one thing about this, which was this article: https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5091277
Basically, I already think that religion is insane, and that Muslim religion is even more insane than most others – mostly because of the terrorism, crazy conspiracy theories that control arab news, and most of all the weird ways they restrict women and girls. But I’d probably be a lot more chill – I remember once being much more chill – if pretty much every piece of information I got didn’t reinforce my view.
These algorithms aren’t necessarily serving us badly – I’ll never be sympathetic to the muslims or christians or anyone, never, when it comes to some issues – but it’s pretty odd that the only way I learned about this protest was through some article that explained it in a way that completely aligns with my view, and underlines that it’s run by a guy that – I believe – shouldn’t even be in this country, let alone pretending to be a human rights guy.
Hamza 04:27 on 2019-04-11 Permalink
Even if I was to go out on a limb and say that ppl like david100 aren’t full-on bigots, the fact that there are so many folks entitled enough to spew the ‘HURRDURR MOSLEMS ARE TERRORISTS’ level of bullshit less than a month after Christchurch and in the very real and still-present shadow of Quebec City *and still expect to be taken seriously* reveals the disgusting level of hate, prejudice and fantasy that the CAQ folks thrive in every day.
You are not the enlightened mainstream – you’re wrong. You’re malicious. And this country is better despite you, not because of you.
qatzelok 10:17 on 2019-04-11 Permalink
@david100: I agree that religion is insane, but disagree that Islam is any more insane than any other. It just appears to be more insane because Islam is actually practiced in a lot of societies from where we get immigration and where our mining companies savagely exploit resources.
The reason that “religion” is more practiced in thise places is because the level of social desperation and misery leads them to follow mythology, since reality has proven to be so awful for them. This is not something to celebrate – the ignorance and superstition that is partially a result of rich nations’ predation on defenseless other countries.
dwgs 10:21 on 2019-04-11 Permalink
Damn, I’m in full agreement with qatzelok. Whaddayknow?
Chris 11:31 on 2019-04-11 Permalink
david100, religion is of course nonsense, but it doesn’t follow that we should ‘never be sympathetic to the muslims or christians’. They are the victims of religion, the vast majority being brainwashed since birth. The majority are just regular decent people. Don’t confuse human beings (Muslims) with ideology (Islam). People are more than one ideology. Thankfully, most Muslims ignore the worst of the garbage in Islam.
That CBC article is a great read though, I encourage everyone to read it.
Meezly 15:59 on 2019-04-11 Permalink
People are not an ideology, but interestingly, those who wield power tend to be the ones who uphold and force an ideology upon the people.
I’m an atheist who also views religion as a form of insanity, but from a scientific viewpoint, also understand that human beings are hard-wired for religiosity. I believe that an ideal secular society should be one of neutrality and tolerance. It’s hard, but I try not to view religious people as victims – it’s as condescending as a religious person feeling superior to the non-believer, and I’d rather not sink to that mindset!
Bill 21 kind of scares me – it does not support the idea of religious neutrality at all. It’s designed to specifically target Muslims and those who are visibly “other” in Quebec society. It gives ill-founded power to racists who think they can pull a hijab off someone’s head simply because they feel this law supports their right to do so.
IMHO, Islam seems more insane only by matter of degrees. If you take away its ideological wrapping, the heart of its religious teachings is as spiritual and meaningful as any other major religion. Since the Crusades, the thing with Islam is that it continued to grow as a fascist theocracy, taking over countries by violent aggression while the RCC never seized such power and got splintered off by other Christian branches. Also, “Christian nations” never had to suffer from decades of US foreign policy during the 20th century, which likely gave rise to Islamic extremism.
The ex-Muslims who see the hijab as a symbol of oppression, it’s not just the religion but also their history. It’s a very complicated relationship they have with their culture, and us Westerners who have the privilege of distinguishing ourselves as individuals free from the trappings of ideology, pass our judgements and view ourselves as ‘superior’ to someone who has willingly chosen to adhere to her beliefs and wear her hijab (that’s can’t really ‘her’ choice, she must be brainwashed by her religion/ideology).
For ex-Muslims who support Bill 21, does that mean that Sikhs who wish to work in the public sector must forego their turban and cut their long hair? Or Jews must take off their kippahs? Is this law justified because turbans and kippahs carry the same weight of oppression? Because if it’s symbols of patriarchal oppression, we might as well ban stiletto heels and neckties as well. This law feels like such a slippery slope.
For a society to be truly neutral, a citizen should have the right to maintain or renounce their faith, and not be punished for either one.
Kevin 22:16 on 2019-04-11 Permalink
Quebecers are not aware that there are many religions that are Islamic, just like there are many religions that are Christian.
Kate 08:22 on 2019-04-12 Permalink
You guys, you think “religion” is just a set of irrational ideas in one person’s head. You leave out the huge community-sustaining effect of a shared belief, because where you live, religion has dwindled to the point where it really is only a set of ideas in a single person. In other places it’s not, and refusing to see this side of religion clouds your rationality.
Kevin: yes, but that doesn’t stop the usual squabbling among Shias, Sunnis, Ismailis, Ahmadiyyas and the general dogpiling on Bahaism, which I guess is no longer Islam but certainly branched off from it.
Kevin 19:00 on 2019-04-12 Permalink
Kate
Nah, but when you have people saying Islam is bad they are completely ignoring the larger picture, which you pointed out
ant6n 02:11 on 2019-04-13 Permalink
Religion is mostly culture. Just like the atheism and Religion bashing displayed here is a kind of culture.