What some prominent Quebec nationalists lack in dignity and tolerance, they make up for in cunning and cynical populism. The province’s discourse on identity and language has become so polluted that it’s difficult for many to criticize government policies, even constructively, for fear of being labelled a “Quebec-basher” or, for Francophones, a sellout and a colonial slave to federalist puppeteers.
Even making fairly obvious, reasonable observations about the Parti Québécois (PQ) Charter of Values, for instance, and the plan’s inherent hypocrisy in banning ethnic symbols in the public sector while tolerating Catholic ones, is seen in many circles as an attack on Quebec heritage. Nationalists have the system down to a science: Offend minorities by fining or shaming them into conformity and submission, play the victim card by labelling the subsequent, anticipated policy criticism as an attack on the Quebec population – victims of the Canadian majority, and repeat the process until a consensus develops that sees otherwise agreeable Canadian concepts of inclusiveness as excluding Quebecers.
It’s this perception, promoted by nationalists in media and government, that the identity of the other – les autres – can poison the Québécois identity that has led me to label many government policies – Péquiste, Liberal and otherwise – as blatantly xenophobic. The vicious cycle of minority-baiting and self-victimization is not something that is openly acknowledged among prominent nationalists, presumably for fear that Quebecers might catch on to their game and realize that, as it turns out, their views on social cohesion aren’t that drastically different from Canadian multiculturalism after all.
In a heated debate recently on Télé-Québec, the provincial public broadcaster, noted National Post “Quebec-basher” Barbara Kay was faced with an angry Richard Martineau, arguably the province’s most prominent nationalist commentator:
“I want to thank you, Mrs. Kay, as well as your colleagues in English Canada. My sovereignist sentiments have been dormant, lukewarm, soft…You’ve made them fervent…What are we doing in a country that looks on us with contempt and condescension?” asked Martineau, to a round of applause from the audience, as other panelists denounced the apparent anti-Quebec consensus in Canadian media. There was no distinction made by Kay’s opponents on criticizing Quebec policy and policy-makers versus criticizing the Quebec people; a common red herring used in the nationalist argument.
“There was a big hole, a trap set by the PQ,” Martineau added, smirking, “and all the pundits in Canada fell into it!”
In a rare moment of insight, Martineau acknowledged that this intolerance trap exists, even if it is perhaps more rhetorical than official, and that he moves in concert with the PQ government to set that trap in order to further the alienation of Quebec from Canada. It was a subtle but important slip for Martineau, who has lowered the Values discourse to level so offensive that some of Quebec’s more balanced intellectuals view him as a nationalist self-parody, a “mononc’” – Québécois slang for that rambling redneck uncle who shames the family.
In one of his latest oeuvres, Martineau lambastes the four frontrunners in Montreal’s mayoralty race for all opposing the proposed Charter of Values (along with roughly half of Quebec’s commentariat). He writes, tongue in cheek, that “I admire Islamists” for their devotion to defeating the Charter. He is impressed that radical Muslims, apparently hell-bent on interfering in municipal politics, have managed to ally themselves with politicians – without acknowledging that non-Islamist arguments against the Charter exist and without proof that Muslim community leaders who met with said politicians have an Islamist agenda. Minor details in the narrative he’s created about the coordinated assault on Quebec identity.
“Imagine succeeding in convincing Western intellectuals on the benefits of the veil,” Martineau writes, assuming that opponents of the Charter encourage women to cover up with either hijabs or niqabs. He then doubles down and insults Jews, trivializing the Holocaust. “It’s the kind of magic trick that the KKK would have loved to accomplish…Imagine what the Nazis could have accomplished had they succeeded in convincing the world that Jews wore their yellow stars VOLUNTARILY…they could have sent pretty Jewish girls on TV to say, while batting their eyelashes, that they ADORE wearing their symbols of enslavement, no, really, it’s super cute, there are light yellow ones, dark yellow ones, some in silk, some knitted…”
Such is the level of discourse accepted by Quebec’s most popular newspaper, the Journal de Montréal, in this week’s Thanksgiving Day edition. I would be thankful had Martineau’s hurtful comments been widely denounced by fellow Quebec commentators, but he’s a big target and too many are too scared to be labelled a self-hating Quebecer by his one-man, multi-platform media machine (a machine owned by Quebecor Media, whose chairman, Pierre Karl Peladeau, also chairs Hydro Québec’s board and attends PQ government cabinet meetings, but I digress).
I don’t mean to pick on only Martineau; I target him because he is arguably most prominent and best represents the decline of Québécois intellectualism in favour of anti-intellectual, populist intolerance. He’s not alone, of course. His cohost on another Télé-Québec program called Les Francs-tireurs is Benoît Dutrizac, whose noon-hour radio show is the most listened-to in Montreal. He was condemned by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council last year for calling the city’s Orthodox Jews “mentally-ill retards.” Their crime against the Québécois nation which prompted Dutrizac’s insults: They supported a noise bylaw in the predominantly Jewish town of Hampstead on high holidays.
The nationalist’s probable defence for such universally offensive statements: The insults expressed are a function of decades of Canadian repression and debasement, or something. No matter how extreme the minority-baiting gets, there is always a highly influential segment of Quebec society who can justify these hateful exercises and a dormant media establishment with a faulty intolerance gauge, often too afraid to defend les autres.
Quebec will not advance, culturally or economically, until leaders of all stripes take a good, hard look in the mirror and realize that the vicious cycle of self-victimization and repression, a war on the other institutionalized by government and media, will be the slow death of this once progressive society.
Dan Delmar est le co-fondateur de Provocateur Communications et l'animateur de “The Exchange,” les lundis à 20h à CJAD 800 Montréal.