When I ride the bus to work, I pass a school with a cross at the top of the front of the building, a statue of the Virgin Mary below it and a name translated as Very Holy Sacrament School.
It’s a public school, administered by a school board that is non-denominational, even though the board is named for a Catholic saint, Marguerite Bourgeoys.
On Tuesday, in the campaign for the Sept. 4 Quebec election, the Parti Québécois promised a “charter of secularism” stipulating that Quebec is religiously “neutral” and banning certain “ostentatious” religious symbols from public services, including the education system.
But the charter would not affect the religious name and symbols on the public school I pass on the bus.
That’s because the ban on religious symbols applies only to those worn by public employees, and really to symbols of minority religious such as Islam; the only “ostentatious” crosses I’ve seen on people in Quebec accompanied piercings and tattoos as a fashion accessory or, much less commonly, the full garb of a religious order.
And the ban would not apply to symbols of Quebec’s “heritage,” such as the crucifix placed on the wall of the National Assembly chamber in 1936 by conservative premier Maurice Duplessis to symbolize an alliance between the government and the Catholic Church.
Like its proposed ban on religious symbols, the PQ’s concern with preserving Quebec’s heritage is selective.
A former PQ government created a “toponymy commission” to wipe off the map centuries-old names given by English-speaking settlers; for example, the Eastern Townships were officially renamed l’Estrie in 1981.
But the PQ would not remove a religious symbol of an alliance between church and state from the Assembly, even after it adopted a charter proclaiming Quebec’s religious neutrality.
It would, however, forbid a Muslim woman from wearing a hijab to teach at the same public school that would continue the ostentatious display of a cross, a statue of the Virgin Mary and the name Very Holy Sacrament.
At least one PQ candidate is uncomfortable with the shameless hypocrisy of her party’s “selecularism.”
Djemila Benhabib said that while she supports the PQ policy in favour of keeping the crucifix in the Assembly, she’s personally in favour of removing it, and would argue in caucus against the platform on which she would have been elected.
The PQ has turned the week in the campaign before the televised leaders’ debates into Identity Week.
Two days before it unveiled its proposed secularism charter, it promised to introduce a “new Bill 101” in the first 100 days of a PQ government.
This is what’s known in U.S. politics as “red meat for the base.”
In the case of the PQ, its purpose is to get the party’s base of support to turn out to vote despite the absence of a commitment on holding a sovereignty referendum.
It’s also known as “dog-whistle politics,” sending a message with a second meaning to some voters — in this case the xenophobes whom Gilles Duceppe, former leader of the Bloc Québécois, has called “bluenecks.”
Ten hours after Marois presented her party’s “secularism” plank, André Drouin showed up at a campaign rally for her. Drouin is the former small-town councillor who drafted the stereotype-based, 2007 Hérouxville code of behaviour for immigrants. While that made him a joke or worse to urban cosmopolitan types, it made him a hero to opponents of accommodations of religious minorities.
At the rally, he repeated for province-wide media the endorsement of the PQ he had delivered in a local weekly newspaper before the election was called.
If the “bluenecks” didn’t already know for whom to vote Sept. 4, Drouin’s presence at the PQ rally and his endorsement were a pretty clear signal.
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.comTwitter:@MacphersonGaz