The proposed Charter of Québec values has rung the bell of the lamestream media and the chattering classes, both in la Belle Province and in TROC (The Rest of Canada). Those calling it "racist", "anti-Muslim", and "unhelpful" -- you know the list of epithets -- include the Federation of Québec School Boards, the association representing the province's health care industry, and even the Québec Bar Association, which says the Charter will certainly be challenged in the courts.
What's really causing those who celebrate diversity to soil their silkies is the possibility that the Parti Québecois -- presently a minority government -- will call a snap election with the Charter (and only that) as the ballot question. Latest polls put the PQ in first place (ahead of the Liberals), with 36% of decided voters likely to back them. If polling day results reflect those numbers, the PQ would be returned with a majority.
Why? Because the real people of Québec -- even in the "culturally diverse" Montréal region -- overwhelmingly support the proposal. On Monday, a Léger poll found that that 60% Québecois back the Charter. Among the crucial francophone voters, that number rises to just short of 70%!
It's real people -- like the Pineault-Caron family, from the Saguenay town of Sacré-Coeur -- who are speaking out against religious and cultural "accommodation", meaning the stealthy Islamization of their heretofore white Christian society. The video of part of their testimony about the upsetting sights and sounds of Islam they suffered during their travels in Morocco and Turkey — and their conclusion that it is "unthinkable" to allow people in such "disguises" to roam around in public in Québec — became a YouTube sensation, registering over 300,000 hits so far.
Some Québecois see the charter as little more than an electoral ploy. The pundits and "progressive thinkers" of the anglophone media accuse the PQ of playing the "politics of division", to get back the francophone vote they lost to the Coalition Avenir Quebec in the last election. If that's the plan, it's working; the Leger poll says support for the CAQ is down 10 points from the 2012 election.
What about a court challenge, if the Charter is enacted? For the liberals and diversity-lovers, the wish will almost certainly be father to the thought and grandfather to court challenges under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Such action would bring the whole issue of diversity and "accommodation" not just to the Supreme Court of Canada (ultimately) but to the attention of the real people in TROC. According to Walt's Canuck agents, there are a great many -- outside of Toronto, the font of all evil -- who would be happy to see a similar law in force all over the Great Not-so-white North.
Further reading on WWW: "What Québec's new Charter of Values will and will not do"
No comments:
Post a Comment