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Vol. 71/No. 46      December 10, 2007

 
Quebec immigration debate
targets Muslim workers
(feature article)
 
BY MICHEL PRAIRIE
AND ROBERT SIMMS  
MONTREAL—A debate on immigration raging in Quebec for the past year reached new levels this fall with public hearings held across the province. Framed by capitalist politicians, the debate on “reasonable accommodation,” as it is often couched, centers on what allowances should be made for immigrants’ religious and cultural practices.

The hearings were conducted by the so-called Bouchard-Taylor commission, a consultative body set up by the Quebec government and chaired by two well-known academics.

While targeting the foreign-born in general, the debate takes special aim at immigrant workers who are Muslim. In the past decade there has been a substantial growth in the number of immigrants settling in Quebec, an increasing proportion of whom are Muslims. With Ottawa’s troops in Afghanistan, Canadian imperialism’s “war on terror” propaganda campaign has also fed the flames of the controversy.

Accommodating prayer obligations, the kirpan (a small Sikh ceremonial dagger), and kosher food is “quite accessory to the survival of Quebec culture,” said Yves Rocheleau at the commission’s October 23 hearing in the city of Trois-Rivières, Quebec.

“The only francophone [French-speaking] people in America among 400 million Anglophones [English speakers]—that’s the real cultural diversity that must be respected and protected,” he emphasized. The Quebecois are an oppressed nationality in Canada of about 6 million people. They are subject to oppression based on their language, French.

In a contrasting view, retired teacher Rueul Amdour stated at a hearing of the commission in Gatineau, Quebec, on September 10, “The idea that we are going to be suspicious of people because they dress differently, or have different religious beliefs… . I think it’s disgusting.”

The debate erupted a year ago when a Montreal YMCA installed frosted windows in a gym, paid for by Hasidic Jews who said they did not want their youth seeing women in leotards. About the same time, a community health center in Montreal roused protests because it banned men at prenatal classes, saying this was in accommodation to Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh women.

At that point, Mario Dumont, leader of Democratic Action of Quebec (ADQ), a small right-wing party in Quebec’s National Assembly, jumped in to declare, “There is a difference between [equality of rights] and staying in the background, and saying that the majority no longer has the right to exist, to have its own traditions, to have its ways of doing things.”

Then in January of this year, the town council of Hérouxville, a village of 1,300, issued a “code of conduct” for would-be immigrants that barred stoning, female circumcision, immolation by fire, and the veiling of the face.

The Liberal government of Jean Charest in Quebec responded by setting up the Bouchard-Taylor commission and called provincial elections for March 26.

Dumont used the elections to deepen his reactionary campaign, casting himself as the protector of “Quebec culture.” After the vote, ADQ deputies increased their ranks from 4 to 41 and their share of the vote rose from 18.1 to 30.8 percent. The ADQ became the official opposition in Quebec’s National Assembly.  
 
Canada’s rulers weigh in
In late October, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper introduced a bill requiring women who wear veils to show their faces when they vote. The Charest government followed suit the following week in Quebec’s National Assembly.

Meanwhile, trying to outdo Dumont’s ADQ, newly chosen Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois proposed a bill in Quebec’s National Assembly to require immigrants to prove an adequate knowledge of French and of “Quebec’s fundamental values” before they can run as candidates for the national legislature.

In English-speaking Canada, the capitalist media and politicians, not known for their pro-immigrant record, have seized on the debate to paint Quebec as a bastion of anti-immigrant intolerance. In a November 3 editorial titled “Quebec’s toxic identity debate,” the Toronto Star described the Bouchard-Taylor hearings as “a festival of fear, bigotry and ignorance.”

Up to now, union officials in Quebec have either remained silent or bent to the chauvinist pressure. In a position paper presented to the Bouchard-Taylor commission in October, the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), while denouncing the most extreme cases of anti-immigrant chauvinism, supported the banning of the chador and burqa in public schools and the requirement that women show their face in order to vote.  
 
 
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