MONTREAL - “Over my dead body,” Philippe Couillard told his Quebec Liberal Party’s general council on Oct. 26.
He was talking about the Marois government’s proposed “Charter of Pants” forbidding public employees from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols at work.
“Never will I be the accomplice of this cynical government. Never. Never. Never. …
“I want to be clear: on the freedoms of all Quebecers, there is no possible compromise. Our individual freedoms are non-negotiable. …
“We will defend and preserve our individual rights and freedoms at all cost. I will stand up and protect them to the end.”
Well, the end came less than four weeks later. On Tuesday, Couillard, very much alive, announced that compromise on the charter was possible after all.
Until then, the party’s position, which Couillard had announced Sept. 5, had been against forbidding any public employee from wearing a religious symbol.
An “extensive review” had indicated that such a ban would be “unreasonable and most likely in violation of the (rights) charters in effect.”
Even limiting such a ban to those with “coercive” power, such as judges and police officers, “would be contentious,” said Couillard, since the coercive nature of a position “always varies depending on circumstances.”
And the term “conspicuous” was “eminently subjective, and promises interminable debates.”
By Tuesday, however, Couillard had concluded that the defence and preservation of individual rights and freedoms for all Quebecers wasn’t worth the cost of an open split in his party’s caucus in the National Assembly.
In what Couillard himself had called a “an act of breaking off” with the party, Liberal MNA Fatima Houda-Pepin had publicly criticized it after Couillard and the Liberal critic for the charter had said the party would accept a candidate wearing a chador.
That’s a full-length version of the hijab that also leaves the face exposed.
La Presse had also reported on Tuesday that other dissident Liberal MNAs, worried that the party’s position is unpopular among French-speaking voters, had been meeting among themselves.
To regain control over a usually disciplined Liberal caucus, Couillard made another of the “Philippe-flops” that have characterized his eight-month-old leadership.
He announced on Tuesday that his party will consider a ban on religious symbols for public employees with “coercive” power, after all.
Again Couillard said “never,” and “over my dead body.”
This time, however, the line he drew was farther back, at overriding the Canadian and Quebec charters of rights.
That’s exactly what Houda-Pepin had advocated in a statement last Friday.
And now she knows, and so does everybody else, that when Flipping Phil says “never,” he means “not yet.”
So now both the major opposition parties in the Assembly have offered concessions on the charter.
That leaves only the Parti Québécois holding out. But then, it’s the PQ that’s dealing from a position of strength.
The charter in its present form is more popular with voters than the PQ itself. Results of a poll conducted by CROP for La Presse, and published on Wednesday, suggest that 48 per cent of voters are in favour of the charter, to 32 per cent who would vote PQ.
The PQ owns the “identity” issue, and the opposition parties can’t hope to outbid the PQ on it, no matter how many concessions on the charter they offer.
Fortunately for them, the charter is not a priority for most voters. In another CROP poll, conducted for L’actualité magazine in mid-October, respondents were asked to choose up to three priorities from a list.
The three most popular were economic, traditionally the Liberals’ strength.
The charter ranked 10th, chosen by only 13 per cent.
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com
Twitter: MacphersonGaz
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