Journal de Montréal columnist Sophie Durocher is scandalized by the poor notices Quebec’s election campaign and its participants have received in the anglophone press. Andrew Coyne called Pauline Marois a “redneck”! And he called the Parti Québécois platform “ethnocentric,” and “discriminatory,” and “chauvinist”! Don Macpherson, Tasha Kheiriddin and Chris Shelley — it’s Selley, by the way; the H is both silent and invisible — referred to “xenophobia” in Quebec! And Jonathan Kay went after a PQ campaign video because (Durocher’s words) “in the montage of images of Quebec, we don’t see any photos of … Chinatown or Carifête!” He says that Marois “associates Quebec values with white, Christian values”!

Kay wasn’t arguing for tokenism in the video, just suggesting a single “non-white face” might have softened the very blunt message. But other than that, this is all pretty much accurate; it’s what these people, myself included, said. And frankly, none of those positions is particularly controversial, let alone unutterable. A cursory search confirms that you will find such thoughts in the francophone papers, too. Columnist Rima Elkouri wonders how the self-described centre-left PQ wound up defending the Front National’s vision of secularism. Marie-Claude Lortie deplores the “racism,” “stupidity” and “xenophobia” she sees on the campaign trail. Josée Legault uses the dreaded X-word. One might even argue, albeit controversially, that Don Macpherson should qualify as a Legitimate Quebec Voice — having been born, raised and educated there, and having covered politics there since the 1960s.

Why does criticism coming from outside Quebec (or from an anglophone inside it) constitute “hatred” (Durocher’s word), but criticism from inside … something else? Eventually she gets to the rub: “The problem,” she says, “is that in criticizing the candidates and their platforms, they find themselves at the same time insulting the entire population of Quebec.”

You will notice that this is rubbish. The state is not the people, and you have to be mighty touchy — or have a mighty agenda — to think or pretend otherwise. When it was discovered that a Wildrose Party candidate had opined that gay people burn in hell, and he was pilloried, and leader Danielle Smith was likewise pilloried for not disavowing him, this was no reflection on Albertans en masse. Nor is it any reflection, necessarily, on Quebecers en masse that the mayor of Saguenay, Jean Tremblay, doesn’t want some uppity Algerian-born woman with a funny-sounding name espousing a version of secularism that doesn’t privilege Christianity, and that he is willing to say so on the radio.

It is a reflection on Quebec politics, however, that the mayor of Trois-Rivières quickly threw in his lot with Tremblay; that Premier Jean Charest did not denounce Tremblay’s statements; and that two of Charest’s own candidates, Serge Simard (a cabinet minister) and Carol Néron came out in support of Tremblay’s remarks, and did not suffer for doing so. Other opinions are available, but setting aside the unique language situation, I do not believe that Quebecers are meaningfully more intolerant than other Canadians — certainly not in Montreal, where most of that tolerance is required. But that was beside the point I was trying to make, which was that Quebec’s politicians are willing, to a unique degree, to placate the intolerant, and that Canadians ought to make their feelings known about that, just as they would regarding any other province.

That’s not Quebec-bashing, let alone “hatred” of Quebec (which I love). It’s politician-bashing, and richly deserved at that.

In conclusion, while I hesitate to upset Sophie Durocher even more, she may be interested to learn that le Journal‘s parent company owns a few papers in English Canada, and that the commentary regarding Quebec to be found therein makes the stuff in the National Post and Montreal Gazette seem positively genteel. Napkins at the ready, ma’am, lest any more coffee escape your nose!

National Post

Chris Selley: • cselley@nationalpost.com