Wednesday-Night

See also John Moore on Reasonable Accommodation
More on Wednesday-night.com
Quebec’s culture clash, Backgrounder on CBC
Download Abridged Report (English)

June 5
Bouchard-Taylor : Une lourde tâche
Warning: this link may not take you directly to the article; the MetropolitaIn website still has some ‘linking issues’
Kheiriddin et Collacott
Si un bon nombre des recommandations de la Commission Bouchard- Taylor visent à faciliter l’intégration, elles semblent uniquement imputer à la société d’accueil la responsabilité de cette lourde tâche. Au lieu d’offrir des solutions innovatrices qui engagent tous les citoyens, le rapport mise presque exclusivement sur les Québécois francophones pour assurer la réussite du processus et ce, d’une façon coûteuse, bureaucratique et inefficace.
Le rapport souligne légitimement que « les minorités […] sont fragiles et inquiètes face à l’avenir… » Il peut en effet être déchirant de quitter son pays, surtout pour s’établir dans un pays de culture et de traditions très différentes. Ainsi, chaque société d’accueil doit faire tout en son pouvoir pour aider les immigrants à s’adapter à leur nouvelle patrie.
Mais, à la lumière des réalités actuelles, les recommandations de la Commission sont presque risibles. Elle souhaite que le gouvernement dépense des fonds publics afin de créer des tribunes ethniques dans les médias, qu’il soutienne les activités d’organismes vouées à promouvoir la tolérance, et crée un « Office d’harmonisation interculturelle » ainsi qu’un portail interactif. On n’a donc qu’une réponse : vive la bureaucratie!
A very courageous report
Bouchard-Taylor point the way for us to follow
ROBERT LIBMAN, Freelance
Looking at one’s reflection in the mirror is a difficult thing to do for people who have a guilty conscience. Jean Dorion of the St. Jean Baptiste Society and PQ leader Pauline Marois are among many of the usual suspects who have come out swinging since the release of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission report. They refuse to recognize or accept that the report carefully suggests that Quebecers take a look in the mirror. In order for Quebec to thrive, the reflection in that mirror should have faces of many different colours that should all be able to fit within its frame.
June 2
There’s a difference between accommodation and reconciliation
There’s more to reasonable accommodation debate than irresponsible media
CHARLES BLATTBERG, The Gazette
Yes, there is an “accommodation crisis” in Quebec. No, it cannot all be put down to “misperception,” as Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor do in their report on reasonable accommodation.
True, as they point out, there have been very few real conflicts over accommodation issues in the province. But that is why we should be asking the question of how these rare incidents could so easily produce such widespread feelings of dissatisfaction, even victimization. The authors and others have laid the blame on an irresponsible media and politicians, but this is surely an insufficient explanation. People are just not so easily fooled. There must be a deeper reason for the malaise, one that has made so many Quebecers susceptible to the manipulations of a Mario Dumont or a Journal de Montréal. But it is a reason that Bouchard and Taylor have missed.
That they have done so is understandable, since this is a case of something that is especially well hidden because it is right there out in the open. What I am referring to is the tension that exists between accommodation practices on the one hand and those that aim for reconciliation on the other. Most people fail to distinguish between these, and it must be said that they get no help from the report (whose subtitle is “A Time for Reconciliation”).
May 24
Charest in damage control over Bouchard-Taylor
Premier takes out ads unveiling new plan requiring immigrants to learn French before arriving and adhere to Quebec values
RHÉAL SÉGUIN
QUEBEC CITY — Premier Jean Charest is taking to the airwaves and buying full-page newspaper ads to defend himself against opposition claims that he’s not adequately protecting Quebec’s identity.
Mr. Charest immediately distanced himself from one of the major conclusions in this week’s controversial Bouchard-Taylor commission report on the accommodation of immigrants in Quebec.
It called for religious and cultural reciprocity between francophone Quebeckers and immigrants as a means to resolve the so-called “accommodation crisis.”
The ad features a picture of Mr. Charest signing a document stating that “when one chooses Quebec, one also chooses Quebeckers and their values,” referring to the need for immigrants to do their part to integrate into Quebec society.
May 22
Jonathan Kay reads the Bouchard-Taylor report on “reasonable accommodation” in Quebec, so you don’t have to and we thank him for preparing the Coles Notes!
(National Post) The “reasonable accommodation” report, released today by Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, is a tough slog. Most of the ideas in it are sensible — and some are even admirable. But the document is written in a dilatory style. It easily could have been just 20 pages once you took out the throat-clearing, academic jargon, and general windiness. At 96 pages, I doubt many people will bother reading even the abridged version.
Recommendations of the Bouchard-Taylor commission
Here are some of the recommendations of the Bouchard-Taylor report

. The crucifix above the chair of the president of the National Assembly be relocated in the Parliament building to a place that emphasizes its heritage value.

. The commission says it would be absurd to extend the neutrality to all historic signs e.g. the cross on Mont Royal or crosses on old buildings converted to secular uses.

. Municipal councils abandon the saying of prayers at their pubic meetings.

. Judges, Crown prosecutors, police officers, prison guards and the president and vice-president of the National Assembly be prohibited from wearing religious signs. Teachers, public servants, health professionals and all other government employees be authorized to do so.

. Students who wish to wear religious symbols in class, such as the hijab, kippah or turban should be able to do so.

. Students must not be exempted from compulsory courses in the name of religious freedom.

. Educational institutions are not required to offer permanent prayer rooms. However, it is in keeping with the spirit of “adjustment,” to authorize for the purpose of prayer the use of temporarily unoccupied rooms.

. In health care facilities, patients should receive care from the professionals available without expecting to choose them according to sex.

. Co-education must prevail where possible in swimming and other classes bearing in mind educational requirements or constraints.

. No formal recommendations on the state of the French language. The commission deemed this subject outside of its mandate. However, the commission welcomes the government’s recent efforts to improve the Francization and said it wants to relay an idea they heard several times: to extend French operating rules included in the French Language Charter to small companies with 20 to 49 employees.

. The government should encourage public and private administrators to adopt paid leave for religious holidays.

. Modifications to teaching training programs to include additional instruction devoted to intercultural questions.

. Increased funding for organizations that support immigrant women, launching of a vigorous campaign to promote interculturalism in Quebec society.

. Better inform newly arrived immigrant parents about adjustment practises and the operation of the school system.

. The government seek to better understand and combat different forms of racism with emphasis on fighting hate crimes and the protection of all individuals subject to multiple discrimination; e.g. homosexuals and the disabled.

. The government enshrine interculturalism in a statute, a policy statement or a declaration and that this initiative include public consultations and a vote in the National Assembly.

. The government produce and disseminate every year among the managers of institutions and public or private organizations a multidenominational calendar that indicates the dates of religious holidays.

. Additional funds be devoted for the study of interculturalism and the dual relationship among immigrants to their cultural of origin and the host society’s culture.
May 21
Have some faith in Quebecers
(The Suburban) Two events in Quebec this past week underscored once again the inability of our public officialdom to differentiate between appropriate public policy initiatives and nanny-state mind control. The first was the unveiling of new anti-tobacco measures forcing merchants to hide cigarettes behind closed cabinets. The second was the publication of parts of the Bouchard-Taylor report by The Gazette which indicated that the commission will recommend a change in our very lexicon. Both are beyond the pale.May 20
Le hijab est ici pour rester
(Journal de Montréal) …Selon le document que nous avons pu consulter, le rapport est divisé en six parties elles-mêmes subdivisées en une douzaine de chapitres. De grands pans sont consacrés à déboulonner la version «stéréotypée» des événements qui ont marqué l’imaginaire, à faire l’état des lieux en matière d’accommodements et à passer à la moulinette les arguments anti-immigration.
«Plusieurs musulmans ont choisi de rester fidèles à leur religion, alors que la grande majorité des catholiques francophones ont choisi de délaisser leurs temples. En vertu de quel droit pourraient-ils obliger les premiers à en faire autant ?» demandent-ils encore.
MM. Bouchard et Taylor notent qu’il «y a peu d’exemples au Québec démontrant que des musulmans ont voulu imposer leurs valeurs et leur religion à des non-musulmans» et que les gens de cette confession ont beaucoup souffert des événements du 11 septembre 2001.
Daniel Goldbloom on the leaked Bouchard-Taylor Report: What did everyone expect?
For sovereigntists, the most damning part of the report is the assertion that the word “Québécois” actually excludes all non-francophones. Thank God someone outside of the hardline separatist movement finally said this. The mainstream sovereigntist line that the term “Québécois” refers to everyone living inside of Quebec’s borders is a lovely idea that simply isn’t true. The boundary between “us” and “them” in Quebec in general — and the separatist movement in particular — has never strayed from linguistic lines.
May 19, 2008
The Bouchard-Taylor Commission submits its final report to the Québec government
(CNW Telbec) - The Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences (CCPARDC) today officially submitted its final report to the Québec government.
Commission Co-Chairs Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor will make public the report at a press conference in Montréal on Thursday, May 22, 2008.
It looks as though rather than calming things down, the Bouchard-Taylor Report may well have the opposite and undesirable effect of fanning the flames of debate.
Commission Bouchard-Taylor: les souverainistes redoutent un rapport Elvis Gratton
(Presse Canadienne) QUEBEC — Pauline Marois et Gilles Duceppe réclament le dépôt immédiat du rapport de la commission Bouchard-Taylor dont les fuites, ces derniers jours, suscitent inquiétudes et railleries dans le camp souverainiste.
Les informations qui ont filtré jusqu’à maintenant laissent croire que certaines recommandations sont inspirées du film “Elvis Gratton” première mouture, ont ironisé les chefs péquiste et bloquiste lundi à Québec au terme d’une activité publique marquant la Journée nationale des Patriotes.
Interprétation contestée
Le débat sur les accommodements raisonnables revient sur le devant de la scène. Depuis samedi, le quotidien anglophone The Gazette affirme avoir obtenu une copie du rapport final de la commission Bouchard-Taylor, qui doit être rendu public dans quelques jours, et en dévoile des extraits.
Or, le professeur Daniel Weinstock, membre du comité-conseil de la commission Bouchard-Taylor, estime que le quotidien fait une lecture erronée du rapport.
Time to change our lingo
‘Accommodation’ ‘de souche’ and ‘visible minority’ have got to go, report says
JEFF HEINRICH The Gazette
Change your vocabulary.
Be kind and say “adjustments,” “adaptations” or “harmonizations,” not “accommodations.”
Be precise and refer to “people of French-Canadian descent,” not “old-stock Quebecers.”
And avoid the racist term “visible minority” and the meaningless catch-all “cultural communities.”
The Bouchard-Taylor report introduces a new lexicon to the debate over immigration, minorities and Quebec identity.
In the final draft obtained by The Gazette, co-chairmen Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor are categoric: It’s out with worn-out terms and in with new ones.
May 17
(National Post) The “Two Solitudes” of French and English have been replaced in Quebec by “deux inquietudes” — the twin anxieties of the majority and the new minorities, according to a much-anticipated report on reasonable accommodation.
French-Canadians, a “strong ethnocultural majority,” fear being submerged by minorities who are “fragile and worried about the future,” says the report.
The French-Canadian majority in Quebec must shake off its angst about minorities and help build a truly open society in a globalized world, says the report.
The report recommends that people in Quebec learn more English — even becoming trilingual — be nicer to Muslims and get better informed.
May 16
QUEBEC’S “REASONABLE ACCOMODATION” DEBATE, TO EVERYONE’S SURPRISE, HAS TURNED INTO A RACE TO SEE WHICH PARTY CAN CHAMPION TRADITIONAL FRANCOPHONE VALUES THE BEST. IS THIS THE DEATH OF MULTICULTURALISM? Maisonneuve
POLITICS: 1968 and the Birth of Diversity
Analysis by Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 13 2008 (IPS) - The year 1968 has become a symbol, but not necessarily one that is easy to sum up. High-profile violent events involving multitudes of people marked it as revolutionary, but it is hard to define the nature of that revolution. Endless enigmas and controversies still surround it.

3 December 2007
Out, damned commission!
Lysiane Gagnon, Globe & Mail
For more than two months, the Bouchard-Taylor commission on the accommodation of minorities toured Quebec’s small “white only” towns, and listened to old-stock Quebeckers (many of whom had never met an immigrant) voicing imaginary fears about immigration. Last week, the commission finally returned to reality. And what it heard in the Montreal area - basically the only multicultural region in Quebec - was that there is no real, serious problem in the schools and health services that have diverse clients. Each day, small compromises are made ….
1 December
Anglos don’t seem to understand accommodation crisis
Don Macpherson, Gazette
Hearings in English underscore differences between Montrealers and other Quebecers
The commission’s Montreal consultations this week has confirmed on the accommodation question, Quebecers are divided not only between francophones and non-francophones, but also between francophones from the regions and those from the metropolis.
… And almost everybody at the forum belonged to a linguistic community that is multiethnic and multicultural, with a long experience of accommodating non-Christian religious practices in schools and hospitals.
The mood at the forum could be expressed in the questions:
“Why can’t we all just get along?” And, “accommodation problem? What problem?”
Perhaps answers could be found in one particular French-language daily this week. It was the Journal de Montréal that created the accommodation controversy last year, sensationalizing - and often distorting - incidents of friction between religious minorities and the majority. …
The commission heard about another problem in the schools this week, concerning schools in poor areas that don’t give tests at the end of the month because pupils whose parents’ welfare benefits have run out are too hungry to concentrate.
Some families can’t afford to pay 50 cents for each of their children to eat lunches provided by a mobile kitchen every day, so the children take turns going hungry.
That’s a real problem, unlike the imaginary ones of veiled voting that have been receiving so much more attention.
30 November
“The commission has become something of a cauldron for a huge range of hopes and fears in a province full of both, including when the commission held its only English-language hearing at the Montreal Convention Centre.
We were joined by two reporters who covered the Bouchard-Taylor Commission hearings from the start. Valérie Dufour is with Le Journal de Montréal, and Jeff Heinrich is with the Montreal Gazette.” CBC - The Current
17 November
A reality check for Herouxville
Poll of muslims’ attitudes shows no grounds for panic
SUE MONTGOMERY, The Gazette
Anyone who has been following the Bouchard-Taylor travelling circus on reasonable accommodation could be forgiven for thinking we live in a province full of xenophobes.
I would like to suggest a reality check for the Herouxvillians of this world in the form of Michael Adams’s book Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism. This should be required reading for anyone wanting to take the microphone at the commission.
Adams, who is president of the well-respected Environics polling firm, is someone who makes his living from gauging the attitudes of Canadians - those born and bred, as well as newcomers. His book, which includes new data gleaned from polling Canadian Muslims and features a chapter explaining current attitudes in Quebec, brings a welcome note of reasonableness to an increasingly unreasonable debate. More

16 November
Bigots the minority at Quebec hearings, commissioners say
Jeff Heinrich , CanWest News Service; Montreal Gazette
LAVAL, Que. — They’ve been attacked as ivory-tower scholars, old men who are naively unaware of the creeping rise of religious extremism in Quebec, or worse, liberals who have given some a platform to spout their bigotry.
But Thursday, in their first major public statement since beginning their cross-Quebec road-show on “reasonable accommodations,” Charles Taylor and Gerard Bouchard put a positive spin on a controversial process that been the talk of the province since it began 10 weeks ago.
They called the “reasonable-accommodation” hearings on the integration of immigrants a great exercise in democracy and blamed critics for denigrating them as “a freak show.” More
14 November, 2007
We thank The Suburban’s Anthony Bonaparte for doing our homework for us on this topic, which, we confess to having tried to ignore because we feel that the hearings are a bad idea. For the most part, it seems from what we read and hear, they have offered the crazies a platform, while moderates have stayed away in droves. And we are left with the impression that we are part of a small minority who decry the entire process. This week’s summary of the French press is thorough and reassuring.

A review of Quebec’s French press
by Anthony Bonaparte, The Suburban
Often lost amidst all the noise that leads so much coverage of the ongoing reasonable accommodation debate in the French-language media, are the voices of the many people who think the Bouchard-Taylor road show is doing more harm than good.
Much like those targeted by some of the tripe, they think the commission opened an ugly can of worms.
A cyberpresse.ca video editorial last week titled Bouchard-Taylor: qui a dérape? (Bouchard-Taylor: who went off the rails?) had La Presse editor André Pratte commenting on that two-week-old open letter written by Premier Jean Charest. More
November 03
Que. hearings a flawed model: observers
Marianne White, CanWest News Service
QUEBEC — They have come to Quebec’s roving commission on how to better integrate minority groups to complain about having to eat kosher peanut butter, how hijabs make them uncomfortable and to say immigrants should go home if they refuse to bend to the values of their new land.
That was just a snapshot of one open-mic session of the so-called reasonable accommodation commission touring the province.
At times the views have been anything but reasonable, but the question with just under a month left of these hearings is has it been worth it? More

Bouchard, Taylor take a stand
Commissioners lose a bit of their cool, spell out what they hope to accomplish
JEFF HEINRICH, The Gazette
October 26
First they gave a public platform to the controversial spokesmen of Hérouxville.
Then they spent the evening in a private meeting with what they called a “courageous” group of model immigrants from Latin America.
The next morning, they turned their attention once again to more negative outpourings against immigrants at one last public hearing in the Mauricie.
And then they lost a bit of their cool. Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor yesterday spelled out explicitly where they stand and what they hope to do with their commission on “reasonable accommodation” of religious and ethnic minorities.
It was the first time they have done so in a road show that has taken them across the province since early September.
“We’re trying to find means, Charles and I, to avoid what happened in France,” Bouchard told one presenter in a Trois Rivières hotel conference hall.
“We want to avoid the creation of ghettos, that people get rejected by society, that they be condemned to live in the margins of society, and that they then turn against their society, and with reason.” More