Quebec’s new Charter of Values not the road to national liberation

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Controversy over the rights of religious and cultural mi­ norities has once again taken centre stage in Quebec, ever since the minority Parti Quebecois (PQ) government of Pauline Marois declared its intention to introduce a Charter of Quebec Values. Purporting to strengthen the separation of church and state, the charter would outlaw “ostenta­ tious” religious symbols or clothing worn by government workers and in public institutions such as primary schools and daycares. This would target women wearing the hijab (head scarf) and extend as well to the Sikh turban and pos­ sibly even to the Jewish kippah.

The numerous Christian crosses that dot the Quebec land­ scape, including the large crucifix hanging in the National Assembly and the giant illuminated cross atop Mont Royal overlooking Montreal, would be exempted on the grounds of belonging to the province’s “patrimonie” or cultural heritage.

The proposed charter has split the population down the middle, with 43% in favour and 42% opposed, according to one poll. Support for the charter is seemingly on the rise especially outside of multi-ethnic Montreal. However, there is strong opposition from diverse quarters, including important women’s organizations.

Sept. 14 saw a demonstration in Montreal of over 20,000 against the bill, organized by the ad hoc Quebec Collective Against Islamophobia. The Conseil du statut de la femme (CSF, Council on the Status of Women) expressed grave concern that the charter would further marginalize Muslim women. The Marois government is now trying to reverse that position by packing the CSF with its own appointees. The charter is supported by the provincial government employees’ union, but the large union centrals—the FTQ, the CSN and the largest teachers’ union, the CSQ—have so far remained non-committal. The union leaders are caught between rejecting clearly discriminatory legislation and their traditional loyalty to the PQ.

The federalist forces in Quebec are all opposed to the Charter. This includes the provincial Liberal Party and the three federalist parties representing Quebec in Ottawa, the New Democratic Party, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Party of Canada.

Passage of the Bill in the National Assembly will depend on whether the PQ can get support from the right-wing populist Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ). Thus far, the CAQ wants restrictive dress codes applied to higher civil servants only. But it will have its eye on the polls, and its position could shift.

Reaction in English-speaking Canada has been entirely predictable. There, the media and a wide swath of politi­ cians have worked themselves into quite a self-righteous lather about the alleged superiority of Canadian multiculturalism over backward Quebecois ethnic nationalism. The left-wing party, Quebec Solidaire, with two depu­ ties in the National Assembly, opposes the Charter from the standpoint of “laicité ouverte.” That means separation of church and state, yes, but not to the extent of dictating clothes and ornaments worn by public employees. Noteworthy is the opposition the PQ charter has provoked from within the nationalist and sovereignist camp. The Bloc Quebecois (the sovereignist counterpart of the PQ in the federal arena) expelled one of its five MPs because she had publicly criticized the repressive aspects of the charter.

In June 2012 the Conservative federal government made changes to the Telecommunications Act to allow foreign telecom companies to buy domestic operators that own less than 10 per cent of market share. The so­ cial democratic NDP and many labour unions found this “very problematic.”

When the plans of Verizon, an American telecom gi­ ant, to purchase Wind, a small operator in Canada, be­ came public in June 2013, the shares of the big three “Canadian” firms (Bell, Rogers, and Telus, which have a combined 90 per cent share in Canada’s market with 26.9 million wireless subscribers) tumbled. But the stocks bounced back when Verizon indicated it would not be entering Canada after all. The debate intensified over the upcoming new wireless 700 mHz spectrum (high speed internet) auction. That’s when each of three Canadian giants can bid for 25 per cent of the spectrum, but others can buy up to 50 per cent.

Canadian bosses and workers reacted with rage. Thou­ sands of unionized workers marched in protest. The Ca­ nadian Federation of Pensioners declared its concerns over the fate of Canadian telecom giants’ revenues;

pensions are invested there. The telecom giants ran a “Fair for Canada” campaign with full page adds in newspapers. They argued that Canadian jobs in the sec­ tor would be lost, rural communities’ access to wireless would drop, and Canadians’ privacy would be at risk Jean Dorion, a respected sovereignist who was a Bloc MP and a former president of the nationalist St. Jean Baptiste Society, describes the PQ initiative as a gift to the feder­ alists. Likewise, sovereignist intellectual Michel Seymour termed the PQ approach to immigrant minorities shameful and saluted Quebec Solidaire for opposing the charter. A petition titled “For an inclusive Quebec” has garnered over 12,000 signatures, including many supporters of inde­ pendence. The authors of the petition refer to the “stagger­ ingly high unemployment rate among Quebec immigrants” and go on to point out that “a ban on religious symbols in public service, schools and daycares would … further exclude immigrants from the Quebec labour market, ... in­ crease the vulnerability of women wearing the hijab and exacerbate inequalities between men and women.” This in a nutshell is the refutation to the PQ’s claim that it is pro­ moting social cohesion and defending women’s equality. Hitherto, opposition to the xenophobic tendencies in Quebec society has rested on defense of individual rights and cultural pluralism. This is the position, for example, to be found in the report of Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor in their 2008 report on “reasonable accommoda­ tion” of immigrant communities in the province. Missing in this stance is any consideration of the fragile identity of the Quebecois as a small national minority within a vast English-speaking North America.

The problem of overcoming Quebec’s national oppres­ sion is key to building an inclusive society for immigrants. In former times the PQ leadership stressed its commit­ ment to “civic nationalism.” This concept lay behind the introduction of mandatory French schooling for children of new immigrants to Quebec. The result is a much more diverse francophone population. Now, the PQ is trying to rehabilitate a retrograde ethnic nationalism. Ironically, those predominantly targeted by its new legislation would be women who are French speaking!

It might be countered that all nationalisms promote chau­ vinism and sow division. Indeed, some socialist currents reject the struggle for Quebec independence on that basis. But precisely because Marxists uphold the highest stan­ if a foreign cell phone provider dominated the domes­ tic market. But the government claimed, “More choice, lower price, better services,” encouraging more com­ petition in the telecom industry with its own campaign titled “Consumers First.”

Both sides are wrong, but for different reasons. It is true that the Canadian telecom market is dominated by giant firms. This is hardly a surprise since there is monopoly control over most of the telecom markets in the world. Inviting Verizon, a gigantic corporation with enormous capital, to enter the Canadian market would not foster but rather impede competition.

“We would not allow that to happen,” the govern­ ment might claim. But if the government has that kind of power over these firms, then why doesn’t it use it to reduce consumer prices and foster investment by trim­ ming the profit margins of the domestic “big three”? Or if it really prioritizes consumers’ welfare over the corporate interest, it could follow the socialist course of producing telecom services for people’s needs, not for private profits.

“Protection” against the “foreign” firms is what makes the Canadian telecom market peculiar. ‘The barriers of entry” facing foreign corporations should be preserved. But much more should be done to build a truly benefi­ cial industry. Nationalist sentiments that favour Cana­ dian firms over American ones are wrong-headed for several reasons:

First, workers (a majority of the population) and boss­ es (less than 1 %) have conflicting interests. Firms, be they Canadian or American, aim to maximize profits. They intend to give the workers less, and make the con­ sumers (who are mostly workers) pay more. It may be true that many Canadian pensioners’ financial interests M. Breton Fontaine (Above) Quebec student strike in 2012. dards of internationalism, they must take up the cause of oppressed peoples whose national development is thwarted to one degree or another by the capitalist order. That con­ tinues to apply to Quebec, in our view.

Socialists should welcome this most recent crisis of per­ spectives in Quebec’s sovereignist movement and pay close attention to how it unfolds. But not as do the feder­ alists (and some on the left) who oppose an independent Quebec. To the contrary, we agree with those who say the PQ’s racist gambit weakens the fight for national libera­ tion. Our perspective is for a political party rooted in a re­ vitalized labour movement, which advances a program for independence and socialism.

The PQ`s Charter of Quebec Values should be defeated for the following reasons:

• It punishes women coming from conservative patriar­ chal cultures while ignoring the sexism rampant in more ‘modern’ capitalist societies. These issues will be settled by women themselves and not by state dictat.

• Some supporters of the charter are motivated by anticlericalism. Quebec only recently emerged from the domi­ nation of the Roman Catholic Church. Against all evi­ dence, these people are haunted by the spectre of regres­ sion. Where this is not a mask for Islamophobia, it is based on a faulty understanding of religious belief and its social role (cf. Marx`s often misinterpreted discussion of religion as the “opium of the people”).

• The premise of shared values in a class society like Quebec is an oxymoron. Irreconcilable differences exist on every front from university tuition fees to fossil fuel ex­ ploitation and transport. The values discourse is an attempt to create a phony consensus to help maintain social order.

• Finally, socialists want to deepen the unity of the work­ ing class by recognizing oppression within its ranks as well as in society, and by building solidarity. Defense of the most vulnerable sections of our class is not just a ques­ tion of justice (although it is certainly that) but is also an important strategic principle. n are now tied to the shares of “the big three.” Howev­ er, doesn’t this ongoing process prove the need for an independent pension fund, which is controlled by the pensioners themselves—rather than workers’ earnings being invested in corporations that they cannot control whatsoever?

Secondly, Canadian and American bosses are linked to one another through a myriad of investment ties. Since the end of World War II, multinational corporations have dominated. U.S. firms began building branch plants or subsidiaries inside Canada in order to bypass tariff re­ strictions—which, by the way, taught the U.S. firms how to enter the European market, a process which is dubbed “Canadianization” by some Marxists. Today, the U.S. is the largest foreign investor in Can­ ada, and U.S. investors hold 54.5 per cent of Canada’s total internal investment stock. U.S. and Canadian capi­ tal are inter-connected to such an extent that it is diffi­ cult to find a purely “Canadian” firm. The “nationalist” bourgeoisie that social democrats and Stalinists wrongly present as a strategic ally for the working class does not exist. The interests of the Canadian bosses lie in collab­ orating with their American counterparts to accumulate capital around the world. Canada is not a “neo-colony” but an imperialist state, one that is a junior partner of U.S. imperialism.

Last but not least, communication is a right! Isn’t it ironic that many who see people’s revolts as “Twitter revolutions” decline to make the case that the wireless industry, on which all social media depends, should be publicly owned and managed? Nationalization, not Canadianization of the telecommunication industry is the way forward for a sector that should serve popular needs, not the priorities of private profit making. n SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 2013 11

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SOCIALIST ACTION

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Nationalize telecoms, don’t Canadianize them