Bouchard needs a lesson

Paul Jackson

Calgary Herald 1998

Give me a chance and I'll speak out against the federal or provincial governments' multicultural or bilingual programs at every touch and turn. To pay people to be different is not only nonsense, it's asking for trouble. As we have seen with Quebec separatism. If you want to keep your culture or language alive, fine, but pay for it yourself. That said, I think of myself as a cosmopolitan type, slipping into Chinese, German, or one of 1,001 other cultures in Canada with ease. It's the only way to live.I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't care if someone is white, yellow, black or polka-dot; or Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist, so long as they treat me and my friends decently, they're friends. Racism is not only evil, it's banal. Pointless idiocy. This is not the case in Quebec.

The likes of Premier Lucien Bouchard and former premier Jacques Parizeau have established racism as a state doctrine. No one other than 'pure' Quebecois are welcome in the province. Already, their racist policies have driven thousands out of Quebec, and ethnic minorities, including English-speaking Canadians, live in fear of what's to come. What's to come, of course, if the Parti Quebecois and the Bloc Quebecois have their ways, is minority ethnic residents of Quebec will suffer increasing discrimination until they are eventually driven out.

Sidney Cyngiser, a prominent member of our city's Jewish community who saw his parents and sister die in Adolf Hitler's death camps, explained that Jewish residents of his homeland didn't initially panic at the state-ordained anti-semitism because it came in small doses. First were curfews. Then they were forced to wear the Star of David in public to identify them as Jews. Soon there were official edicts prohibiting them from this or that occupation.

Think of the sign laws in Quebec. With every minor encroachment on their civil rights, they shrugged and thought: "We can put up with this". Finally, they had no civil rights. They were outsiders, scorned, and later abused, for it. Ponder the bureaucratic stranglehold being put on non-francophone Quebecers -- including the language and educational laws -- and shudder. Reflect on Parizeau's comments on the night he lost the referendum that the enemies of his "state" were "ethnics" and "money." We have had a vivid picture painted of just what the separatists have in mind.

I'm not comparing Bouchard or Parizeau with Hitler, but they are surely intolerant of minorities. Alarmingly, the federal Liberal government of Jean Chretien, a government supposed to protect the constitutional rights of all Canadians in every province, turns a blind eye to abuses of the PQ government in Quebec. Ottawa will move with a vengeance on every province it feels is not living up to federal laws -- Alberta's health care initiatives, for instance -- but lift not a finger to protect Quebec residents against discriminatory laws. The federal Grits are toothless cowards and the PQ and BQ adherents know it. Which is why they hold Ottawa and the rest of Canada in contempt and thwart the civil and constitutional rights of so many minorities.

As Canadians, we should hold out the hand of friendship to immigrants of all creeds and colours who have chosen our nation as their new home. They are more patriotic than any member of the PQ or Bloc. If they want to have their own country, we should tell the separatists, fine, go ahead, but you aren't taking a single square foot of Canada with you. And Quebec is very much a part of Canada. From coast-to-coast.

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