A majority government that does not hesitate to jostle its “partners” to fulfill its commitments: the launch of the new Culture and Quebec Citizenship course, which takes on partisan overtones, is indicative of the Legault government’s method, say the parties of the opposition.
The new program will replace the Ethics and Religious Culture (ECR) course in 2023, the Minister of Education announced on Sunday in a pre-electoral event. The content of the course gives rise to in-depth debates, but it is above all the manner that commands attention. Words like “arrogance” and “steamroller” recur in criticisms of the Caquist method.
“What people are saying in the background is that they felt a fairly significant political pressure,” responded Liberal MP Marwah Rizqy to the revelations published Tuesday in The duty : Two of the five members of the editorial board of the new course have resigned, including the education ministry official who was responsible for the program.
This former state employee, Marie-Noëlle Corriveau-Tendland, left her post because of what she considers to be the “politicization” of a program that addresses themes dear to the Legault government, such as religion, secularism, Quebec culture and identity. It is incongruous that nine ministers and the Prime Minister himself intervened during Sunday’s announcement, among other things in a video, to praise this new course supposed to contribute to “Quebec pride”, underlines Marwah Rizqy.
“We took religion out of schools a long time ago, it is not to bring partisan politics into teaching,” said the Liberal MP.
“Nothing partisan”
The Minister of Education, Jean-François Roberge, once again defended himself from politicizing education. “There is nothing partisan in a Quebec Culture and Citizenship course. Recognition of others, self-knowledge, openness to the world, Quebec culture, our democratic institutions, I think it’s very unifying, ”he said on the sidelines of the work of the National Assembly.
Asked about his refusal to unveil the report on the consultations surrounding the reform of the ECR course, the minister indicated that the 200 groups that submitted a brief are free to disseminate their point of view on the issue. As for the resignations within the team responsible for delivering the new program, the minister insisted: “It is normal for people to leave and for people to arrive” during a long process.
Fulfill the promises
MNA Christine Labrie, from Québec solidaire, says she perceives similarities between this issue and others put forward in education since the Legault government came to power in the fall of 2018: “For me, these are partisan projects. that do not address the concerns of the school community, ”she said.
The expansion of 4-year-old kindergartens despite the shortage of teachers, the revision of the preschool program, the abolition of school boards and the reform of the ECR course were all commitments of the Coalition d’avenir Québec (CAQ), underlines Christine Labrie.
Like many issues in education, these proposed transformations were not unanimous, but the Legault government insisted on achieving them, sometimes at the cost of strong resistance from the network, notes the Solidarity MP. “What is put forward in education is what François Legault wishes to put forward in education, despite all the reservations of the education community,” she said.
The CAQ government claims to have the courage of its convictions. The opposition parties point out that other challenges are however unanimous in the network: to solve the shortage of all categories of personnel, to slow down school dropouts, to strengthen the Student Protector …
Indigenous concerns
The Parti Québécois, the Mouvement laïque québécois and other groups, including the Association québécoise des Nord-Africains pour la laïcité, applauded the reform of the ECR course, which meets their long-standing demands. However, the transformation of the ECR course worries the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador (AFNQL), which fears a drift of “the new nationalist ideology of which Prime Minister François Legault is championing”.
“What message can we expect from young Quebecers from a provincial government that persists in denying the deep roots of discrimination and racism that make it a systemic scourge? », Asks Ghislain Picard, president of the AFNQL in a press release.
The Aboriginals fear that the proposed course seeks to convince the students “that the rights of the” Quebec nation “in matters of culture, language [et] of heritage are superior to those of the other nations which coexist on the territory ”.
With Marie-Michèle Sioui