Allow me to be a bit blunt, but let’s just say it like it is: The Wokes Club really accepts anyone. After Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and Dominique Anglade, now François “Duplessis” Legault has become woke this week. If you wanted another proof that the label no longer means much, here it is.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
No, but it’s true, frankly, we enter this club as in a mill.
Or like the Conservative Party of Quebec.
It was Eric Duhaime who called his three rivals wokes on Wednesday. The leader of the PCQ had not digested that his opponents summoned him to give up presenting the candidacy of Dr Roy Eappen in the October elections because of his anti-abortion positions.
Éric Duhaime shouted at the “culture of cancellation”. No kidding.
He says he perceives a worrying “democratic drift”, nothing less, in the exhortations of his political rivals. All Quebecers are equal, he protests. Everyone has the right to stand for election, regardless of their personal religious beliefs.
No one disputes that. But, conversely, parties have every right to exclude candidates who do not reflect their values. None of them are forced to accept a homophobic, misogynistic or anti-Semitic candidate. Or anti-abortion.
There is no such thing as a fundamental right to be a candidate for a party. These select clubs – quite a bit more select than the wokes club – may very well turn down applicants, if only for the sake of consistency. And they do it, all the time.
It has nothing to do with discrimination or wokist drift. It’s called politics.
The personal religious convictions of Roy Eappen only concern him, protests Éric Duhaime. It’s none of our business, especially since the Dr Eappen has promised, if the PCQ comes to power, not to seek to legislate.
Does that reassure you? Not me.
Invoking D’s privacyr Eappen does not hold water. First, because he spoke out very publicly against abortion, many times, on his blog and on Facebook. Then because he never promised to keep his opinions to himself. On the contrary, when he announced his candidacy in March, he said he wanted to “talk to people” to “change their opinion”…
Notice, he would have every right to do that. But under the banner of the PCQ, really? An officially pro-choice party? The Freedom Party?
Doesn’t Éric Duhaime feel uncomfortable presenting this candidate in favor of the idea of restricting women’s freedom to dispose of their bodies?
” What is the next step ? People who are creationists will no longer have the right to stand for election? asked Éric Duhaime to my colleague Charles Lecavalier.
Let’s reassure him: they will always have the right. Not sure they are elected, however. But that’s another debate.
Now let’s return the question to Mr. Duhaime. After the famous anti-vaccine candidate and the now famous anti-abortion candidate, what is the next step for the PCQ?
A homophobic candidate, perhaps? Or pro-Sharia? In the name of freedom of conscience, is the party ready to accept any candidacy?
There is a red line, recognized Éric Duhaime. Questioned by Patrick Lagacé at 98.5 FM, the conservative leader, openly gay, admitted that he would refuse a candidate favorable to conversion therapies. “It never happened, it won’t happen, and if it does, well, it sure wouldn’t work. He couldn’t tell me that I have to go to conversion therapy, though! »
Even in the PCQ, there are limits to freedom of conscience.
Strange to hear Éric Duhaime suddenly remind us of the importance of respecting the religious convictions of others, he who proposes to select immigrants according to their “civilizational compatibility” with Western values.
Éric Duhaime, he sees rather hypocrisy in the speech of Quebec solidaire, a party that lectures him on abortion when he presented a veiled candidate in the last election. “Do you really think that Eve Torres, who wears the veil, is a woman who is pro-choice, that? “, he asked on the airwaves of 98.5 FM.
Éric Duhaime took it for granted that Mme Torres opposed abortion. So much so that he didn’t bother to ask her.
Eve Torres replied on Twitter: “I am a woman, admittedly Muslim, but feminist and pro-choice as far as I can remember. ” Whoops…
Too bad. As Éric Duhaime said when he was a radio host: “Better bad information than no information at all. »
We will be told not to get upset with it. The voters, who are still not idiots, will decide at the polls. Without a doubt.
But we forget that for years American women were told not to get upset with ultra-religious groups bent on banning abortion. They were told that Roe v. Wade would never, ever be invalidated.
Then Trump arrived. The shock wave has not finished being felt. You have to be naive to believe that Quebec and Canada are immune to this kind of political upheaval.
“Never forget that all it takes is a political, economic or religious crisis for women’s rights to be called into question,” Simone de Beauvoir once said. These rights are never acquired. You will have to remain vigilant throughout your life. »