Patrick Moreau is a professor of literature in Montreal, editor-in-chief of the journal Argument and essayist. He notably published These words that think for us (Liber, 2017) and contributed to the collective work edited by R. Antonius and N. Baillargeon, Identity, “race”, freedom of expressionwhich has just been published by PUL
The Legault government has just given up imposing a “health contribution” on unvaccinated Quebecers, because this measure had “came to divide Quebecers”. Of course, such a tax was not unanimous, and not only among the non-vaccinated that it would have targeted; many feared in particular that it would introduce into the health system the user-pays principle and a risk calculation that would have gradually assimilated health insurance to private insurance.
Law 21 on secularism has also been criticized for also “dividing” the population, as if “reasonable accommodation in religious matters” did not “divide” Quebecers between those, minority, who are favorable to them, and the majority which is rather opposed to them (with all the nuances, of course, that such a debate can give rise to).
However, it is not this “health contribution” that I will talk about in the following lines, nor secularism, but this idea that has become commonplace according to which we should not “divide the population”.
On this question, we can start from a rather obvious observation: the population is, has been and will always be “divided”. This is not only inevitable, but perfectly normal. It is precisely to manage this division that democracy was once invented. The democratic system is indeed the fairest way that we have found to decide between the interests, the opinions and the various beliefs which confront and confront each other in any society.
Staging popular unanimity
Conversely, except in exceptional circumstances (a war, for example), the absence of division and the “union” of the people behind the leader or the Party which represents him and is supposed to embody his will constitute either a fantasy which of what is conventionally called populism (which can be of the right or of the left), either is the prerogative of totalitarian political regimes which most often achieve this so-called “union” by means of propaganda, but also violence (by eliminating their opponents and silencing any dissenting voices) and the fear that this induces. Moreover, these regimes are fond of nothing more than staging this popular unanimity in large-scale shows where a fanatical and disciplined population shouts or sings in unison and marches in step (one can think of the Nazi rallies in Nuremberg , at the parades of 1er May in the defunct USSR, or nowadays to the martial choreographies orchestrated by the Pyongyang regime).
Of course, neither is it a question, in a democracy, of stigmatizing any minority or of harassing a significant part of the governed by vexatious measures. The goal of democratic regimes is, on the contrary, to manage to pacify and civilize the conflicts and oppositions that pit citizens against each other. But the fact remains that a legitimately elected government must also take difficult decisions in certain cases, decisions which it knows will displease part of the population. It’s inevitable ; and it is desirable. Because in politics, you have to know how to show courage and sometimes you have to decide, in order to assert the rights of the majority.
Otherwise, not only does the political power suffer from a democratic deficit, since by dint of seeking consensus, which most often translates only into an illusory union, but it hinders itself and condemns itself to helplessness. But in addition, this refusal of division transforms politics into a simple management of what is, instead of making it, as it should be, an instance of freedom where the future can be invented. “Divide”, like the famous “controversial”, is therefore a trick word. Only what is perfectly indifferent does not cause division or controversy.
Power relations
In addition, from what number of protesters is a measure deemed divisive and controversial? You don’t need to be a great scholar to realize that it’s less a question of weight in numbers than of power relations. The measures that accompany the implementation of EDI policies in federal granting agencies and universities, as recently reported in these pages by professors Arnaud Bernadet and François Charbonneau, would cause just as much as others of the “division” among the population (at least if they were better informed). But we will not qualify as divisive or controversial decisions that are taken with the approval of the federal government and that have the support of what it would be appropriate to call the social elite or the ruling classes.
What conclusion can be drawn from this, if not that the democratic spirit can be (and has often been in the past) on the side of what divides and causes debate, and that the false unanimities about decisions taken at the top of the State without having been the subject of publicity or the slightest consultation of the population is in fact a denial of democracy, even if they want to be morally well-intentioned? Populism is harmful and can even be dangerous, but so is the elitism of those who think they can impose their conception of justice and equality on the majority of the population. The latter feeds the other.
Only the questions which, at the beginning, divide and which, consequently, one debates end up by making true consensus. The imposed pseudo-unanimities rarely have this chance.