The documentary Battle for the soul of Quebecincluding Yves Boisvert1 has already spoken in these pages, runs the risk of causing a stir. One of the main theses of Francine Pelletier’s documentary is that current Quebec nationalism, which would be conservative, is at odds with the “open” nationalism of the Quiet Revolution. This thesis is simply false and deserves some comments.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
A little history. The Parti Québécois of 1976 had something conservative about it. Indeed, the government of René Lévesque was committed to a logic of historical continuity. Certainly, the country had to be done to break and go beyond the status of colonized, but it was not with the aim that a Quebecer uprooted from its history should emerge.
Let’s take the case of Bill 101. Through this law devised by Camille Laurin, the collective rights of the historical French-speaking majority were recognized.
At the time, this law was accused of practicing ethnocentrism, but nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, this law favored social and cultural mixing and the integration of immigrants. These were called upon to converge culturally towards a common base, that is to say a memory and a history that one could qualify as “conservative”, because produced by the centuries. Of course, this base is not crystallized, it changes naturally over the decades, in particular thanks to the contribution of minorities.
Today’s nationalism, which is described as conservative, is therefore not at odds with that of yesterday. And the amalgam we try to make in the documentary, that conservatism is necessarily synonymous with exclusion and closure, is fabricated from scratch in the Quebec context.
Secularism
The other big topic covered in the documentary is obviously the relationship between religion and the state. It must first be said that secularism did not arrive in 2006-2007 with the crisis of reasonable accommodation. We forget its long history with the deconfessionalization of Quebec in the 1960s and the Patriotes who were already talking about the separation of Church and State. Again, the nationalism that takes up the subject of secularism from 2006 is in continuity with its past.
On the theme of secularism, the majority of the speakers in the documentary agree on the fact that the Charter of Values of the Parti Québécois in 2013 went too far and it is said in a nutshell that the Bouchard-Taylor report should have been applied.
Remember that the main difference between the Bouchard-Taylor report and the State Secularism Act (Law 21) is the ban on the wearing of religious symbols by teachers. Of course, we can disagree with this law, but it remains moderate and represents a happy medium between Bouchard-Taylor and the Charter of the Parti Québécois. The Coalition avenir Québec even removed the crucifix from the Blue Room to show that the principle of secularism applied to everyone. In short, we are far from a tyrannical nationalism which would be intransigent with diversity as we try to present it in the documentary.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
In fact, whether it be questions of language or secularism, nationalists are always accused of dividing and excluding. One can recognize that such a feeling exists among certain fellow citizens.
However, one may wonder if there is not something that falls within the scope of self-fulfilling prophecy in all these accusations. It is that by dint of repeating the lie that nationalism excludes minorities, it is certain that we do not encourage these same people to open up to the national option and we thus create more divisions. The discourse that seeks to denounce exclusion therefore also participates in what it denounces by caricaturing laws that are, in reality, rather moderate.
Finally, what do the critics of nationalism propose? That we throw away the laws on secularism and language in order to “include” minorities more and to be more “open”? This is to forget that the absence of measurement divides as much, and even probably more, than the current measures which ultimately represent a certain consensus where everyone is called upon to put water in their wine.