Pandering to Big Mo

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Feb 21

RE: The Hamilton Spectator once again sucks around Big Mo in an editorial.  It complains about Quebec’s Bill 21, as if the suppressed rights of English speaking Quebeckers no longer mattered.  But having accepted that, it forms a precedent.

“Why won’t PM defend Quebec minority faiths?” the Spectator asks plaintively, as if it didn’t know.  For balance, the editorial also drags in Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh, who, of all three, ought to be the most exercised over Bill 21.  Hint: it has to do with Quebec’s 75 Commons seats and the great popularity of Bill 21 among Quebec’s majority French population.  Unlike English Canadians of urban areas, Quebeckers aren’t suffering from a crippling loss of cultural confidence.  Quebec will remain French because the French culture and French language are good, and under threat.  Quebeckers aren’t going to wonder whose province Quebec is.

“Nor has anyone convincingly explained why wearing a religious symbol and responsibly performing a government job should be mutually exclusive.”  What if that religious symbol is a swastika, as it is to a Buddhist?  Maybe the Jews will take offense.  Maybe Lebanese Christians will take exception to their public servant wearing hijab.  The wearing of a mask - speaking of offensive religious symbols - will defeat communication with a lip-reading deaf person.  Wearing symbols won’t affect the person doing the job, it is the people around them who may be affected, and that matters too.

Finally there is the court challenge.  No one who is into mask-shaming and supports punitive lockdowns has any business whinging about infringed Charter rights.  Bill 21 invoked the Notwithstanding Clause and still courts pretend jurisdiction over it.  A farce of power-grabbing,

Vive le Quebec libre!

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