They only took down the cross in the National Assembly after backlash and calls of hypocrisy. Originally Legault wanted it to stay up. That alone says to me how BS the whole thing is.
But that stuff really is "history and culture" rather than "public endorsement of religion."
People in my home country would never tolerate foreign Christians coming in and demanding that the state stop celebrating Eid or changing place names. People are entitled to their heritage, and shouldn’t have to erase it to accommodate newcomers.
We had a Christmas tree every year growing up in America as immigrants from a Muslim country. When I visit Tokyo in December, which is in a non-Christian country, there are Christmas trees in all the malls. Christmas trees are the archetypal examples of religious symbols that have turned into cultural symbols.
> there is also "history and culture" in Confederate monuments and places named after them.
Please, lean into this.
The use of saint names is unavoidable, a reminder of how the Church used to control everything. It would be a powerful statement of actual secularism if some schools were renamed, even some streets. But most people don't care, they just stopped going to mass and kicked the priests out of schools, job done. Secularism is now code for xenophobia.
[3] exclusively targets non-Christian symbols and came after a campaign of primarily non-city folk freaking out because immigrants are different - most infamously Herouxville where the town published a manifesto warning immigrants against "stoning and burning women. It included, too, an explanation of the importance of Christmas trees." [1]. The Catholic symbology remains in the officialdom - see the giant cross that sits atop Montreal, and the crosses that were never removed from the public schools, or many provincial offices. Not to mention it's OK to wear a crucifix.
[4] goes way beyond education. Montreal is a functionally bilingual city and those of us from here speak "franglais", a mix of the two and have no issue switching. This new law massively restricts access to: education, medicare, legal services, to name a few in the official language of your choice. It even gives powers to the language police to, for example, raid a law or medical office, get access to confidential documents to ensure you are only being served in French [2]. I live in a nation with 2 official languages in a city where the majority of people are bilingual and happy to serve in either language- and Quebec just effectively made one of those languages illegal. How is this is not discrimination?
Georgia-Atlanta is an analogy. The rural areas are 99% white, unilingual francophone - a group who genuinely believe bilingualism and multiculturalism is a problem - Montreal's two key, unique strengths and defining characteristics. If we had representation by population, these would be non-issues but because the rural areas are heavily weighted, the ruling CAQ has a supermajority after winning only 37% of the vote.[3]
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/herouxville-quebec-r...
[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bill-96-explained-1....
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Quebec_general_election
A distinct cultural group seeking to avoid cultural or linguistic change created by an influx of outsiders isn’t “racism.” It’s a human right for distinct ethnocultural groups to seek political autonomy on that basis: https://unpo.org/article/4957. Quebec is by its very nature a province for French speaking descendants of French immigrants to Canada. Québécois are perfectly entitled to say it should stay that way. It’s alien to modern Anglo notions of multiculturalism, but that doesn’t make it “racism.”
Or do you have another explanation for the population , capital, and cultural flight that occurred over the 80s 90s that we have never recovered from?
That’s not what’s happening in Quebec. It’s not like rural Quebecois are welcoming of Anglo Canadians either. They simply oppose multiculturalism, just like China or Japan or France itself.
Bill 96 is a direct violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so you're right it's not racist, just a denial of my guaranteed rights as a Canadian Citizen. Ignoring First Nations, of course, many of whom speak neither French nor English. If you do count them, then Bill 96 can also be considered racist
[1] https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/two-thirds-of-qu...
[2] https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-coroner-feels-joyce-echaq...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/world/canada/canada-herou...
The current movement is a continuity of the work that was started 50-70 years ago to get religious symbols out of public institutions, and in that sense, it's coherent.
Those discriminations for sure helping the independence movement.