First, we finally heard a wise (former) politician… Nowadays, one must be a “former leader” to have the courage and lucidity of being wise:
Mr. Mulcair stated yesterday the following: “Mr. Singh had no reason to accuse Mr. Therrien of racism and he should now apologize”. He considers this accusation to be serious.
Mr. Jagmeet Singh, it is time to be wise now. Even NDP folks are saying so.
Your apologies are overdue… but it is never too late to act like a gentleman in life.
Sadly, instead of apologizing as polite Canadians usually do, Mr. Singh seemed to insinuate that he had a treatment of “systemic racism” at the House of Commons when he was expelled by the Speaker.
Singh’s wife even came to his so-called rescue in Narcity. For her, he is a “hero of anti-racism”, to use her own words. Normal, after all, he is also her heart’s hero ?:
Mr. Singh seems to have forgotten about the following:
First, in a “noble” fight, we can fall into the trap of being unfair, especially when we are passionate about a topic. It is never too late to admit that we went too far in life. We, the citizens, respect our public servants even more when they know how to be humble. Mr. Singh’s apologies to Mr. Therrien would be indirectly to the Bloc Québécois and directly to the hearts of each Québecker… four days ahead of the “Saint-Jean Baptiste” (Québec national day). It would be a lovely gesture on your behalf. “Yalla, you can do it ?” (= Come on, in Arabic!).
Second, the only systemic discrimination that Bambi sees in this incident is against Québec (French-Canadians of Québec). Not by the Speaker of the House of Commons, thank Goodness! It is rather by Mr. Singh and our PM who have both unwisely played identity politics (Ms. Bombardier may have guessed why).
Third, Bambi is also seeing increased systemic prejudice against our police officers on our streets and media, which would be contrary to the spirit of the noble cause of “systemic racism/discrimination”. It is both odd and troubling to see politicians behaving like that toward the servants of their own (our!) institutions. It is even surrealistic, to say the least.
It is amazing how no one dares to say anything nowadays. For Bambi, it is strange to see Canada increasingly resembling Syria (more authoritarian) and decreasingly Lebanon (more democratic)… Is it normal to have all our opposition parties that well aligned with the party in power, and with MOST of the mainstream media, at least the English ones?
What would have Mr. Jack Layton said about all this, had he been still alive today ☹? She bets that he would have not been proud today of Mr. Singh’s attitude. Indeed, he used to respect Québec. Québec respected and loved him back. We all did!
Anyhow, here is Ms. Bombardier’s powerful text, published in the Journal de Montréal, translated into English:
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/06/20/le-quebec–une-province-raciste
As this “false news” circulates across Canada, last Wednesday, the leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, called the Bloc Québécois House leader Alain Therrien a racist. The leader of the NDP was kicked out of the House of Commons for using a word classified as unparliamentary.
The leader of the Bloc Québécois asked him to apologize, which the latter refused to do. Prime Minister Trudeau has said that the Bloc is paying the price for refusing to admit that systemic racism is a scourge in Canada.
The leader of the Bloc, Yves-François Blanchet, acknowledged that “residual traces of racism exist in Canadian institutions”.
But he believes that we must refrain from generalizing by associating all members of a community with this racism.
The Bloc therefore takes issue with the accusations made against the Legault government, which voted for Bill 21 [the bill on secularism].
His opponents describe the French-speaking majority, which supports François Legault, as racist.
Anger
It is understandable that Jagmeet Singh’s strong anger was explained by the exchange of tense looks when he voted on his motion to recognize systemic racism in the RCMP.
Mr. Singh therefore interpreted the look of the Bloc Québécois House leader and the gesture that accompanied him as a rejection of his words.
He felt somehow rejected as a racialized person.
And so here is the Gordian knot which apparently all white people who seem to be put in the same bag have to face.
Today’s whites are said to be the heirs of yesterday’s slavers and all those who for centuries have colonized, exploited, despised, and discriminated against non-whites.
On the whole earth and even in the heart of the villages of Québec.
How can we organize more civilized debates on this ever-growing theme?
Can Québeckers, themselves humiliated, poor and made to feel guilty by a limited catholicity, be locked up now in a racist status of which they would be oblivious?
Attacks
How can we resist these destabilizing attacks which make them systemic racists by the mere fact of their skin colour and their battles to protect their language, always flouted, and their distinct culture, which includes secularism?
Should the majority of Québec become silent again, fold their backs, make their mea culpa and leave it to others to now define what it is?
Formerly French Canadians, we have renamed ourselves Québecers to include all the citizens of Québec.
And here we see minorities excluding themselves from belonging to Québec in the name of race and religion.
What a regression of universalist values!
Should we expect all of Canada to decide to exclude “racist” Québec from the Canadian federation so as not to tarnish the image of virtue and purity of a postnational Canada?
It would be reverse separatism.
In the international media, articles vehiculated these prejudices about Québec today.
It is doubtful that the Canadian embassies would be quick to correct this perception, which tarnishes the image of Québec and its inhabitants.
Québec society thus finds itself in the camp of racists.
What a calamity!”
