In the final throes of the recent federal election, a question asked during the English-language leaders’ debate shed some troubling light on the current situation in Quebec politics.
It began when host and moderator Shachi Kurl posed her now famous question to Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet regarding Bills 96 and 21. She asked how he can justify supporting the two bills which are seen by many as discriminatory.
His response was telling.
Rather than answer the question, he said that the bills are not about discrimination but the values of the Quebec people. The implication is that to ask such a question would be an affront to those people, and that the impetus behind these two bills is therefore somehow immune to public scrutiny.
It was a chilling Orwellian moment. But only the first of several.
The very next week, two resolutions were brought forward in the Quebec legislature, one by the Liberals condemning the asking of the question and calling for an end to Quebec bashing, and the other by the Parti Quebecois demanding a formal apology of the debate organizers. Both were supported unanimously.
In the process of being vetted by the public, political leaders need to be able to handle tough questions. Their policies need to be able to stand up to scrutiny. The public has a right to know what they are up to, and it is the job of journalists to ask questions designed to find out.
The big challenge is to get behind the rehearsed talking points and unearth actual truth. This is exactly what Kurl did. She would have been remiss in her duties as the moderator of a national election debate to have done any less.
It is not Quebec-bashing to inquire about policies that constrain the freedom of linguistic and religious minorities any more than it is anti-Semitic to inquire about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, or anti-American to ask why the president has ordered the invasion of a small country. It is simply democracy.
When someone attacks the messenger instead of addressing the substance, it’s a pretty good sign they don’t have a good answer.
It’s a sad day for democracy if we cannot ask tough questions of people who seek to govern us. More so when nary a political leader anywhere in the land has the courage to stand up and call it out.
Charles Dickson
