Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literary Studies

Amplifying Threat: Reasonable Accommodations and Quebec’s Bouchard-Taylor Commission Hearings (2007)

129 Amplifying Threat: Reasonable Accommodations and Quebec’s Bouchard-Taylor Commission Hearings (2007) Monika Kin Gagnon and Yasmin Jiwani In January 2007, the small town of Hérouxville, near Quebec City, gained international attention and,from some quarters,acclaim,for issuing resolutions concerning prospective immigrants. These resolutions specifically banned the stoning of women, the covering of women’s faces through veiling, and a host of other such prohibitions, all in the name of maintaining the province’s “civilized” culture. Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s response to the resulting brouhaha was to strike a blueribbon Study Commission to criss-cross the province and address the question of “reasonable accommodation” through a series of town hall events and a consultative process that took place in the fall of 2007. Headed by philosopher Charles Taylor and historian and sociologist Gérard Bouchard, the Bouchard-Taylor Commission itself unleashed an unforeseen maelstrom of racist opinion, repressed anxieties, and resentments, as well as a deep-seated malaise that pierced the delicate veneer of tolerance that characterizes everyday life and social practices in Quebec. L’Affaire Hérouxville, as it has come to be called, and the ensuing Bouchard-Taylor Commission, offered yet more baffling examples of the complexity of the Quebec race/culture equation, with its particular versioning of colonial histories, its linguistic divides, and oppressive religious legacies. Much attention has been brought to the legal concept of “reasonable accommodation” and how it has become the central structuring notion in the Bouchard-Taylor Commission and 130 Gagnon and Jiwani their final report.1 On 27 October 2009, eighteen months after the Bouchard-Taylor Commission Report was deposited, Montreal’s La Presse published their survey results on “accommodements raisonnables ,” with headlines that affirmed,“Les Québécois disent non: 18 mois après le dépôt du rapport Bouchard-Taylor, la question demeure sensible . Et les balises restent floues” (Quebecers say no: 18 months after the deposit of the Bouchard-Taylor report, the question remains sensitive . And the markers remain unclear), citing of 76–90 percent of Quebecers who were saying no to various questions relating to reasonable accommodations. The significance of the central concept of reasonable accommodation to the commission, these debates, and their related analyses have also precipitated an abstracting function that overlooks the broader effect of the commission on people of colour and for Quebec’s Native communities, and disavows its contribution to normalizing racist attitudes in the public at large, implicit, for example , in former Bloc Québécois candidate, May Chiu’s observation that the commission was “faites par des Blancs pour des Blancs” (made by Whites, for Whites) (Lévesque). This essay begins with an account of l’Affaire Hérouxville, which is the backdrop to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, then proceeds to examine the texture of the ambient environment during the Bouchard-Taylor Commission province-wide consultations from 10 September to 13 December 2007, highlighting this ambiance and general public atmosphere through some newspaper representations from this consultation period.We are therefore less concerned here with the commission’s outcomes and conclusions, outlined in detail in their final report, than with understanding the dynamics of racialization and racism that occurred during this specific time frame. Our analysis suggests that, during the period of the commission hearings, the media initially amplified the discord and disgruntlement that were apparently extant in the population at large. As Bouchard and Taylor were themselves quoted as stating:“Nous avons perdus nos repères: Gérard Bouchard et Charles Taylor sentent clairement qu’il y a un malaise au Québec à l’égard des immigrants”(We have lost our bearings : Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor clearly sense a malaise with regards to immigrants in Quebec) (Péloquin).The media amplified this perception in three ways: by not immediately challenging and critiquing the debate’s frames of reference that informed the appointment of the commission;by conflating democracy with populism;and,finally,by Amplifying Threat 131 confusing cultural and religious symbols and affiliations. We conclude with a more substantial examination of the role of racialized gender in the formation of these debates and, more particularly, the representations of women wearing the hijab and niqab and their congealing of anxieties about difference and the perceived Other in Quebec culture. In this, we hope to dismantle and challenge, in a preliminary way, some of the discursive logics of racialization that have come to the...