Defenestrate Them All: Canadian Politics 2021

You’d think Lionel Carmant or Nadine Girault would have been a better fit but I guess Legault prefers to tokenize them elsewhere.

Anyway, it’s a step up from outright denying the existence of systemic racism.

“I think there will be a lot of knee-jerk reaction. Let’s give the runner a chance.”

counterpoint: jerk actions necessitate knee-jerk reactions

Legault and Charette continued to insist systemic racism does not exist in Quebec and that the formula they have chosen to fight racism works.

Never mind, I should’ve read the article first.

“The nomination of Mr. Charette to such a position sends a clear message,” said Max Stanley Bazin, president of the Black Coalition of Quebec. “That message is that the government of Quebec wants to make the fight against racism a priority.”

well I agree with the first part

“I don’t deny racism exists — on the contrary,” Charette said. “What bothers me about the expression is that it creates a false sense of security, to put the blame on others. If we retreat behind a concept which is very vague, poorly defined, it removes the responsibility we all have (to act).”

So is it just the phrase they don't like? These seem like tedious quibbles.

Anyway, there can be systemic racism and also individual racism, right?

no there can only be one kind

The burden of proof for systemic racism to be recognized as such in Quebec is exceedingly high – if it’s not literally Jim Crow and/or apartheid, we’re golden. Apparently it’s really hard to hold together these two thoughts at the same time: ‘systemic racism in Quebec is technically less of a problem than it is in the US’ and ‘systemic racism in Quebec is still a serious problem that needs to be addressed posthaste’. The persistent narrative (within some circles) according to which white French Canadians were treated as badly as black Americans or very nearly is also to blame for this state of affairs.

On a more personal note, one thing I often wonder about is: how do we categorize discrimination against people with exotic-sounding names?

I'll wait to see what he does before judging ofc but... what is he expected to do?

I tried to find the original quote to see if he expanded more or if it was clearer but he just seems to be stressing that it's an individual problem, that everyone needs to look within himself or herself, that people of all races can be equally racist - so what would be the role of a Minister?

Pour M. Charette, le débat sur le racisme systémique « donne un faux sentiment de sécurité [et permet] de rejeter la faute sur l’autre ». « Mais en matière de racisme, on peut tous — qu’on soit noir, blanc, peu importe notre origine — alimenter certains préjugés. Donc si on se replie uniquement derrière un concept qui est très vague, qui est mal défini, ça nous enlève un peu une responsabilité qui nous revient », a-t-il plaidé.

« Peu importe la couleur de notre peau, peu importe nos origines, nous sommes tous susceptibles d’alimenter un racisme, d’alimenter certains préjugés à l’égard de certaines communautés ou de certains groupes, donc la solution est en partie à l’intérieur de chacun d’entre nous », a-t-il affirmé.

Not directly related to Charette, but this piece from a week ago is worth reading:

https://www.lapresse.ca/debats/opinions/2021-02-20/le-mot-en-s-pour-systemique.php

BC finding the best possible use for 16 billion dollars

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/site-c-announcement-friday-1.5928719

i sometimes do market research surveys on this app on my phone (it's tedious and it takes you ages to accrue enough points to get an uber eats $20 gift card or whatever so i don't do it that often) and i got multiple surveys, obviously from the NDP, regarding site C in the last month. i was anticipating some announcement on it imminently but wasn't sure which way it would go.

i feel like probably on a sheer dollar judgement it's probably the right decision - have already sunk so much into it - but im just totally against it on every other consideration

keeping it going after they were elected was such a mistake

i feel like horgan personally doesn't give 2 shits about indigenous sovereignty issues or the environment, and electorally they know that they have the capital and vancouver, so they want to appeal to the resource economy boosters outside the larger cities

Thinking more about the Charette appointment, I realized something didn't sit right with me about Legault's comments:

“I have the impression that had I named someone from a minority group, people would have said, ‘We know very well that the person was named because they were members of a minority,’ ” Legault said. “Yet it is all Quebecers who must fight racism.

He essentially indicates here (and the original French did not help him) that he intentionally chose a white person because he was worried about what people would think, which does not bode well for an anti-racism campaign imo.

Also, the CBC actually trimmed this quote in a generous way imo (from Le Devoir):

« Ce n’est pas parce que quelqu’un est parmi le groupe qui est victime que nécessairement, la personne est mieux placée pour lutter », a fait valoir M. Legault pour justifier son choix de ministre. « On s’adresse entre autres aux personnes qui font partie des Québécois qu’on appelle blancs, ou “de souche”, pour qu’eux autres — s’il y en a une minorité qu’on doit faire changer d’idée — [ puissent ] poser des actions. »

I don't necessarily disagree that someone from outside an oppressed group could do a good job in the fight but the second part (which CBC left out) feels a little off. He wants to also reach out to white "old stock" Quebecers, so that they (or the minority who need to change) can take action too - but why would they need a white Minister to be motivated to do that?

I haven't had a chance to read everything posted today, but yes the "logic" behind not hiring a minority because you're afraid it will seem tokenizing is gross.

There might be some truth to "old whites will only listen to another white about racism" but yikes

I mean seriously, that last bit is more kinda worse than admitting there's systemic racism! "There's no systemic racism, but it is true that white Quebecers are so profoundly racist they will only respect the authority and viewpoints of white people."

It’s just a handful of individuals, you see.

Also, is he saying that only ‘old stock’ Québécois are white? If so, that’s quite the hot take.

Ha, I wasn't sure where you were coming from earlier about discrimination over exotic-sounding names but maybe that goes some way towards clarifying?

Yeah, I’m curious about the data on whether in Quebec you are less likely to get an interview with an employer if you have a ‘non-Western’-sounding name (my hunch is: probably) and whether that qualifies as ‘racism’ or another kind of discrimination altogether.

In any event, it does seem that the answer to this question was "yes":

did they deliberately go looking for the whitest motherfucker they could find

A Chinese colleague of mine said he couldn't get interviews for IT jobs in Canada until he adopted a Western first name.

I believe it.

This is purely anecdotal, of course, and perhaps a bit paranoid on my part, but I've often wondered whether I didn't make it to the interview stage for certain jobs on account of my 'alien'-sounding first name (my legal last name is also 'weirder' than the one I usually go by) despite scanning as 'white'. I've never been gratuitously stopped by a cop while going about my business, so this is obviously a different and less crucial ballpark – I don't mean to minimize the oppression visible minorities continue to suffer in Quebec, and elsewhere. Still, it's an insidious kind of discrimination that has always made me feel like I'm never going to fit in 100%. Maybe it just comes with the territory when you're an immigrant, idk.

Tbc there are other positions I applied for where I did not get this impression at all. Rather, it seems to be a pervasive issue at a particular kind of institution where 95% of employees have a franco-sounding name (I'm not going to spell it out because I'd rather not doxx myself just yet).

I've definitely 'changed' my name on the phone in my illustrious former telemarketing/phone survey career (and was advised to do so by one manager) but I just thought the potential discrimination involved there, as with the example of the Chinese IT worker, fit under the generally understood rubric of racism, as opposed to anything about exotic names in and of themselves. The case where someone would not experience bigotry based on anything like skin colour, clothing, or accent but might be discriminated against just because their name reveals them to be the wrong type of white person is interesting, though.

The case where someone would not experience bigotry based on anything like skin colour, clothing, or accent but might be discriminated against just because their name reveals them to be the wrong type of white person is interesting, though.

It's a very minor problem, really. I'm curious about it for mainly personal reasons and because of my own nagging sense of foreignness. The Romanian community appears to have done fairly well for itself in Quebec, as far as I can tell. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if having an overly anglo-sounding first *and* last name was also an impediment in some fields.

When my dad came to Toronto in 1950 from England, some employers said straight out they wouldn't hire limeys. Not to say the English were discriminated against in any real way, but people have always found a way to underline a difference between themselves and the other.

I've been told that in the Hungarian community in my grandparents' generation there were even prejudices against other Hungarian immigrant cohorts, like those who came over in '56.

Sneetchyarok

Update: We’ve secured 20 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine - and on top of that, we’ve now reached an agreement with the Serum Institute of India for another 2 million doses. Our first shipment of half a million doses is expected to arrive within weeks.

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 27, 2021

Nice.

Don't know where to put this but here: https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/596096/dis-son-nom-ne-peut-etre-anonyme

Maybe someone knows enough about Quebec/Canadian law to explain why the anonymity of the abuse victims, and all their conversations to the Dis Son Nom account had to revealed?

This whole thing is so aggravating. I wish eternal sadness and solitude to that Marquis dude.

Just as things start to reopen, this, which I doubt is a blip; felt like an inevitability.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/03/08/coronavirus-updates-covid-19-canada-ontario-toronto-march-8-2021.html

As the new cliché goes, it really is a vaccine-variant race.

They just very recently ramped up asymptomatic testing in lots of locations around Ontario (we had it offered here on Saturday and it’s available again on Thursday) so it would be good to see which proportion of that new increase is attributable to those - the % that were previously just going unnoticed.

Labs report 38,063 completed tests with a 3.4 per cent positivity rate.

That's a jump too; I think we're somewhere between 1-2% when we're doing well...I don't want to sound all doom and gloom--the vaccines are just about to be administered widely. I just dread another shutdown, for personal reasons and for what it will do to public morale.

I’m just annoyed that none of this data reporting seems to answer that sort of really obvious question. Even the govt pages don’t give that breakdown or mention it under the caveats heading -unless I’m missing it.

https://files.ontario.ca/moh-covid-19-report-en-2021-03-08.pdf

CP24 is blaming the jump on a “data catch up”

Good to hear--I remember now that lagging data was an issue when they switched over to a new reporting system a few weeks ago. Even better, that CDC news today about masks, which I assume will be adopted here, too, at some point.

this made me laugh:

Aaaand the Conservatives have deleted their ad for Justin Trudeau. pic.twitter.com/O8tsTMgiKO

— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) March 16, 2021

Haha

wow that is dim

Amazing

wtf I love the Tories now

I was tbh shocked to see Isabelle Hachey retweet this call (by an Ottawa-area journalist) for UOttawa to reconsider a prof's position bc of an opinionated tweet about QC health care and racism, considering what seemed like her v principled liberal defence of Véronique Lieutenant-Duval. Is academic freedom less important now?

Ce prof est digne de votre institution, @uOttawa ? https://t.co/j0mXRqtZzg

— Louis-Denis Ebacher (@ldebacher) March 15, 2021

I find Attaran's takes eye-rollingly simplistic and deliberately provocative but that seems very deux poids, deux mesures on Hachey's part, I agree. Criticize him if you want, but to imply that he ought to lose his job over such tweets is about as self-contradictory as it gets.

tbh I appreciate her making explicit who she thinks deserves academic freedom and why.