Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Choisir, My Ass

The irony in the Parti Quebecois's slogan just gets deeper and deeper.  So, now the PQ is talking about prohibiting people who are not fluent in French from running for office.  Certainly, such folks should be fluent, but why not let the voters decide?  If one is running for office in a community full of Anglophones, perhaps fluency in English might be a bit more important.  OR if one is living among First Nations peoples, it might be more important to be able to communicate with them.

Of course, one only needs to communicate with the local folks if one is trying to represent them.  And the PQ has little interest in representing people that are different.  And choice?  Not a strength of the PQ which has a basic authoritarian tendency based on the view that  giving people discretion is a bad idea.

Sure, they are now walking a bit back from this--new immigrants would face these restrictions.  Lovely.  The fifth D of xenophobic politics, along with dodge, dip, duck, and dive is deny.  Appeal to the xenophobes and then act as if you are not discriminating in a racist/xenophobic way.

So, yeah, I am super-happy to have left Quebec when I could.


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