Risible discombobulation

Since I have arrived, the media is absolutely choc-a-block full of the vagaries of the Bouchard-Taylor commission; a political fanfare which is touring Quebec discussing the problems of integrating immigrants' culture in Quebec. The idea is for the commission to sound out what Quebequois residents can consider as reasonable accommodations for immigrants, particularly religious groups, to provide exceptions for laws or customs which might conflict with immigrants' customs.

The media is, predictably, having an absolute field day over these hearings. A Jewish community somewhere frosts its windows to allow prayer in the dark, while a baseball game is going on next door, and there is "mayhem", "clash of religions", you name it... Someone says it's an unreasonable accommodation, and boom, there's your news story. Interview Michel Leblanc who is sick of everything changing in his town, and berates the foreigners, and then interview the Chinese corner shop owners, who barely speak French, and their statement translates (badly) to being sick of Christmas trees littering pavements in January. As Eric Cartman from South Park says: Race war!

The commission is spearheaded by the guru of cultural relativism himself, Charles Taylor, whose openmindedness shines forth through the murky darkness of our ignorance and modernistic, backwater mentalities. His razor sharp mind cuts through the provincial idiocy to remind us that

Other societies present us with different and often disconcerting ways of being human. Our task is to acknowledge the humanity of these "other" ways while still living our own. That this may be difficult to achieve, that it will demand a change in our self-understanding and hence in our way of life, is the challenge our societies must reckon with in the years ahead.

The Other and Ourselves: Is Multi-culturalism Inherently Relativist?
by Charles Taylor, July 2002

"Tut tut", he says, wagging his creamy white messianic finger "you've been skipping your multicultural pills again, haven't you?". The commission pushes onwards, at warp speed, boldly going where no culturally relativistic commission, destined to spin policies government has already predetermined, has gone before.

These public hearings have become a freak show, allowing the loudest vessels to voice whatever opinions they choose to on immigration issues. This obviously gives rise to the most hilarious and depressing interventions, and I never know whether to laugh or cry when reading them.

The world's most popular sport is a way to bring people together even if they have different religious beliefs, said Joseph Morelli, a physical education teacher in Joliette, Quebec.

"We all have the same objective — just to put the ball in the net, and everybody who participates in the sport can go get something out of it. There's no colour or language barrier through all of that," Morelli said at public hearings Wednesday."


Soccer can sow sectarian serenity, commission hearsWednesday, September 26, 2007
CBC News

Hooray. Let's all play soccer, eat oranges at half-time, and sing 'Heal the World' by Michael Jackson while holding hands, around a giant footbll painted with the 5 continents. Then we can watch reruns of the World Cup last year and watch the final, when Zidane headbutted Materazzi for insulting his sister... no, wait.

I can hardly believe the sort of media reports which are darkening between 5 and 10 pages of every newspaper, not to mention 5 minutes of each radio report on CBC. The amount of attention given to this is unbelievable. And Quebequois residents have no problems with immigrants! Compared to being in Europe this place is multi-culti heaven. And I'm not just talking about Montreal, where half the residents are so happy from passive pot smoking they wouldn't flinch seeing a naked, four-headed, turban-wearing sikh with black bangles, singing 'Kum-ba-ya' to Hare Krishna music. The rest of Quebec is unbelievably accommodating to foreigners.

Is it a coincidence that yesterday in one of my classes, I find out that Michel, a 50 something-year-old postal worker with the best pension imaginable, who rides his bicycle for 70km per weekend just for kicks, has a 2 month wait before he can see his family doctor? The words 'red' and 'herring' seem to scream their way out of the paper with each new charade of this commission. And still blogs like this one find space to discuss it. What suckers we are.