Justin Trudeau returns to Parliament this week having backtracked on a couple of issues. Althia Raj writes:
For the Liberals, the return of Parliament this week was marked by a series of reversals after many unfortunate own goals.
On Friday, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino acknowledged bungling gun control as the Liberals withdrew controversial amendments to legislation that Conservatives and the NDP had denounced as scooping up hunters and Indigenous Peoples in an effort to target assault-style weapons.
On Thursday, Justice Minister David Lametti tabled a bill asking for a yearlong delay before expanding medical assistance in dying to those solely suffering from mental illness. Last fall, Lametti was adamant a delay wasn’t needed. But public pressure mounted, and this week government officials acknowledged it was to get the process right, to prepare professionals, and to consider an upcoming report from a Commons committee.
But Trudeau's hottest potato is his appointment of Amira Elghawaby as an advisor on Islamophobia and Quebec's reception to her appointment:
Elghawaby, a former Star columnist, was appointed on Jan. 26 to serve as an adviser on the government’s efforts to fight Islamophobia, racial discrimination and religious intolerance. In Quebec, her appointment caused an uproar — she has suggested the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed by anti-Muslim sentiment, accused Quebec Premier François Legault of showing xenophobic tendencies and, in a since-deleted tweet, said the claim that French-Canadians were oppressed under British rule made her want to “throw up.” That kind of language starts a fire in modern Quebec, qhich is steadfastly committed to secularism -- as expressed in the recently passed Bill 21.
Quebec's secularism is a hard rejection of the influence of the Catholic Church in Quebec. I grew up in that province, where priests used to instruct their parishioners on how to vote. Advice that used to be taken seriously there -- Le Ciel best bleu. L'Enfer est rouge. Heaven is blue. Hell is red. -- is now a standing joke.
One hundred and fifty years ago, religion was a major fault line in Canadian politics. It would be a grave mistake to return to those days.
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