The vandalism, and Kenney’s appearance at the mosque, came at a time when relations between the federal government and Canada’s Muslim community were uneasy at best and hostile at worst. A month earlier, the Minister had decreed that Muslim women had to remove any face veils like burkas or niqabs when taking the oath of citizenship. Some Muslims felt that Kenney was making these women choose between their faith and their citizenship. Higher up on the political hierarchy, Prime Minister Stephen Harper angered many Muslim Canadians in September when he described ‘Islamicism’ as the greatest threat to Canada’s security. Critics accused politicians like Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney of appealing to the mainstream Canadian population’s Islamophobia in order to obtain votes. But are Canada, and its government, really as Islamophobic as some allege?

To a certain extent, allegations of pervasive anti-Islamic hostility in Canada have some basis in fact. A recent survey by the Association for Canadian Studies found that only 43% of Canadians had a ‘very positive’ or ‘somewhat positive’ perception of Muslims. In contrast, 70% of respondents had a positive perception of Catholics and Jews and 60% of atheists. According to a similar poll in 2009 conducted by Angus Reid, a mere 28% of respondents held a favourable attitude toward Islam, compared to 57% and 53% toward Buddhism and Judaism, respectively, and 72% toward Christianity. These results suggest that a considerable portion of Canadian society views Muslims and their religion in a fairly negative light, at least in comparison to other belief systems.

It’s also true that much anti-Islamic feeling in Canada is based on ignorance or plain bigotry. For example, honour killing, a crime in which a woman is murdered by her family members for ‘disgracing’ them by having premarital sex, marrying men not of the family’s liking, or even talking to boys, is often described as a ‘Muslim tradition.’ Even in Canada, however, such crimes have occurred not only among Muslims but among Sikhs and, in at least one instance, Hindus (a Sri Lankan father who tried to run over his daughter because she was seeing a man of another caste). Some so-called Islamophobes seem to be against any non-White Anglo-Saxon Protestant immigration whatsoever. An example is a commentator calling him- (or her-?)self PaxCanadiana who runs a website called the Canadian Immigration Reform Blog. True, he or she rails against Muslim immigrants, but he (she) also deplores the entry of Filipinos, Chinese, and even the White – if not Anglo-Saxon Protestant – Portuguese into Canada.

One might therefore ask whether this apparent Islamophobia extends to the Canadian government, more specifically the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. Much was made of Stephen Harper’s remark about ‘Islamicism’ being the greatest threat to Canada. I am not so sure; it seems that problems like home-grown crime (the bulk of which is NOT committed by Muslims), environmental degradation and child poverty are at least as threatening as Islamicism is in the lives of most Canadians. On the other hand, while ‘Islamicists’ by no means constitute all Muslims, the somewhat uncomfortable truth is that there exists a fanatical element in Islam that has no modern-day counterpart in Christianity or other belief systems. Even ‘arch-atheist’ Richard Dawkins admitted that he knows of no ‘Christian suicide bombers’ or ‘major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death.’ Christianity, he said, might serve as a ‘bulwark against something worse’ (he didn’t spell out what that ‘something’ was). And both Dawkins and Harper are old enough to remember the ‘fatwa’ against writer Salman Rushdie by Muslim leaders for his supposedly blasphemous work The Satanic Verses.

It does not appear that Stephen Harper or his Cabinet have anything against Islam or Muslims per se. They participated in an Eid (major Muslim holiday) celebration on Parliament Hill, for example. Furthermore, both Harper and Jason Kenney spoke out strongly against the vandalism of the mosque in Gatineau, Quebec – whereas neither they nor any other federal official, as far as I’m aware, said anything about the spray-painting of a public nativity scene in St. Catharines. Finally, in 2010 Harper bestowed honorary Canadian citizenship on the Aga Khan, leader of the Ismaili Muslim spiritual community.

So back to my original question – ‘Is Canada Islamophobic?’ – with regard to the Canadian government itself and its main leaders, I would have to say no, at least not based on anything they have expressed or actually done. When it comes to the population at large, my response is more mixed. It’s apparent from polls like the above-mentioned Angus Reid survey that many Canadians are hostile to both Muslims and their religion.

Finally, how can this gap be bridged? Perhaps Muslim Canadians can let it be known that practices like honour killing and female genital mutilation are not Islamic traditions and that not all Muslims embrace capital punishment for apostates, for instance. Non-Muslims for their part should avoid lumping all Muslims together as fanatics or automatically labelling abusive husbands/fathers/brothers from the Middle East or South Asian as ‘Islamofascists’ (a term used to describe, ironically, a Lebanese Christian man named Joseph Hawach who kidnapped his two daughters from his ex-wife and brought them to Lebanon). Good fences may make good neighbours, but talking over these fences might make even better ones. Above all, I’d like to see Muslims and Canadians of other (or no) religions see themselves as fellow citizens of our one country.

Personally, I have never voted for Jack Layton or the NDP for that matter. The times that I have cast a ballot, I’ve fluctuated between the Liberals and Conservatives. I tend to fall in the ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ category, the latter of which does not leave much room for supporting the New Democratic Party. Still, I remember telling a consistently Conservative friend a few months before Layton’s death that regardless of one’s political philosophy, few people could dispute that the NDP leader was a decent and honourable man. My friend agreed.

Another thing that could not help but impress the public about Jack Layton was the fact that he managed to do what would have been unthinkable even a year ago: he made the NDP the official Opposition. While the NDP has been elected in various provinces at different times, at the federal level it has basically been relegated to the sidelines. I sometimes wonder whether Bob Rae, once the NDP Premier of Ontario, regrets ‘jumping ship’ to the Liberals now that his former party has more seats than his present one.

The NDP’s relative success in the election – I say ‘relative’ because the Conservatives are after all a majority government – was in my view due to several factors. A large number of NDP seats were obtained in Quebec from the Bloc Quebecois. The Quebec separatist movement has always had its highs and lows. The Toronto Spanish-language newspaper El Centroamericano speculates that the movement is losing steam as Francophone Quebecers realize that it might be more difficult for an independent Quebec to be self-sufficient now that its prospective trading partner the United States is currently in the economic doldrums. As a left-wing party, the NDP in a sense filled in the gap for many Quebecers.

However, another reason behind the NDP’s newfound success may be its leader himself. Jack Layton certainly came across as a very personable and approachable figure – a reality recognized even by non-NDP supporters like me. In this respect Layton had the edge over his Liberal counterpart Michael Ignatieff, who basically lacked the charisma to win over the people of Canada as a whole. Of course approachability is not the only factor in a candidate’s victory or defeat. If that were the case, the NDP under Layton would have garnered more votes than the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper. Nonetheless, I believe that Layton’s personality played some role in the last election.

As well, part of Jack Layton’s appeal lay in the confidence he exuded. This was evident, for example, in his promise even after he was diagnosed with a second cancer that he would ‘be back.’ Unfortunately, he never did ‘come back,’ but for his followers this message still holds. Although I have never been one of Layton’s followers, I join other Canadians in mourning his passing. Canada has lost a great leader. At least we can take some comfort in the fact that he died peacefully at home with his family. Since we all must die one day, the least we can ask is that our death be as tranquil as possible. We shall see who will carry on his legacy.

Perhaps more important than the “what” is the “why” these elections turned out the way they did. First, the Conservative victory. It may be that despite the Bruce Carson and Bev Oda/KAIROS scandals, Canadians felt that the Tories were the best choice available or, from a more negative angle, the least of three or possibly more evils. Under the leadership of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, for instance, Canada managed to weather the economic recession relatively smoothly, at least compared to other nations like Portugal, Ireland or Greece. While the above-mentioned scandals may have dissuaded some Canadians from casting their ballots for Harper, many of these people may have simply abstained from voting altogether, thereby failing to give any advantage to the various non-Conservative parties.

I also attribute Stephen Harper’s win partly to the fact that Canadians refused to fall for the scare tactics engineered by the Conservatives’ opponents. One such tactic was the attempt to portray the Tories as reactionary Bible thumpers bent on banning abortion and keeping women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. This effort began well before the recent elections. A few years ago, one left-leaning website featured a picture of Gerri Santoro, an American woman who died from an illegal abortion in 1964, lying dead in a motel room, as if to portray what Canadian women would face if Harper remained at the helm. Leaving aside the fact that the most egregious violations of women’s reproductive rights in recent years took place not in a right-wing God-bothering theocracy but in a left-wing officially atheistic state, Communist Romania, where not only abortion but contraception was banned, Harper himself has stated that he has no plans to re-open the abortion issue. Critics have countered that he did raise the matter by failing to include abortion in a federal package for maternal health care in the Third World. But declining to finance a procedure can’t be equated to legally prohibiting it. As an analogy, no government in Canada would stop me from getting breast implants, but no government would pay for them either other than in the case of a mastectomy. Finally, Harper’s supposed pro-life sympathies are belied by anti-choice groups’ characterization of the Prime Minister as “pro-abortion.”

The huge sea change in this election was the Liberals’ descent to third place, behind the Conservatives and NDP. Some would sum up the reason for the Liberals’ seeming downfall in two words: Michael Ignatieff. However great an intellectual/author/broadcaster Ignatieff might be, he simply lacked the charisma to win the Canadian public’s favour as a future Prime Minister. The other side of the Liberals’ defeat was of course the rise of the NDP. Part of the NDP’s newfound success stemmed from the support it received in Quebec, where it managed to supplant the Bloc Quebecois in all but a few ridings. Quebec’s turn to the party of Layton was not especially surprising to me, as Quebecers have long held left-wing views on social and economic matters. I also wonder whether some people who might have otherwise voted for the Liberals chose the NDP out of a belief that the latter party has at least had the courage to stand by their principles (many of which, by the way, I do not personally share) while the Liberals in contrast seem to define themselves solely by their status as non-Conservatives.

I have to admit that I did not vote in this election. There was no party with which I felt 100% comfortable casting my ballot for, so I simply abstained. Nonetheless, I’m not necessarily displeased by the results of this election. I suppose that if I were forced to vote for one particular party, it would be the Conservatives. Yet the idea of the NDP as a counterbalance to the Conservatives doesn’t strike me as a bad scenario either. At the very least, the outcome of this election could have been worse.

That statement remains in the recently updated version of Discover Canada. This time, however, the words seem to have caught the eye of Liberal MP Justin Trudeau (son of the late Prime Minister). On a radio talk show, Trudeau took exception to the expression “barbaric” on the grounds that such strong language had no place in a government document and created a barrier between “us” (i.e. mainstream Canadians) and “them” (i.e. immigrants). “Absolutely unacceptable” would have been better, according to Trudeau.

Reaction was swift to follow. Kenney’s office said they made no apology for letting immigrant women know their rights. The Minister himself noted that statements like Justin Trudeau’s “undermine public support for multiculturalism” and refused to accept the Liberal MP’s later apology. Conservative MP Shelly Glover demanded that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff remove Trudeau from his post. Interestingly, NDP Immigration Critic Olivia Chow appeared to take Kenney’s side in the matter, declaring that honour killings were indeed barbaric and that the Discover Canada guide had every right to make that clear. Meanwhile, Ignatieff merely opined that “There’s no such thing as an ‘honour’ killing… only killing, and it’s a crime everywhere.”

Outside political circles, the controversy continued to rage. Commenting on a Toronto Sun article about the Kenney-Trudeau debate, one reader accused Justin Trudeau of tolerating the murder of women in the name of multiculturalism. On the other side of the ledger, Kenney and his supporters were slapped with the “r” word – racism. Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner described Kenney’s rebuttal to Trudeau as part of the Conservatives’ strategy of “he who is not with me is against me.” There was, in short, a great deal of hysteria, and voices of moderation were drowned out or shouted down.

As with all hot-button issues – abortion, military intervention in Afghanistan, and so on and so forth – the “barbaric” brouhaha is another case in which arguments on both sides have grains of truth but a lot of distortions as well. Many of those who objected to Jason Kenney’s use of the term “barbaric” appeared unwilling to face the fact that honour killing (that is, the murder of a woman by relatives for having “dishonoured” the family by anything from having pre- or extramarital sex to wearing make-up or suggestive clothing) has no equivalent in mainstream Canadian society. Traditionally in Canada, the treatment of wayward women by their families has consisted of ostracism or disinheritance – not homicide. But good luck in trying to point this out to some of the so-called multiculturalists. For example, when I remarked on a website accusing Kenney of ignoring the abuse of underage girls in Bountiful, British Columbia that no woman in Bountiful had ever been killed, the moderator informed me that I thought domestic violence was an exclusively Muslim problem. I replied that not only had I not even mentioned the word “Muslim” but that the most sexually, physically and emotionally abusive boyfriend I had ever had was a – drum roll – White Christian. Even so, I was reprimanded for my “prejudices.” I soon gave up on the conversation, as it was like holding a rational discussion with a Creationist convinced that the Earth came into being 6,000 years ago.

On the other hand, some (small “c”) conservatives – not Kenney himself – engage in their own half-truths as well. For instance, many insist that honour killing is a “Muslim thing.” This is partially true: a number of honour killings have taken place in countries with an Islamic majority as well as among Muslims in Western nations, including Canada (famous example: Aqsa Parvez). Even here at home, however, such murders, or attempted murders, have also been reported among Sikhs and Hindus, like a Sikh woman in British Columbia who was killed by her father for dating a White man or a Sri Lankan girl in Toronto whose father tried to run her down with his van because she was involved with a man of another caste. Some right-wingers also lump in with “honour killings” acts that would more properly be called crimes of passion. One such crime of passion was the murder of Aasiya Hassan by her husband, a television executive in Buffalo, New York, after she told him she wanted a divorce. Though Muzzamil Hassan’s motives and actions do not seem that dramatically different from, say, those of Windsor, Ontario physician Dr. Marc Daniel, who fatally stabbed his ex-wife at the hospital where they worked, the former man’s Islamic religion immediately caused his deed to be slotted in the honour killing category.

Still, I have to admit that the Left’s – with exceptions of course, like Olivia Chow – approach to honour killings bothers me more than that of the right. Some supposedly progressive commentators have even expressed sympathy for “honour killers.” For instance, Toronto Star columnist Jim Coyle said that rather than condemnation, the parents of Aqsa Parvez, the Mississauga teen killed by her father and brother allegedly for refusing to wear the hijab, deserve “all the comfort they can get” in their troubled time. Their only fault, according to Coyle, was “caring too much of what other people thought.” Conservative commentator Ezra Levant immediately shot back and asked whether Coyle would have commiserated with Karla Homolka over the death of her sister Tammy. A better question, in my view: would Coyle have had even a glimmer of sympathy for a white-bread Anglo-Saxon man I knew who disowned his daughter for marrying a Black man? While genuine racism undoubtedly played a role in my acquaintance’s reaction to his daughter’s marriage, he very likely was motivated as well by “What would the neighbours say?” My semi-educated guess is that no, Coyle would not have had any sympathy for this man – even though the man did not, as far as I know, even try to physically assault his daughter.

Finally, people like Jim Coyle, or even those who deny the essential truths about honour killing (that it doesn’t occur in mainstream North American society, for example), make me wonder whether the Left is really the friend of women it has always purported to be. At times it seems that their solidarity with women gets short shrift when it clashes with other tenets, like a misguided notion of multiculturalism. I am not even saying this out of self-interest: the victims of honour killing are not White women like me or my family members but some of the “women of colour” that multiculturalists and other leftists claim to defend.

Jason Kenney has won the public opinion battle so far, at least for now. But we can be sure more is yet to come.

Reaction was swift to follow. Sikh groups and their advocates pointed out that in 2006 the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the kirpan as an article of faith, not a weapon, and the wearing of the kirpan as part of Sikhs’ freedom of religion under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The word “racism” was thrown around a great deal. On the other side of the argument, the Bloc Quebecois called for a ban on the kirpan in federal Parliament. Some commentators insisted that when in Canada, Sikhs should do as the Canadians do – that is, put away their kirpans. One reader of the Globe and Mail remarked sarcastically that as a person of Scottish descent he should be able to carry the “dubh,” a traditional Scottish knife worn along with the kilt, wherever and whenever he pleased.

The irony of the whole affair was that the four above-mentioned Sikhs were going to the National Assembly to take part in a debate to defend Muslim women’s right to wear the niqab, or burqa, in Quebec government facilities. Addressing both the niqab and the kirpan, Rogers TV OMNI News personality Zuhair Kashmeri (a Muslim) wondered aloud whether we would soon see crosses being burnt outside mosques and Gurdwaras (Sikh places of worship). But is the kirpan debate really a Christian/conservative/White versus non-Christian/liberal/minority issue?

Considering the political parties of those names, it’s difficult to say that we’re looking at a purely Liberal pro-kirpan/Conservative anti-kirpan picture. Just last week, for example, the Quebec Liberal Party voted with their separatist foes on a motion to prohibit the ceremonial dagger in that province’s National Assembly. At the federal level, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney, a Conservative, defended Sikhs’ right to carry the kirpan, describing the matter as a “non-issue” that was resolved by the 2006 Supreme Court decision.  It should be mentioned that Minister Kenney has not always been so “tolerant” of immigrant groups’ traditions: in the 2009 Citizenship Guide he stated that Canada’s welcoming of newcomers did not extend to “barbaric” practices like honour killings, spousal abuse and female genital mutilation. Nor are the Bloc and Parti Quebecois necessarily right-wing. The current leader of the former party, Gilles Duceppe, was once a trade union negotiator, while as governing power in Quebec the Parti Quebecois promoted universal day care – an anathema to right-wing ideologues who feel women should be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

Furthermore, despite Kashmeri’s talk of burning crosses outside mosques and gurdwaras, there is no indication that the ban on the kirpan was motivated by a desire to keep Canada “Christian.” The Quebec separatist movement – at least that which evolved during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s and which spawned the Parti and Bloc – was never religious. In fact, the late separatist leader Rene Levesque was an agnostic, and Catholicism did not form the basis of the movement’s concept of Quebec as a society distinct from the rest of Canada.  Similarly, Sikhism does not seem to be a target of Christian fundamentalists: if any non-Christian religion is, it’s Islam, even though in terms of their attitudes towards women’s rights, homosexuality and the death penalty Christian and Muslim fundamentalist views often overlap.

Finally, the idea of the kirpan as a White Christian versus minority non-Christian issue is literally brought to its heels by a letter from Ron Banerjee of the group Canadian Hindu Advocacy. Praising the Quebec National Assembly’s decision not to admit the four Sikhs carrying kirpans, Banerjee states openly that the ceremonial dagger is indeed a weapon and that it has been used as such right here in Canada. He goes on to attack the niqab and hijab (headscarf worn by Muslim women) as well as the Sikh turban. Banerjee then contrasts Muslims and Sikhs’ insistence on wearing such attire with Hindus and Jews’ harmonious transition into Canadian society, calling the latter two communities’ traditions as “conducive to democracy.”

I’m not convinced by everything in Banerjee’s letter. There have been “culture clashes” between Jews and Hindus on one hand and mainstream Canadian society on the other. In a case in Montreal, a Hasidic Jewish synagogue demanded that a nearby YMCA tint the windows of its exercise room to prevent congregation members from seeing scantily clad women inside.  Similarly in Toronto some discussion took place regarding Hindus scattering their loved ones’ ashes in rivers – though Hindu leaders declared their willingness to work with authorities and though the matter was settled peacefully without much fanfare.  It is also true that Sikhs and Hindus have always had an uneasy relationship, both in India itself and overseas.  Still, the fact that a non-white non-Christian voiced his opposition to a Sikh tradition in such stark terms casts strong doubt on the notion of kirpan foes as a bunch of “redneck Reformers.”

I personally don’t have strong opinions on the kirpan either way. Religious freedom – which also includes the freedom not to practise any religion at all – is important; hearing the story of a friend from the former Soviet Union who was prohibited from entering a church makes me appreciate my ability to go, or not go, to any place of worship I want. On the other hand, religious freedom is not absolute. Sometimes it should take a back seat to other values. For example, courts have ordered children of Christian Scientists to receive medical treatment against their parents’ wishes. Security is another value that in some cases should trump religious freedom. For example, an argument for banning the burqa could be made if it became widely used by criminals to conceal their identity.

In the case of the kirpan, is it really a safety risk, as security personnel at the Quebec National Assembly claimed?  Perhaps on one hand its proponents have underplayed its potential for harm while its opponents have overblown its dangers. The kirpan has indeed been used as a weapon. On the other hand, so have everything from glass bottles (which would make me armed and dangerous when I entered a building with a bag of beer bottles I’d collected to return to the Beer Store for ten cents), pens and even the innocent hairpin. I’m not sure whether security is an adequate justification for banning the kirpan in the Legislature.

I don’t have too many problems with the 2006 ruling declaring the kirpan an article of faith. However, I also have to accept the Quebec Legislature’s right to bar the kirpan from their premises. The reality is that multiculturalism as practised in Anglophone Canada has never been well-accepted in Quebec. Nonetheless, I find the Bloc Quebecois’ demand to prohibit the kirpan in the House of Commons a bit arrogant. That is not to say that a ban on the kirpan in federal Parliament should be totally excluded in future; it’s just that I don’t think it should come from a party that doesn’t believe in a united Canada in the first place.

So far I’m satisfied with the status quo vis-à-vis the kirpan: permitted in the Legislature in Ottawa and that of the Anglophone provinces and prohibited in the Quebec National Assembly. This status quo, and my feelings on the matter, could change. I would be interested in hearing my readers’ opinion on this issue.

For a large number of people, Nenshi’s victory was indeed a revolution. Indo-Canadian television station OMNI News, for example, compared it to the election of President Barack Obama in the United States two years earlier. OMNI commentator Zuhair Kashmeri saw Nenshi’s win as a sign that mayoralty in Canada was no longer the exclusive domain of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Among the general Canadian population, some suggested that the election of a Muslim mayor in Calgary meant that Alberta might not be the redneck haven it was often portrayed as being. Others noted the irony in the victory of Nenshi in the supposed backwoods of Alberta versus that of (White) right-wing candidate Rob Ford in the reputed bastion of multiculturalism Toronto.

While I understand the South Asian community’s elation, I would like to make my own clarifications. With all due respect to Mr. Nenshi and to Calgary, being elected mayor of a city can’t be equated to becoming president of an entire nation. Canada furthermore has had, and has, non-White mayors. They include Niagara-on-the-Lake Mayor Art Viola, who is of Filipino descent, and the Lebanese-Canadian Mayor of Windsor, Ontario Eddie Francis (note: I personally find it somewhat curious that Arabs are classified as ‘minorities’ by the Canadian government even though many of them – such as dear Mr. Francis himself – are physically indistinguishable from Greeks or Southern Italians). However, Nenshi’s Muslim faith causes him to stand out in a way that Viola and Francis do not. Both Francis and Viola are Catholic. Perhaps Filipinos and Lebanese Christians are Westernized enough to be seen as mainstream: after all, how ‘exotic’ can someone with the name of Art or Eddie be?

Naheed Nenshi’s religion has sparked commentary. Some have wondered darkly whether he might try to impose sharia law on his constituents. This possibility seems fairly remote. For one, Nenshi belongs to a moderate branch of Islam, the Ismailis. Ismaili women, for instance, are allowed to marry non-Muslim men, whereas women in mainstream Islam are not (though Muslim men can wed Christian or Jewish women). Secondly, even if Nenshi were an Islamic fundamentalist intent on bringing sharia to Calgary, as mayor his power to do so would be limited, just as that of Toronto’s Rob Ford – who has been quoted as saying that marriage should be exclusively between a man and woman – to ban same-sex marriage would be.

Finally, what does Naheed Nenshi’s election as mayor tell us about Canadian society in general? Does it mean that racism in this country is a thing of the past? I would say no. On the other hand, Canada does appear to have come a long way, so to speak, from the days when prejudice against groups ranging from the Irish to Ukrainians to Jews to Chinese to Japanese abounded. Also, should a candidate’s faith (or lack thereof) be a factor in deciding whether or not to vote for him or her? Again, I would answer in the negative, unless of course he or she were going to attempt to impose it on others – which Nenshi shows no intention of doing. In the end, all we can hope for is that Nenshi will govern the city and serve the people of Calgary well.

I can’t help wonder: Did it never occur to the Globe’s editorial board that perhaps the majority of women really don’t want to enter public life, that maybe men and women really are “different” in terms of life “choices?” And, isn’t that what feminism is supposed to be about? Choice!

As the National Post editorial says today, notions of affirmative action are far more undemocratic than prorogation:

“The Globe cares deeply about the state of Canada’s democracy. We know this because it recently ran a front-page editorial denouncing Stephen Harper for performing an ‘underhanded manoeuvre to avoid being accountable to Parliament.’ But when it comes to the MPs who actually populate that Parliament, Globe editorialists have no problem gerrymandering the place to suit their feminist veiwpoint. To hell with the people Canadian voters actually want to elect.”

Look, I consider myself a feminist in the sense that I believe both men and women should have equal opportunities and choices in life no matter what their gender, their sexual preference, their colour, race, religion or culture. But, at the end of the day, running for political office is a personal choice — a choice that is either accepted or rejected by the voters.

No appointments. No slam dunks. No gerrymandering. Being elected by the people should be the only type of affirmative action we need.

C/P at Jack’s Newswatch & Just Politics.

Though most Canadians don’t seem to have anything particularly against the Queen as an individual, she has increasingly found herself at the centre of a controversy over the institution she represents: the British monarchy.  Some people believe Canada should throw off the final yoke of British colonialism, scrap the monarchy, and become a republic.  Others by contrast feel equally strongly that Canada should remain part of the British Commonwealth – so strongly that they have formed groups such as the Monarchist League of Canada to ensure our country remains under the royal wing.

I myself am fairly agnostic on the issue..  My sense is that if we embraced republicanism tomorrow, life wouldn’t change much, either for better or for worse, in this country.  However, while I’m hardly demanding that Canada go (small “r”) republican, nor would I necessarily fight to keep Queen Elizabeth on as our head of state if there were any serious movement to literally dethrone her.  So I’d like to present the “pro” and “con” arguments, with their relevant counterpoints, for making Canada a completely independent nation or not.

Pro-Republican Arguments

#1 It is wrong that a person holds the position of head of a state simply for having been born into a particular family

From a purely rationalistic standpoint, it does seem both absurd and unjust that due to an accident of birth an individual can have their image placed on a nation’s currency, their initial in court cases (the “R” in “R. v. [name of defendant]” stands for “Regina,” meaning “Queen” in Latin) and their photograph in government buildings.  This absurdity/injustice strikes us as even more untenable if we think that the royals are only human.   A reader of a Montreal-based Italian-language publication put it even more succinctly: the royals obviously have no morality (this was just after the Camillagate tapes and pictures of the Duchess of York topless at the side of a pool came out), so why should they be more exalted than any of us common mortals?

Counterargument: This argument would be more convincing if the royals had any real power.  But several generations now the British monarchs have been mere figureheads.  If the Queen decided she was a pro-lifer, for instance, she would essentially be forced to go about trying to ban abortion the same way the head of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children would: by first swaying the opinion of the general public and from there that of the elected officials.  So the ability of the Queen or whoever succeeds her to influence our everyday lives is fairly limited.

#2 The British monarchy has no place in a multicultural society like Canada today

This argument was made by the above-mentioned Portuguese doctor in Voice. While he personally likes the Queen, he claims that having a member of a British family as Canada ’s head of state makes no sense in a nation where the Governor-General is a Black woman of Haitian descent and where some of our most prominent citizens boast names like Medeiros, Silva, Patel and Suzuki. Canada is a different country from that forty years ago when the majority of Canadians still hailed from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant stock.  So it is time our form of government reflected that change.

Counterargument: Canada ’s demography has indeed changed in the past half-century.  However, other than the special case of Quebec Canada is basically an Anglo-Saxon country culturally speaking.  In the words of Lawrence E. Harrison in his book The Pan-American dream, “anglophone Canada is not really multicultural.  Its bedrock is the same Anglo-Protestant system of values and attitudes that is the cultural foundation of the United States , and it is to this system that successful immigrants to Canada … acculturate.”  This does not mean Canada should remain under the Queen –after all, the United States ditched the British monarchy over two centuries ago without losing its Anglo-Saxon character.  But becoming a republic would not automatically make non-WASPs feel any more at home here.

#3 Making Canada a republic would resolve the problem of Quebec separatism

An argument somewhat related to #2 is the notion that a republican Canada would weaken if not altogether eliminate the push for Quebec sovereignty.  One can’t help but notice that among the few people to pay any attention whatsoever to Prince Charles’ visit were a group of Quebec separatists who came out to jeer at him.  According to proponents of #3, if the Queen were removed as head of state Quebecers would feel that Canada was truly their country and not an overseas territory of Britain .  One complaint of Quebec separatists is that over the years Francophones in Canada have been oppressed by the Anglo majority.  With their respective ancestral lands ( France and Britain ) placed on equal footing, separatists would have far less ammunition for their cause.

Counterargument: While this idea might sound good in theory, the chances of it actually working in practice are more doubtful.  The harmonious coexistence of two or more linguistic groups within a single political entity is a shaky prospect at best, monarch or no monarch. The most glaring example is perhaps that of the former Yugoslavia , which descended into violent interethnic conflict following the death of Marshall Tito.  More recently we’ve witnessed similar strife in Sri Lanka as the Tamils struggle for their own independent nation on that island.  (Of course as a member of the Commonwealth, Sri Lanka does have a monarch – Queen Elizabeth II – but unlike in Canada she doesn’t belong to either of the island’s two main ethnic communities.)  Even if in a less violent fashion, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech and Slovak Republics after the fall of Communism.

Pro-Monarchist Arguments

#1 The monarchy is a Canadian tradition
That is the argument of groups like the Monarchist League of Canada.   Some traditions, even if they’re merely symbolic, such as a church wedding for a couple who may not be believers, can serve as a source of comfort and stability.  Some have gone further and credited the presence of the monarchy for Canada ’s low murder rate in comparison to that of the United States .  Even if the Queen no longer holds any actual power, she nonetheless contributes to Canada ’s social well-being.

Counterargument: An appeal to “tradition” could be used as well to justify denying women the right to vote, requiring a married woman to obtain her husband’s permission to open a bank account, and jailing gay men caught in “the act.”  These what now seem like laughably quaint laws were once proud Canadian traditions.  It’s also hard to attribute Canada ’s relatively low crime rate to the monarchy when one considers that a number of other Commonwealth countries, such as Jamaica , have even higher homicide rates than the United States does.  All this does not mean that having the Queen at our helm can be equated to discriminating against women or homosexuals or that being a constitutional monarchy leads to social upheaval.  But it calls into question the value of “tradition” as an argument for maintaining the status quo.

#2 Having the Queen as our head links us to other Commonwealth countries

I confess this argument has some emotional appeal for me.  The Commonwealth encompasses a wide range of nations on virtually every continent, plus Australia and New Zealand .  I must admit feeling a particular bond with people from other Commonwealth countries that I don’t with those from the United States , for instance.  I remember once gossiping with a girl from Ghana about whether or not the late Princess Diana had actually had an affair with singer Bryan Adams.  Or being pleasantly surprised to learn that a co-worker from the Bahamas knew who King Richard the Lion-Hearted was.  We in the Commonwealth may differ in race, religion and native language (though the vast majority of us speak English even if it’s not our mother tongue), but we have the sense of being part of a larger group.

Counterargument: Canada ’s bonds are no longer limited to the Commonwealth.  An obvious example is the United States , our NAFTA co-member and major trading partner.  We’re now forging commercial, political and social ties to countries with no British connection whatsoever, such as China and Mexico .  Therefore becoming a republic would in all probability not affect our relationship with either Commonwealth or non-Commonwealth nations.

#3 Abolishing the monarchy would disrespect Canadians of British descent

Ironically, multiculturalism has been used as an argument both for and against maintaining Canada ’s status as a constitutional monarchy.  The “pro” side was articulated by the editor of the above-mentioned Italian-Canadian publication in response to the observation that the royal family had no morality.  The editor contended that in a multicultural country like Canada , it is important to respect the cultural heritage of all Canadians and that saying good-bye to the monarchy would be an affront to Canadians of British origin.  As an Italian Canadian he felt that he had no right to ask the government to honour his culture if it did not honour British Canadians’.

Counterargument: Setting aside the question of whether all British Canadians want to retain the monarchy, according to the editor’s logic we should enshrine the monarchs of every nation to which Canadians can trace their ancestry as Canada ’s heads of state.  For example, as a Canadian of (part) Norwegian descent I could demand that a picture of King Harald V be put on our coins.  Japanese Canadians could do the same for the Emperor of Japan.  The list could go on and on.  Not only Canada ’s coin minting industry but diplomatic relations with the above-mentioned countries would be in a state of chaos.  If taken to its logical conclusion, defending the monarchy as a multicultural issue would be impractical if not totally unfeasible.

So here are my arguments on whether to keep Canada part of the Commonwealth or to break loose and refashion ourselves as a republic.  During this exercise my agnosticism on the matter has remained unshaken.  I suppose that at a rational level I tend to lean against the monarchy and at an emotional level to want to hold onto it.  But my readers may have their own opinions on the issue, so I would love to hear them.

The judge’s logic does seem somewhat warped. The average Muslim student on a Canadian college campus is probably far removed from the people who killed the engineer in Pakistan . A fair number of these students might actually be embarrassed by the Taliban’s actions. If I were a Muslim myself, I would almost certainly be offended by Staniszewski’s decision. By the same token, I would be upset if my daughter, as a Christian, were denied a bursary on account of people like Fred Phelps, the American Baptist minister who pickets funerals of gay men with signs reading “God Hate Fags.” (By the way, I find Phelps disgusting and harmful to the reputation of Christianity as a whole). One wonders who would qualify, or disqualify, as a Muslim in Staniszewski’s eyes. Could a student who was raised in the Islamic faith but later fell away from it or, better yet, embraced another religion – in particular Staniszewski’s religion, which I presume is Roman Catholicism – access his scholarships? Would a former Muslim who had since become an atheist or agnostic be required to openly denounce his or her faith of upbringing in order to apply for one or more of these bursaries?

The point has been made that many existing scholarships by their very nature discriminate against certain classes of individuals. For example, scholarships set up specifically for girls or Native Canadians automatically exclude male and/or Black/White/Asian students. On the other hand, there is the issue of motivation. Most people who earmark bursaries for female or Native students do so out of concern that women and Aboriginals are being short-changed by the Canadian educational system, not out of hostility to men or non-Natives. Judge Staniszewski’s acts appear to be spurred solely by anger towards Muslims. (It must be said that as a member of a profession that prides itself on its impartiality and rationalism, Staniszewski’s emotionalism does not strike me as especially judge-like.) It is the explicitness rather than implicitness of Staniszewski’s exclusion to which many, including the above-mentioned universities, object.

In the end, I would agree with a number of observers that Judge Staniszewski has the right to do what he wants with his own money, regardless of his reasoning. I would add that the universities also have every right not to go along with his request. At this point the best course of action would be for Staniszewski to withdraw his scholarships from the institutions in question and, if he wishes, set up a similar bursary on his own. While this solution might not make everybody happy, it would be the most effective way to preserve both Staniszewski’s individual freedom to act according to his own conscience and the universities’ obligation not to engage in discrimination against any particular category of students.

The decision – by Governor General Michaelle Jean – to bestow this honour upon Dr. Morgentaler created a firestorm of controversy unseen since the 1980s. That was the decade in which articles on abortion appeared in major Canadian newspapers on literally a weekly if not daily basis. At the time, under Canadian law women who wished to end their pregnancies had to obtain permission from a hospital-based committee consisting of three doctors who determined whether the woman in question possessed adequate grounds to do so. These grounds included medical as well as social reasons. Dr. Morgentaler on the other hand ran freestanding clinics where a woman could undergo the procedure for no other reason than she wanted it. For setting up these clinics he was imprisoned, put on trial, and acquitted on at least three occasions. Finally things came to a head in 1988 when the Supreme Court of Canada, in a case entitled R. vs. Morgentaler, effectively legalized so-called abortion on demand by removing any reference to the procedure from the Criminal Code. Morgentaler, and any other abortionists for that matter, were free to set up shop without restriction.

As expected, different groups have reacted differently to Morgentaler’s reception of the award. Feminist Judy Rebick, for example, described it as a “victory for Canadian women” in the generally conservative National Post. For Rebick and other pro-choice activists, Morgentaler’s work has made it possible for women to control their own bodies without fear of having to resort to a dangerous illegal abortion. At the other end of the spectrum, pro-life individuals and organizations, such as the Roman Catholic Church, were up in arms at Dr. Morgentaler’s nomination to the Order of Canada. They hold him responsible for the death of thousands of unborn babies. The minister at a church near my home invited his parishioners to sign an on-line petition opposing the nomination. Some past recipients of the Order, including Lucien Larre, a British Columbia priest who founded a home for drug-addicted youths, have returned their award in protest. Even people not necessarily affiliated with the anti-abortion movement have expressed reservations about the decision to grant Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who despite the presence of pro-lifers in his party has denied any intention to change Canada’s current abortion law, claims he would have preferred to see the award go to someone who united rather than divided the nation. Some White Supremacists have denounced Morgentaler as the Jew who kills White babies (I must admit to being a bit perplexed not only by the White Supremacists’ view that Jews are not White but by their portrayal of abortion as an anti-White genocidal plot, as White women actually terminate their pregnancies at a lower per capita rate than minority women do).

I myself lack strong feelings either way on Morgentaler’s reception of the Order. First, awards like the Order of Canada don’t really mean much to me. In addition, I’m fairly apolitical about abortion in general. A candidate’s position on the matter, for instance, won’t make or break my vote. I suppose I’m part of the so-called “mushy middle,” i.e. support legal abortion in the first few months of pregnancy, later for medical reasons, all the while conceding that the procedure is not the moral equivalent of having a tooth pulled. I’d even concur with the pro-lifers that abortions done for social reasons shouldn’t be paid for with public money. In these respects I think I’m like the majority of Canadians, who veer from either extreme on the issue.

Ironically, perhaps both the pro-life and pro-choice sides are guilty of according Henry Morgentaler more importance than he is actually due. To paraphrase Voltaire, if Morgentaler did not exist, we would have had to invent him. Abortion on demand, de facto or de jure, would in all likelihood have become a reality in Canada with or without him, just as it did in most other industrialized nations at a time when legislation on issues like abortion, divorce and homosexuality were being liberalized. Even before the 1988 Supreme Court decision, the much-maligned abortion committees probably didn’t stop too many women from ending their pregnancies. Many of them simply obtained permission to do so by claiming bearing a child would threaten their “health,” as in psychological health. Though anti-abortionists lay the death of thousands of what they consider unborn children at Morgentaler’s feet, in his absence someone else would have almost certainly stepped up to the plate, so to speak, and offered the same service. Just as animals will continue to be butchered as long as people eat meat, abortion will always occur if there is a demand for it.

The key to reducing the demand for abortion and resolving the debate lies in providing accessible and effective birth control so that women can avoid pregnancies they do not want. Unfortunately many members of the pro-life movement oppose not only abortion but contraception as well. Indeed one abortion provider in the Netherlands, a country with a low abortion rate despite very liberal laws, told an interviewer that by providing birth control information to his patients he has probably “prevented more abortions than the Pope.” My own hope is to see abortion one day become, in the words of former US President Bill Clinton, safe, legal and rare.