Entrevue dans Le Devoir

Une entrevue sur les causes de la défaite du PQ publiée dans Le Devoir:

Les sources du mal
Souveraineté, nationalismes et autres causes de la défaite péquiste

Stéphane Baillargeon
S’il y a un mal, il doit bien y avoir des symptômes. Pour le Parti québécois (PQ), la raclée de lundi est un grand mal, et le philosophe Jocelyn Maclure est capable de dénombrer les signes qui permettent de poser un diagnostic.

” La déconfiture est totale, résume le professeur de l’Université Laval. Et cette défaite grave est symptomatique de problèmes importants au sein du parti. ”

Lesquels ? Le spécialiste de la philosophie politique, qui a été expert auprès de la commission Bouchard-Taylor (2007-2008) sur les accommodements religieux, en voit au moins quatre. Un trio de causes internes et une autre raison liée à la manière de mener la politique.

La souveraineté.” À ce stade-ci de notre histoire, il y a un désintérêt assez grand par rapport à l’idée même de débattre du statut constitutionnel du Québec,dit-il.… Continue reading

The Party’s Over

When I was growing up, the cool kids were pretty much all péquistes. Even among the anglos and allos, the political movement launched by René Lévesque, Gérald Godin, and others, had undeniable youthful allure. Think about it: on the one hand, you had a hard-drinking, hard-smoking ex-journalist and his merry band of poets, academics, and all purpose dreamers. On the other, you had…, well, you had Robert Bourassa and his drab-but-sensible technocrats. If you were a 17 year-old aspiring leftie who thought that politics was about the hope for a better, more just world, then the PQ was your go-to party. Now, granted, you don’t have much of an idea about what it might mean for the world to be better and more just when you’re 17, but surely, having a poet in a Cabinet position had to be part of it.

I never ended up voting for the PQ, I should add.… Continue reading

Enlightenment 2.0 drops next weekend

Came home from work today to find this bad boy sitting on my porch:

e2

First copy of new book! The official release date is April 15. Look for a sneak peek in the Ottawa Citizen on Saturday, April 12th. And then look for me popping up everywhere to promote it. Actually, not so much, but I will be doing a talk at the Ottawa Writer’s Festival on April 27th.

And kudos to HarperCollins for their support of Canadian non-fiction publishing.… Continue reading

The central challenge for the left in Canada

Anyone who read my last post will no doubt have sensed that I’m having a lot of difficulty summoning up much enthusiasm for the current politics of the NDP in Ontario, in particular, their willingness to assign redistribution of wealth priority over the need to solve certain pressing collective action problems. Thinking about the issue reminded me of the opening paragraph of a book I read recently, by Samuel Bowles (The New Economics of Inequality and Redistribution):

Socialism, radical democracy, social democracy, and other egalitarian movements have flourished when they successfully crafted the demands of distributive justice into an economic strategy capable of addressing the problem of scarcity, and thereby promised to improve living standards on the average. Redistributing land to the tiller, social insurance, egalitarian wage policies, central planning, and providing adequate health care and schooling for all have been attractive when they promised to link a more just distribution of economic reward to enhanced performance of the economic system as a whole.

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Whither the Left in Quebec?

            I live in a Montreal riding that has been voting Liberal since time immemorial. Deciding who to vote for is therefore for me something of a theoretical exercise. Whatever happens in the province more broadly, you can be sure that Kathleen Weil, who served as Minister of Justice in the Charest government, will be returned to power with a hefty majority. Weil is a credible candidate, but I won’t be voting for her. Like many Quebeckers, I worry about the degree to which Philippe Couillard has managed to rid the party of the stench of corruption in the few months that he has been leader. Like many people on the Left, I don’t see him as having in any significant way arrested the rightward drift that Jean Charest imprinted upon the Liberals. And as a civil libertarian, I am not ready to forgive the Liberals (and Mme. Weil) for having enacted repressive legislation aimed at stemming the protests that gripped the province in the Spring and Summer of 2012.… Continue reading

Before we stop talking about the Charter of Values entirely

A piece I wrote for Global Brief magazine just appeared (not a moment too soon, since it was written before the Quebec election call). It’s aimed primarily at a non-Canadian audience, with the goal of explaining the current dust-up over multiculturalism/secularism:

Misunderstanding Canadian Multiculturalism

There’s not all that much new in it, mainly it brings together in one place arguments that have been made by Daniel, Jocelyn and others, within a broadly “Kymlickian” framework for thinking about Canadian multiculturalism.

There is however one observation that I consider moderately original (or that I have not seen enough discussion of). The fact that religious accommodation is so much more controversial in Quebec than it is in the rest of Canada is, in my view, related to the extremely rapid secularization process that Quebec underwent beginning in the ’60s, which was experienced by many as a cultural trauma:

No visitor to Canada can fail to be impressed by, on the one hand, the vibrancy and enthusiasm of religious communities in immigrant groups – particularly Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus – and on the other hand, the obvious signs of decline in the traditional Christian churches.

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Thoughts on Rob Ford (vol. 2)

My comments a couple of weeks ago about Toronto mayor Rob Ford have attracted a few visits from members of Ford Nation (yes, these people are real). And while none were able to marshall a level of civility sufficient to get their comments past moderation, they were able to communicate to me their strong desire that I elaborate on the various promissory notes I made in my last Ford post, including the suggestion that I would have more to say more about Ford being “dumb.”

I am happy to oblige.

Let me just start by observing that I’m not the only person who has impugned Ford’s intellect. I think the best line came from our former mayor Mel Lastman, who said “this guy makes me look like a genius,” before adding, with the characteristic Lastman touch, “and I’m not a genius.”

This, by the way, was long before the whole crack scandal broke.… Continue reading

Les leaders péquistes comprennent-ils leur propre charte ?

Comme le souligne Joseph, l’idée que les entreprises privées pourraient décider d’appliquer la Charte de laïcité est ahurissante. Bernard Drainville, le ministre responsable du dossier, dit depuis le début que les entreprises pourraient « s’en inspirer ». Pauline Marois et François Gendron viennent tout juste d’opiner que les entreprises seront libres d’appliquer la Charte si elles le désirent. Il y a tout lieu de se demander si la première ministre et le vice-premier ministre comprennent leur propre Charte, ainsi que la Charte québécoise des droits et libertés. Questionnés par les journalistes, ils auraient dû préciser que le chapitre 5 du projet de loi 60, à savoir l’interdiction pour tous les employés des secteurs public et parapublic de porter un signe religieux dit « ostentatoire », ne s’applique pas aux entreprises privées, à moins qu’elles soient sous contrat avec le gouvernement. En vertu de l’article 10 de la Charte québécoise des droits et libertés, les entreprises privées ne peuvent discriminer sur la base de l’appartenance religieuse d’un employé.… Continue reading