It appears I have lost my debating partner so I am going to submit my response to challenges that were posed. First I will back up a bit. I am not Muslim. I do not live in Quebec. I am a sixty plus white, Norwegian-Finnish Scandinavian Canadian man who lives in North Western Ontario. I am not at all religious but I am deeply spiritual. I am a life long learner who thirsts for truth. I have been a patient advocate, crises social worker, free enterpriser who demands that government prove the are worthy to govern before I give them my allegiance. I do not just look at headlines I research who did the writing and what was their motivation. I will be submitting articles every two to three days on what I have discovered and what has been missed in the argument. I hope that what I have to say will be of service and will create a debate which will further the cause to defeat Bill 60. Please feel free to use any and all works in the articles as if they were your own. Also I recommend reading the submission by Professor Catherine Lu. I touched on it in the previous submission but these are the details.
First. My home base is Thunder Bay. Today I am in Terrace Bay a small town some 220km. away. I picked Terrace Bay to begin this series because it is half French and half English speaking. It is multi cultural in the purest form. This small town has 1800 residents who are Hindi, East Indian, Italian, Finnish, English, French, Chinese, Saudi and of course First Nations who have been entirely excluded once again from this dialogue and no one feels threatened by the other and that includes a very healthy French community that thrives here. There are Muslims, Christians(Catholics and Protestants), Jews and Hindi and Atheists. In the store windows there are French signs, English signs and Finnish signs. The average age is plus 45. The people are tough, independent northerns and the people you talk too just can’t see what the problem is in Quebec. So let’s get into it.
Some of the bloggers and commentators have bandied about numbers and different reasons for supporting Bill 60.
The numbers that have been bandied about is that 85% of Muslim women who do not wear the garment somehow support this charter of values and support secularism. If that is true then there should be all kinds of testimony at the Drainville committee but so far I have not heard of one. Why is that? Could it be that they are quite comfortable and not at all threatened with the current state of affairs and do not need protection or rescuing from any threat from the veil and what it stands for in some parts of the world? Of course that is the reason so that argument is moot.
This proposed Charter of Values seems to have as it’s purpose an American ideal which has always been abhorred in Canada and that is to create a melting pot for immigrants and to absorb them into a white, christian society that begins not to have any clue of the outside world and to basically forget their roots unless of course they are white and christian. Oh I forgot not socialist in anyway and if you happened to be communist well forget about saying anything nice about your homeland. That could be a serious problems for you in some areas. Now that is absolutely not true in all areas with some people who equally abhor the melting pot but it is a majority which explains how they get so many things wrong in the world. It is not just the United States it is equally true of England and France as well. Now Canada is not a melting pot like the United States and it never has been which is why Quebec has been able to maintain its French culture in a sea of English North America. We do not pretend that we are a new race of people because we are not, we just want to get along with one another. Why because we are generally all immigrants. Either or mothers and fathers, grandparents, great grandparents or ourselves have been immigrants at one time or another. And why did our families come to Canada. To escape what is being proposed here. That you don’t really have the right to freedom of expression or of faith and if you do you are suspect and are now under threat. You see it already in Quebec. The vigilante mentality of a citizen doing their perceived patriotic duty to harass another citizen who just happens to be law biding. I can’t say this enough. History does not lie or stretch the truth so please check what I am saying if you have any doubt and challenge me. There was no Indian wars in Canada like there was in the United States because we at no time had a policy where we wanted them out for their land or because they weren’t something we were not. We made peace and offered them justice under our law equally as imperfect as it was. There were no Indian massacres in the same time in history that there were by immigrants just like us and just across the U.S. Canadian border which was a line in the sand and nothing more.The same deal they offered to Quebec. They accepted peace and the threat of all war ended and has been maintained to this day. Canada only became a nation when the threat from south of the border became real and they wanted us to become like them. Quebec is attempting the melting pot goal which is ironic at best since they have survived and thrived because the rest of Canada has fought against this path which resulted in their survival in the first place.
Now what can you say about a government that proposes and is steadfast in its determination to make this law? What can you say about a government that does not listen even to the most learned and respected leaders in its history that strongly disagree with this course of action? What can you say about a government that their own elites are so hostile to their own Catholic roots to say they are against all overt religious symbols but have the “Protected Heritage” statement to protect the cross in the national assembly. Is this only to appease the older voter like some commentators are suggesting? Of course it is. That is why they don’t mention that Bill 60 would also restrict their religion potentially and of course would mean that if they did not this secular argument is a lie as well.
What you can say is that this is a search and destroy method used by many a military to confuse, demoralize and defeat an enemy. It is about misinformation and the attack comes when the other side says it is their message has been skewed and their people have been attacked. It is fear mongering to the lowest common denominator. And what is the lowest common denominator. It is your neighbor who didn’t even know there was an issue until he or she was told they may be under threat and should come forth and testify in some public hearing to justify the course of action they have already planned. So why have hearings at all? That is so it can be said you as a citizen participated in a democratic and free discussion. You see in this method you convince the regular folk that they are under threat of something they likely never even noticed before and is not any threat at all so they need someone to agree and testify that they felt a threat but in this political arena it is not the facts that count because truth it not the goal. The goal is winning an majority election so you can hear the other shoe to drop or in other words what this really has been about.
The inference from Andre Drouin that the province must hurry to rid itself of secularism, or religious accommodation or face the perils of other countries is someone who has not learned from history. Canada is unlike any other nation on the face of the planet. It is the only nation who stood between two super powers during the cold war, took a tough stand with both, did not defend either border and was not attacked because it was not a threat. In fact it was Canada they called upon to settle their squabbles. It is not like there have not been Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews. tons of Christian Sects and the rest in Canada before. They have been here almost from the start right along with the communists, evolutionists and atheists and they have always gotten along when they could not in their own countries. This includes the Irish Catholics and the Protestant English that would rather shoot each other than look at each other in the UK but were fine neighbours here. There is a plethora of stories of german soldiers who were prisoners of war and stayed after the war and became neighbours and friends with the Jews their former nation was attempting to extinguish. The list goes on and on of former enemies that were no more once in Canada. The reason that happened the rule was you left your hate behind because here you are protected and free. Really free. Other nations have taken up the Canadian way and it has worked in every case.
Beware of the people that try to put a wedge between law biding peaceful people. These are the hate mongers of society and the ones you should be wary of. They can’t be trusted. Their intentions are for their own ends. They are what they say they hate. There latest front is to get allies from the rest of Canada by suggesting people are fed up with multiculturalism. That would suit them fine when they attempt their final solution of destruction. Divide and conquer that is what they are attempting to do. So how do you defeat such a vicious threat of ignorance. The only weapons that you can use is non violence and reason. Mahatma Gandhi who had nothing but his will threw the British out of India after they threw him in prison, beat him, finally had to listen to him and told him in that battle for India the British had the greatest military in the history of man at that time and what did he have. He said “I have a good idea”. The British left India because of a good idea. Learn from history not revised history. The truth is what sets you free. Those who tell you a version of the truth or only a part of a truth is lying to you. They do not have your best interests at heart and are not your friend or ally. They cannot be trusted.
Most people don’t have any clue what really is going on but do have a vague trust of any government in power until it pisses them off. It takes work to educate yourself and the vast majority of people are not life long learners as a result are prime for easy short term influence. You see it in Toronto where the mayor Rob Ford has about a thirty percent constituency even though he has vowed to be tough on crime and yet has a relationship with known mobsters, drug dealers who he calls friends and defends as straight up guys, been caught lying repeatedly, seen smoking crack cocaine and the rest of the story and he still has support because he makes people believe that he is working class stiff who just wants to lower taxes and what he now does in his private time is his business. There is an old adage that says you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time is false in my opinion because while it is true you can fool some of the people only some of the time you can fool the rest of the people all of the time. And that is how this game of divide and conquer works and anybody that plays it knows it.
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