When God and politics collide
By Martin Patriquin - Friday, November 19, 2010 - 16 Comments
Former British PM Tony Blair on the rights of the religious to be heard
Photograph by Christinne Muschi
So Tony Blair, former prime minister of the Queen’s England, home of the shoe bomber and the London subway terror bombings, a country riven by tension over a growing Muslim population, walks into a Quebec hall to talk about reasonable accommodation.
Fish-out-of-water daydream? Set-up to a tasteless joke? No. The former British prime minister actually did as much in Montreal last week. Blair, at once a devout Catholic and ex-prime minister of notably secular Britain, has spent much of the last three years promoting the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which aims to show how “faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world.”
“I became Middle East envoy for Israel and Palestine, so that’s been quite challenging. And then I decided to try and bring religious faiths of the world together and create an understanding, so that’s been quite a challenge, too,” Blair, sitting in an ornate red leather chair, said to a crowd of about 400 gathered in a downtown ballroom. “And then I decided to do some work on climate change, so this is probably an indication of Napoleonic delusion.”
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What Canadians think of Sikhs, Jews, Christians, Muslims . . .
By John Geddes - Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 4:45 PM - 200 Comments
MACLEAN’S EXCLUSIVE: A disturbing new poll
Canadians like to think of their country as a model for the world of how all sorts of people can get along together. But when it comes to the major faiths other than Christianity, a new poll conducted for Maclean’s finds that many Canadians harbour deeply troubling biases. Multiculturalism? Although by now it might seem an ingrained national creed, fewer than one in three Canadians can find it in their hearts to view Islam or Sikhism in a favourable light. Diversity? Canadians may embrace it in theory, but only a minority say they would find it acceptable if one of their kids came home engaged to a Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. Understanding? There’s not enough to prevent media images of war and terrorism from convincing almost half of Canadians that mainstream Islam encourages violence.The poll, by Angus Reid Strategies, surveyed 1,002 randomly selected Canadians on religion at a moment when issues of identity are a hot topic in Ottawa. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has led a push by the Conservative government to revamp citizenship law, emphasizing the need for real bonds to Canada, and Kenney is looking for ways to encourage immigrants to integrate faster and more fully into Canadian society. But as federal policy strives to encourage newcomers to put down roots and fit in, the poll highlights an equal need for the Canadian majority to take a hard look at its distorted preconceptions about religious minorities. “It astonishes and saddens me as a Canadian,” said Angus Reid chief research officer Andrew Grenville, who has been probing Canadians’ views on religion for 16 years. “I don’t think the findings reflect well on Canada at all.”
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Reasonable accommodations, free parking
By Paul Wells - Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments
Marty’s post on the Bouchard-Taylor leak fiasco got me thinking, yet again, about what a peculiar beast the Bouchard-Taylor “commission” on reasonable accommodations is. Was. Uh, still is, until tomorrow’s news conference.
It’s still not entirely clear what Jean Charest was trying to accomplish by naming this commission. My very strong hunch is that he wanted to kick a nasty debate forward past the then-looming election and deal with the mess later. If his goals were as modest as that, it seems to have worked. If he was actually seeking wisdom on the proper saw-off between the standards of the metropolitan community and the immigrant communities (plural), well, he seems to have gone about it in odd ways. Continue…
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Consume, digest, rinse and spit
By Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 6:16 PM - 0 Comments
Cartoon by Garnotte, Le Devoir
Jeff Heinrich is a tenacious and patient fellow. Not only did the Gazette reporter sit through 37 hearings on ‘reasonable accommodations’ (otherwise known as ‘Whatever do we do with all these immigrants?’), but he published a well-received book about the whole mess shortly afterward, with a colleague from Le Journal de Montréal.
Mr. Heinrich’s tenacity paid off this past weekend, when he got his paws on several chapters of the forthcoming final report from the commission’s two Grand Poohbahs, Gérard “brother of Lucien” Bouchard and Charles “the philosopher, not the murderous dictator” Taylor. Set to be released this week, the report was to suggest how the province can best weather the “reasonable accommodations” crisis that apparently has the province in a death grip.
The Bouchard-Taylor report is one of those “eagerly awaited” tomes that pop up every so often here in Quebec. Had Heinrich not leaked it, the Bouchard-Taylor report would have become, like the Castonguay Report and Johnson Inquiry before it, the subject of one or even three existential crises, several dozen editorials, something about sovereignty, a few kicks at “les anglos du West Island” before devolving into the usual partisan bickering. Consume, digest, rinse and spit. Hey, at least we’re predictable.
