Le théâtre politique, Québec-style.

What is currently unfolding in La belle province is a spectacle.  It's not Grand Guignol yet, but given the inflammatory issues involved, it may yet descend to that.

The knives are certainly being sharpened, and they will be used judiciously to silence critics and opponents.

MP Maria Mourani was expelled from the Bloc Québécois caucus following comments she made about the proposed Quebec charter of values: la charte des valeurs québécoises.

In an interview with Radio-Canada on Wednesday, Mourani said Quebec's charter of values was a political miscalculation on the part of Premier Pauline Marois.

Mourani was making the comments as a spokesperson of a pro-sovereignist group in favour of secularism which calls itself "les indépendantistes pour une laïcité inclusive."

Bloc Québécois Leader Daniel Paillé said Mourani's comments are "irreconcilable" with the party's position.

The Parti Québécois claims that this Charter will unify all Quebecers within a secular state, one that is devoid of all image and symbols of adherence to religious beliefs.

Crucifixes prominently displayed on provincially funded public institutions are to be exempt from the Charter.  Its continued presence is defended as a valid historical and cultural artifact for the majority of Quebecers, in patronizing rhetoric uttered by Bernard Drainville.

Last year, PQ candidate Djamila Benhabib had the temerity to suggest, as a follow-up to the recommendations of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, that the MASSIVE crucifix hanging in the National Assembly be taken down.  She was attacked and

... forced by members of her own party to recant, she was castigated as a foreigner with alien values and an unpronounceable name by Saguenay mayor Jean Tremblay. Her crime? Not having enough cultural Catholicism to know that the principle of secularism only applies to other religions.

The crucifix is a reminder of the oppressive, authoritarian and violent power that the Catholic church wielded.  Many First Nations people and descendants of the survivors of La grande noirceur do not wax nostalgic about the crucifix.

...Charles Taylor, the well-known academic who co-chaired a provincial commission into reasonable accommodation in 2007, describes the proposal as an “absolutely terrible act of exclusion.” So the debate is on.

Former Quebec Premier Bernard Landry has lashed out at English Canadian media for “Quebec bashing” while covering the matter. Landry told CBC Radio’s As It Happens that Quebec welcomes immigrants but wants them to join society. “When you change country, you change country,” he said. “And you have to get first the language, then the culture and integrate.”

In the same interview, Landry even goes on to ridicule the idea of police wearing turbans, which harks back to the Reform Party’s 1989 convention resolution stating that Sikhs should be barred from wearing turbans in the RCMP.

Landry’s comments on religious accommodation obviously shift quickly to immigration policy although individuals barred from wearing religious symbols would likely include native-born Quebecers.

From here. 

I have been reading La Presse, Le Devoir, Le Droit and listening to Radio-Canada with regard to la Charte des valeurs québecoises almost non-stop since last Tuesday.  My head hurts from the intellectual dishonesty and contradictions advanced by those who support and vigorously defend la raison d'être of this project.

Yesterday I had a long chat with a neighbour who wears le hijab about faith, spiritual devotion and cultural adaptation, while we were waiting on OC Transpo.  On the bus, I noticed a young man of African ancestry who may have been an immigrant — or born in Canada as my neighbour was.  He wore un chapelet around his neck. This rosary was made of fluorescent green plastic.  It was quite ostentatious.

It reminded me of cab-drivers who prominently display cross or large medallions that feature Catholic saints.  These objects are usually dangling from rear-view mirrors.  I have asked a few of them:  Do you put these in your taxi so that customers will know that you are not a muslim?  The answer is always an embarrassed yes.

And why is there a photo of Tonto, as embodied by Johnny Depp at the beginning of this blog?

Publicity, even negative, is considered by public relations flaks to be a *good thing*.  Which is why the PQ leaked information about la Charte to engineer a "crisis" ahead of its release, and to provoke a negative reaction from the Rest of Canada.  A win/win situation for the PQ.

Like Depp's costume, la Charte is a shallow, histrionic contrivance designed to create a furor, and to disguise the inherent racism and white privilege oozing from this political tactic.

So. Islamophobia exists. Christian and white privilege exists in Canada.  Religious fundamentalists are using the same tactics as the PQ, framing the *problem* to suit their ideology as well as exploiting people's fear and anger.

Violence against women occurs all too frequently; it seems it's only when a crime is motivated by fundamentalist muslim patriarchal ideology that femicide is rigorously investigated and prosecuted according to existing laws.  When the killing of women is fuelled by christian fundamentalism, only feminists feel that the media should equally denounce it.

Fortunately Tabatha Southey rescued me from feeling as gloomy and grumpy as Depp seems — and I don't even have to choose to wear (or not) head-gear for business, cultural, religious or political reasons. 

“The state has no place interfering in the moral and religious beliefs of Quebecers,” Bernard Drainville, the minister responsible for the charter, said in a bid to explain its stated rationale.[...]

Mr. Drainville’s voice remained remarkably steady for a man who, we’re asked to believe, understood himself to be addressing the confused population of a province whose citizens have been soldiering on through what he called “a crisis.”

The crisis, he clarified in a follow-up interview, stems from the “tensions” and “much frustration” caused by the “clearly unreasonable religious accommodations” that minorities in the province have been granted on occasion.

By “tensions,” was he referring, for example, to a case this summer when a newspaper reported that Muslim and Jewish groups were allowed to bring their own food into the La Ronde amusement park – which offers no kosher or halal dining option? The outrage caused the park to forbid the practice.[...]

Last year, my mum lost her hair to chemotherapy. She found wearing a wig too uncomfortable to bear and so played around with a scarf for a while but was unhappy with the results.

“I was trying to achieve the graceful look I’d seen on Muslim women,” she told me, “but instead I looked like Princess Anne at the races.”

Eventually, she called the Islamic Society of Guelph and asked if someone could help her. “I’ll give you my wife’s cell number,” the man she spoke to said. “She’s awesome.” The two women met at the rec centre it turned out that they both frequent and my mother was scarf-schooled.

 

Just a reminder: the head covering worn by La Piéta is a *traditional* garment. 

It seems quaint now, just as the babushka certainly was when hundreds of Ukrainian Catholic women immigrated to Canada, their scarves firmly knotted under their chins.

A much earlier DJ! post about women being solidaires with women who choose to wear the hijab, here.

Exemplary Cop (Update)

The Montreal police force (SPVM), is known for its brutality and lack of accountability.

In this Rabble News report from March 2012, Stefan Christoff provided an overview of decades of injustice served upon the Montreal population, particularly members of communities that are not protected by their connections to social status, money, organized crime or political power. Some highlights:

Now widely used by the Montreal police, flash bang grenades are made by Defense Technologies, a subsidiary of the world's second largest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems.Flash bangs are rubber-encased devices that explode, creating a 175-decibel shock wave, while emitting a flash of light and releasing a charge of CS gas into the air. CS gas is a chemical irritant that burns the eyes, affects the respiratory system and can cause vomiting. 

According to Defense Technologies' official warning text on the exploding weapon, "this product may cause serious injury or death to you or others."
On March 15, police used sound grenades and CS gas on civilian protesters, weaponry that did in fact "cause serious injury" for 22-year-old student protester Grenier from Cégep de Saint-Jérôme, protesting for accessible post-secondary education. 

Why are Montreal police deploying dangerous explosive devises against popular protests in 2012? Why are more serious questions not being asked in mainstream media coverage about this dangerous weaponry being deployed by Montreal police?

Fredy Villanueva, an 18-year-old youth from Montreal North, was killed by police in the summer of 2005, and his death is the subject of an ongoing struggle for justice led by the Villanueva family. 

To this day, no police officers involved in the Villanueva killing have been charged criminally or faced trial in relation to the shooting, despite a wealth of existing evidence on the topic. 

Villanueva's death inspired numerous underground hip-hop tracks in Montreal, with artists like Sans Pression and Dramatik directing verses against Montreal police shootings and racial profiling. 

In early January 2012, a police intervention at métro Bonaventure turned deadly when police shot and killed Farshad Mohammadi, a Kurdish refugee from Iran struggling with mental health issues and homelessness. The police killing quickly sparked protest in the city and police continue to keep secret a great deal of existing evidence and details surrounding the shooting. 

Since 1987, in Montreal, more than 60 people have been killed during police interventions, including Mario Hamel and Patrick Limoges, killed on the same morning by police bullets in June 2011.

And now Radio-Canada's report on the aberrant actions of a patroller, one Stéfanie Trudeau aka Badge 728 - captures the dysfunctional cop culture that flourishes within the rank and file of the SPVM. (Google translations here and here.) The CTV report is here.

The list of complaints against her is considerable.  It includes gratuitous violence.

Some may remember Matricule 728 from this GGI manifestation in May.

Trudeau may be exemplary but she is not unique.

UPDATE: The inevitable baying of sexist hounds has started, demanding her address and phone number to dox her so that others will inflict the physical harm they wish this woman to suffer.

This is harsh, and may recognize that a form of rehabilitation is required, for her and for all cops who behave thus.

But this is vile, as this one notes.

Josée Legault reminds us of the "rage à deux" that political discourse and police repression produce.

ADDED resource. From this tweet, more about the deleterious impact of cop culture.

TODAY'S UPDATE: My perspective was willfully misrepresented, with regard to outing and doxing Trudeau.  Read my original post.  I never suggested that the procedure used to deal with abusive cops should be more lenient for her.

Though it has been well-documented how social media has been used to transform specific women into targets for the rampant misogyny that festers at large, there are a few so-called pro-feminism men who persist in obdurate denial of this phenomenon and shriek about "gender stalinism" rather than acknowledge the reality. 

From Anita Sarkeesian to Amanda Todd, women and girls are violated online in specifically aggressive ways that men are not subjected to.  Are these threats carried out in real life?  Once a woman has been doxed, she is an open target.  

Food for thought: Whitney Phillips' piece in the Atlantic about Adrian Chen exposing  infamous Reddit moderator Violentacrez in a long profile. This is the product of a tenacious investigation into the many facets of this self-proclaimed troller as well as his role as the creator and moderator of the "Jailbait" and "CreepShots" forums. 

Phillips' reflection on trolling and its oft-denounced racist, homophobic and misogynist manifestations is a compelling and informative lecture.

Added: For those who can read French, this from Josée Legault must be read to understand the foundation and the connections that produced Matricule 728 and a cop culture amenable to political manipulation.
Grand merci to Miranda Nelson.

ROC media dancing to Contempt Party tune.

As it so happens, I'm Franco-Ontarian and while I understand, intellectually and emotionally, the premise of the sovereignty movement in Québec, I didn't feel personally engaged.

Until now.

This is the famous *firewall* letter King Stevie Spiteful the First and his cronies addressed to the premier of Alberta; it was published in the NatPo in January 2001.

The leader of the Contempt Party has bragged about the ways that he will oversee the destruction of Canada as we know it. Federalism? Phooey. SHithead came to Ottawa to reduce our government to something small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Twenty or perhaps even ten years from now, when the country formerly known as Canada has been fragmented into a number of US states, political historians and theorists will compare the respective goals and strategies of ethical sovereignists in Québec - people like Françoise David, Gilles Duceppe and Amir Khadir - versus greedy survivalists in Alberta such as Ezra Levant.

Moving to Montréal is quite appealing, at the moment. If I still feel this way this time next year ...

Priest enslaved girl he claimed was his orphaned niece.

Raoul Deveau was a Catholic parish priest, a predator and a pedophile.

It is claimed by two victims in Nova Scotia - there are likely more - that Deveau preyed on them with impunity and that Church officials and possibly others in positions of authority knew what he did yet let him continue.

Deveau told Linda Deschamp to call him "uncle" because parishioners and teachers asked him about the relationship; Deveau claimed that she was his orphaned niece. In fact she was a child neglected by her family; he gradually enslaved her by sexually abusing her and forcing her into servitude. She cleaned house and prepared meals for him for over 10 years. Deschamp was 12 years old when Deveau first approached her.

"This is so wrong. You're tired of hiding the secrets. They need to come out and people need to be made aware of that," Deschamp told CBC.

Deschamp said her large family was poor, so she was sent to work for and then live with Raoul Deveau, a parish priest in Shelburne. He died in 1982. She remembers him as a jovial person, a "community god" who seemed genuine about helping
parishioners. She trusted him.

"At first it was consoling and it was, 'poor girl,'" Deschamp said. "It kind of gradually built up — offering me food while I was there, and when you're hungry that looks pretty good as a child. And then it was clothing. And then of course there were trade-offs after that."

Deschamp said the abuse by the man she was forced to call uncle lasted for nine years. She ended up moving with Deveau to another parish. "He had me so dependent on him," she said. "He owned me 100 per cent."

From here. More information here.

Institutional collusion between the Catholic Church and local authorities, with regard to the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of children, also occured elsewhere Canada. Hundreds of orphaned or abandoned children suffered like those in Ireland did, in the province of Québec.

Bruno Roy died last night; he was instrumental in leading the adult survivors (Duplessis' orphans) in a civil suit that held the government as well as the Catholic Church accountable for the harm that was done.

All creatures great and small...

Some of my best friends have canine companions, or would like to be a human companion to a dog.

Thus I've been following stories about Christ Church Beaurepaire in Beaconsfield, Québec with great interest. This is the third month that a service has been held there, welcoming the faithful and their dogs.

The church's minister, Michael Johnson, said he has always enjoyed doing a pet blessing once a year, so he was open to the suggestion made by an animal rights activist to include dogs in a church service.

"It's to recognize the value of dogs," said Johnson, who will not be offended if there is barking during his sermon. [...] "The members seem happy about it," said Johnson. He said the service is not an attempt to get more people into church, but perhaps to reach a group of people who would otherwise not have come. "We just want to respond to people's needs," said Johnson. [...]

Johanne Tassé, who suggested the idea to Johnson, said she believes the idea can have a profound impact. "Animals deserve our care and respect," said Tassé, who is president of the Companion Animal Adoption Centres of Quebec. "If we can bring dogs to church, how can we turn around and abuse them?"

She believes that the "deplorable" state of animal welfare in Quebec requires people to take a closer look at how animals affect our lives. "There are search-and-rescue dogs, search-and-recovery dogs, dogs to help the disabled, dogs that go into hospitals," said Tassé. "Dogs help us so much and we need to recognize them as being part of our lives."

From here.

For those who understand French, Radio-Canada has a cool interview about the "Paws and Pray" service that can be heard, here.

This post is for my co-blogger fern hill.

The title is taken from the Anglican hymn: All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, ... Some of you may know the tune.

Les fées ont soif.

It was 31 years ago today that extreme, fundamentalist, ultra-conservative catholics tried to stop the opening of the controversial feminist play "Les fées ont soif." in Montréal.

Though Catholics did everything they could to keep the show from going on (including picketing the theatre and reciting the rosary in the audience during the play), the work went on to several translations and productions here and abroad and the published play went into three printings.

From here:

A whore, a housewife, and the holy virgin walk into a bar. Ouch! But seriously folks, it's no joke for these three ladies desperately trying to find themselves in an oppressive world. Montreal playwright Denise Boucher unconventionally explores the oh-too conventional achetypes of women.

After all we've achieved, how far have we come? The most notorious case of theatre censorship in contemporary Quebec was the attempted ban of Les Fées ont soif when it was first produced almost 30 years ago at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde. The play challenged traditional roles and images imposed by social practice and dramatized women's angry rejection of those roles.

These issues persist today, as women's shelters from increasinly beyond their capacity, as sex workers are forced into dangerous situations by outdated laws, and as 'women's work' continues to be undervalued - the fairies are still thirsty!

The author Denise Boucher also wrote "Jézabel", an alternate version of the biblical confrontation between the heathen queen and the testerical prophet Elijah.

Compare and contrast.

The voice of reason and sanity. The shrieeeking of lies and zealotry.

First, André Picard offers these observations about the face-off in Québec regarding access to abortion with physicians and women on one side, the Health Minister on the other.

The new law dramatically expands the number and type of surgical procedures that can be contracted out from hospitals to centres médicaux spécialisés (specialized clinics) – to 56 from three. In addition to hip and knee replacements and cataracts, private clinics will be able to do a wide range of procedures, including mastectomies, hysterectomies and bariatric surgery.

There are, quite appropriately, new oversight measures that will be implemented to ensure these operations are done safely. These include having sterile operating rooms.

There were 96,815 abortions performed in Canada in 2005, the last year for which data are available from Statistics Canada. Abortions are not done in hospital-like operating rooms. The instruments used are sterile, but the procedure, as with other minor surgery, can be done in a physician's office. Even when abortions are performed in hospitals, they are not done in the operating room; they are done in what is essentially an exam room. ...

The good news is that Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc, after initially defending the rules, now appears ready to back down, creating an exemption for abortion clinics so that the status quo remains.

Picard reviews the facts and highlights this specific issue against the ongoing discussion/exploration of how public health care can meet the needs of patients by allowing regulated private clinics to provide specialized and professional medical interventions safely and promptly.

Lifeshite suggests that the clinics providing IVG (interruption volontaire de grossesse) are doing so in contaminated, dodgy surroundings. Oh, and it opines that premier Charest should not claim that the province welcomes families if abortions are allowed. (Never mind that Québec provides the most generous of child and daycare support to parents. That's irrelevant as far as Lifeshite is concerned.)

Did I forget to mention that Picard's article in the Globe and Mail is followed by comments served up in all the flavours of zygote zealotry? Save The Fetus©™ is shrieeeked, howled and expressed in a MASSIVE number of lunatic overstatements.

Half right, half wrong.

It appears that a reasonable agreement between the Québec College of Physicians and the Ministry of Health may be delayed until the respective parties stop bickering about who is right, who is wrong, who is incompetent and who is lying.

Radio-Canada has found an individual who wrote the recommendations presented by the College of Physicians. He claims that at that time, no provisions were made to exclude abortions, known as IVG (interruption volontaire de grossesse), as practiced in private clinics from the new regulations.

The core of the argument is the same professional criteria of health care delivery, whether in a hospital or in a private clinic should determine how IVGs are provided in the first trimester. The new regulations will oblige private clinics to follow procedures that are more strict than those the hospitals do.

The outcome of this "imbroglio" should not hang on the results of a pissing match between Lamontagne and Bolduc. This is an urgent matter and should be resolved before more clinics are forced to close. I think that the sensible recommendations of Dr Barrette, president of the Quebec Federation of (Medical) Specialists should be followed.

A deliberate political tactic to restrict abortion?

Is this merely a public pissing contest between two big swinging dicks, Dr Yves Lamontagne, president of the Québec College of Physicians, and Dr Yves Bolduc, Québec Health Minister?

When DJ! first blogged about this 'imbroglio' (Minister Bolduc's word) it appeared it was an oversight or perhaps the insidious work of a zygote zealot at the ministry. But now some claim that the situation was deliberately engineered.

From here:

The threat of closing is not coming from anti-choice protesters who have targeted the clinic for 30 years, but from a new provincial health department law that will govern how special medical clinics provide services.

"It's terribly sad. We still have to fight," physician Francine Léger, the clinic's interim director, said Monday.

Bill 34, which was adopted by the national assembly in the spring, says that abortion clinics must adhere to the same guidelines as specialized medical clinics which provide such procedures as cataract and knee surgeries. That means they have to set up separate sterile operating rooms as opposed to simply sterilizing surgical equipment.

Dr Léger, who also practises at the teaching hospital connected to the Université de Montréal, observes that institutions are not required to conform to the new regulations. In fact, the staff of women's clinics who provide abortion, called IVG (interruption volontaire de grossesse) in Québec, were only informed in mid-June by the Ministry that their medical services were included in the provisions of the law and that they would have to enforce the regulations or close.

According to Dr Gaétan Barrette there is documentation - letters from his organization to the Ministry - that proves that Bolduc knew well in advance that Bill 34 would affect independent abortion clinics. He maintains that this political tactic is an under-handed way to restrict the provision of IVGs to hospitals (overwhelmed by demands for other outpatient medical services) and thus limit access.

One step forward for Italy; two steps back for Québec?

Italian women may soon have access to RU 486 medication on a limited basis.

The Vatican and Catholic politicians today reacted with dismay to a decision by Italy's drugs agency to approve limited use of the abortion pill Mifepristone, which has been available in much of the rest of Europe since the 1990s. Senior Vatican officials said women who took the pill would be excommunicating themselves, as would doctors who prescribed it and nurses who administered it. Because of the high proportion of conscientious objectors to abortion in the Italian health service – some 70% – it is likely that use of the pill will be circumscribed.

After a reportedly heated four-hour session that ended late on Thursday, the board of the Italian pharmaceuticals agency, AIFA, voted by four to one to approve Mifepristone. But it stipulated that the pill should only be administered in hospital during the first seven weeks of pregnancy.

Unfortunately it appears that new health care regulations in Québec will make it more difficult for women to obtain a IVG (interruption volontaire de grossesse) in the future. Le Devoir and other media report that the requirements of Bill 34 which establishes understandably rigorous standards for private clinics, in the wake of medical accidents such as Micheline Charest's death in 2004, may lead to the closure of some abortion clinics. Physicians and obstetricians are lobbying the government to exclude IVG procedures from Bill 34, since in their professional opinion there is no justification to apply such requirements. Abortions practised in the first trimester are normally performed with the administration of a local anaesthetic; complex root canals are more risky than such IVG. Doctors and nurses who work in clinics and in hospitals have pointed out that first trimester abortions provided in institutional settings do not have to meet these requirements.

It's one of those events that, as with federal Bill C-484 (now-defunct), makes you wonder if a tiny group of anti-choice bureaucrats and politicians hoped to sneak these restrictions under the radar, without the benefit of public scrutiny. Polls have indicated that the majority of Canadians support access to abortion.

One inadvertently comic note about the Italian story, which includes far too much information about the Italian prime minister (emphasis ours):

For Silvio Berlusconi's government and its supporters, this was a delicate moment for any announcement bearing on sexual ethics. Recordings purportedly made by a prostitute who claims that she spent the night with Italy's 72-year-old married prime minister have focused public attention on his own apparently wide-ranging sex life. In one, a businessman who allegedly supplied women for parties at Berlusconi's home can be heard warning one of them that the prime minister never uses a condom.

That must make him a good Catholic - right?

Will Zygote Zealots Rule at the Con Con?

Back in July, Le Devoir disclosed that members of the Québec CPC were unanimously opposed to a resolution that was presented in the slate of policy resolutions for discussion and ratification at the November convention.

Some party members from the West have inserted a proposition to integrate Bill C-484 into the Conservative platform. C-484 is a law that would recognise the fetus in a case where a pregnant mother is murdered. In such a case, the murderer would be charged with two murders instead of one. This is, in fact and despite what the bill itself says, a backdoor way to outlaw abortion because it
recognises the fetus as a legal person. It isn’t a far step to go from that to claiming the termination of the fetus in an abortion to be murder as well. And this isn’t just an over-reaction, similar laws in the United States have led to the outlawing of abortion in certain jurisdictions.

From here.

In the interval between then and now, Stevie and his Harpocrites threw Ken Epp and his Bill C-484 under the bus in a miscalculated bid to placate Québec voters and remove any obstacle to their desired majority rule. Now it has been revealed that a modified version of C-484 is among the hundreds of resolutions up for approval next week at the Con Con.

Is anyone actually surprised? I hope that there are fireworks and MASSIVE confrontations between the fundamentalist religious Cons and the pro-choice Cons.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

No-choice/No-brainer divide at Con Convention

It may come as a surprise to those unfamiliar with the history of Québec, but within the ranks of the Conservative Party of Canada, there is steadfast support for choice from that province’s party members. And it may lead to a confrontation in November at the CPC convention, if the delegates representing the old Reform party constituency, aka Western fundamentalist interests, present a motion in favour of changing the legal status of a fetus.
Sovereignty en Anglais wrote about this:

Some party members from the West have inserted a proposition to integrate Bill C-484 into the Conservative platform. C-484 is a law that would recognise the fetus in a case where a pregnant mother is murdered. In such a case, the murderer would be charged with two murders instead of one. This is, in fact and despite what the bill itself says, a backdoor way to outlaw abortion because it
recognises the fetus as a legal person. It isn’t a far step to go from that to claiming the termination of the fetus in an abortion to be murder as well. And this isn’t just an over-reaction, similar laws in the United States have led to the outlawing of abortion in certain jurisdictions.

This is the first national CPC convention since March 2005. Over 3000 party members are expected to attend. A meeting of Québec Conservative party members - MPs, senators and riding presidents - was held in Sherbrooke in June. According to Le Devoir’s source, the 300 participants voted against any resolution that would change the legal status of a fetus, as it currently stands in Canada. Some even bluntly stated that Bill C-484 was “insensé”, which in other words, means it goes against common sense.

Remember, 3 Québec Conservative MPs voted against C-484: Josée Verner, Lawrence Cannon (both ministers) and Sylvie Boucher. Also, there are a great number of professional, political, educational, labour and women’s organizations in Québec that are opposed to C-484.

Antonia Zerbisias at Broadsides also comments on Le Devoir’s news item, and takes the opportunity to mention that two polls (one in The Toronto Star and the other in The National Post) demonstrate that most Canadians approve of Morgentaler being awarded the Order of Canada.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

We *heart* Quebec, Part deux

Again, we get further proof that our sisters and allies in Quebec totally get the danger posed by Bill C-484, aka The Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill. (Our deBeauxOs does a round-up of Quebec organizations and bloggers opposed to the bill here.)

Yesterday, there was a kick-ass demonstration in Montreal. La Presse reports that there were 1,500 protesters.

At babble, poster martin dufresne gives a first-hand account:

The demo was TREMENDOUS!!! Between 1,000 and 1,500 people, bilingual speeches and chants, walking and almost dancing to Aretha's RESPECT and local feminist bands on the sound system, applauded by onlookers. The organizers were a kick-ass group of young feminists and despite the pouring rain it was easily the most empowering demo I have seen in decades. A local sexploitive sect (Raelians) tried to crash the event, insinuating itself in the march, with their website plastered on their garish pink get-up: it was a hoot seeing these fifty-something men, bluetooth in ear, with pink t-shirts proclaiming "FEMININITY is the future of humanity". They were booed and finally pelted with a few chocolate cream pies.

The post also helpfully includes this translation from La Presse story:

Dueling sounds

On the front steps of St-Jean-Baptiste church, organizers used a megaphone to denounce the "Religious Right". The church bells started ringing and went on for more than five minutes. A few of the demonstrators entered the church to play the djembé.

Fun.

(First published at Birth Pangs.)