Are others getting as unsettled as I am about how Quebec's so-called secularism law (Bill 21) — with all of its Islamophobic dimensions — is rapidly becoming the focus of the 2019 federal election, in the very same way the niqāb issue did in 2015?
Your Oct. 8 article, “Bill 21: Legault lashes out at Trudeau over debate comments,” got me thinking about what both of these issues actually have in common. You don’t have to scratch beneath the surface very far to see they are really about white privilege, and how the dominant group in Canadian society continues to feel threatened by anything that challenges its preconceived ideas over what a “Canadian” is supposed to look like.
There’s a term for this fear of the other: it’s xenophobia and it is alive and well in our country in 2019.
How we fight this rising intolerance here in Canada was powerfully illustrated in a recent incident involving NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh (the first racialized leader of a federal party in our country’s history) and an elderly, white man who thought he’d give Singh some free advice and suggested he “cut off that turban” so he would look “more Canadian.”
Deftly handling the situation, Singh turned to the man and politely replied, “I disagree, sir. This is Canada. You can do whatever you like.”
John McCracken, Head of St. Margarets Bay
