Panoramic Aerial View of Deforestation Area in Boreal Forest, Quebec · Photo by Onfokus

Huge trucks loaded with wood climb the steep slopes at a slug’s pace before hurtling down at breakneck speed across the Gaspé Peninsula in southeastern Quebec. On weekdays, any driver who finds themselves ahead of these motorized ogres will vividly relive the nightmarish journey of salesman Dennis Weaver chased by a mad trucker in Steven Spielberg’s 1971 film, Duel (think Jaws on wheels, with a tanker truck instead of a shark—in which you feel you are going to need a bigger car).

But on quiet weekend days, one feels completely immersed in nature, driving on the road meandering through thick evergreen woods. Yet, the hustle and bustle of the trucks suggest another story behind the green curtain.

In May 2020, I flew from Gaspé to Montreal. It was a painful experience. As the plane was reaching altitude, I was stunned by the scale of broad patches of cleared areas crisscrossed by dirt roads. I felt fooled by the thin wooded layer bordering the highway I’d used so many times, hiding the interior of a forest that no longer exists.

“Only space visible from road corridors and selected visually sensitive areas are protected by the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks,” says Marie-Ève Desmarais, forest engineer and member of La Commission Forêt at Nature Québec, or the Forest Commission. “All the rest is ignored.”

This way of preserving visually sensitive areas of the forest environment from the public eye first appeared over 20 years ago, following a shocking documentary denouncing logging practices destroying Quebec forests for the benefit of wood companies.

Richard Desjardins’ L’erreur boréale (Forest Alert), winner of eight prizes in Quebec and France, including the 1999 Jutra Award for Best Documentary, provoked a province-wide movement for the reappropriation of public forests by concerned citizens.

An author, composer, performer, and documentary filmmaker from Rouyn-Noranda, a small town located in the heart of the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region in northwestern Quebec, Desjardins showed the public forest treated as a big pile of wood by industrialists and denounced the clearcutting practiced on vast expanses of the boreal forest.

The overview of massive clearcuts—the archetype of industrial horror in forests—completely transformed the social perception of the forest in Quebec. The provincial government reacted to the shift in public perception by creating a new Forest Management Plan in 2010 where timber companies would no longer be the only players in the forest. Instead, plans would be drawn up by the Ministry’s regional offices to meet the aspirations of the local population.

The film was a real eye-opener stirring up public outrage, forcing the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks to improve their methods by taking inspiration from natural forests, creating a landscape closer to nature, and engaging in more sustainable forestry practices. Their approach, tempered by social considerations, recognized that a way to maintain socially acceptable forestry was to mimic natural spatial patterns in managed public forests by replicating physical constraints, disturbances, and biological processes naturally present in the forest environment.

With public perception at stake, the concept of social acceptability, based on landscape ecology principles, emerged with the era of new sustainable forest practices. Visual quality assessment methods, inspired by 1960s American landscape architects, were integrated to determine, classify and map areas of significant interest with a high degree of visual sensitivity.

“If recent cuts occupy more than 40 percent of a landscape that you see, it falls below the threshold of social acceptability,” explains Louis Bélanger, a retired professor and researcher at the Faculty of Forestry, Geography and Geomatics at Laval University, Quebec.

Landscape ecology is the science behind understanding the interactions between ecosystems within a region and the environment’s ecological processes. In the forestry world, this translates into the imitation of natural patterns of ecosystem disturbance by recreating natural cut shapes, preventing straight lines, and waiting for the first cut to regenerate to a height of four metres before starting a second. It also means avoiding scattered trees on peaks and ensuring that logging does not dominate the visible landscape in distant perception areas.

“This is called ecosystem-based management,” says Pier-Olivier Boudreault, a conservation biologist at the Société pour la nature et les parcs (SNAP) Québec. “The goal is to reproduce the disturbances of nature, like a big forest fire or an insect outbreak.”

The Ministry must follow two steps to get a new cutting project accepted. First, landscape planners map sensitive areas to minimize visual impacts, using a series of criteria based on social values such as the attendance and the attractiveness of the area, the number and expectations of users, the duration of use and observation, the importance of infrastructure and equipment, and the diversity of services.

“When we’ve done that, we’ve already found the problems. We know what will be visible and what will be hidden,” says Desmarais. “But we have to validate in the field if what we’ve planned meets the needs of the population.”

To validate their maps, the Ministry is required to hold a public consultation process which can include 3D virtual models of cutting patterns to be shown to citizens and committee members such as Indigenous communities, town officials, outfitters, and recreational and environmental associations. Those who live in an area where a logging project is planned have to be given the opportunity to express their concerns about how the project could affect their quality of life and livelihood. This step suggests public participation has become essential over the years, strongly influencing forest management.

“It is a process of trying to make forestry visually acceptable in places people think are sensitive. But it does not work all the time,” says Bélanger. “If we did a survey to find out the level of satisfaction, I suspect we would get a C-minus. We don’t fail like we used to, but there aren’t a lot of As.”

The Ministry’s attempt to change in the decade following the scandal surrounding forestry management, thanks to Desjardins’ documentary, showed that they could easily take the preservation of forest landscapes’ visual quality into account in the calculation of authorized cuts.

As of April 1, 2013, the Quebec Sustainable Forest Development Act states that, while promoting the use of wood to create economic wealth, the Ministry is responsible, through protecting ecosystems and preserving biodiversity, for ensuring the perpetuity of the public forest for all users. But despite the progress made to implement an ecosystem-based approach over the past two decades, a conflict persists between recognizing the needs of industry and recognizing the landscape as a resource that must be valued.

“There are still no chapters in the strategic plan of the Ministry that take into account the landscape,” says Bélanger. “The aesthetics of the public forest is still not protected.”

Already at a strict minimum to meet a threshold of social acceptability, the public forest landscapes will continue to decline in the coming decades. In 2018, the new Quebec provincial government’s goal of reaching a 30 percent increase in harvested timber supply over the next 20 years might make it challenging for the Ministry to respond fairly to all the needs provided by a territory they define as a multi-use forest.

“They want to double the wood production targets. It’s scary,” says Desmarais. “The new harvest quotas are so high, I don’t know if there will be much room for ecological and landscape issues.”

This current large-scale depletion of the forest cover is due to the new 2018 Québec Wood Production Strategy, which seems to have supplanted the emerging visual trends established in the 2015 Sustainable Forest Management Strategy.

“The lobbying of multinational forestry companies in Quebec is powerful, and they have the attention of the provincial government,” says Desmarais. “And clearcutting is more profitable than adopting an ecosystem-based approach.”

Unfortunately, the Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Since 2016, little account has been taken of citizens’ demand to protect a forest landscape against industrial logging’s visual impacts if it jeopardizes cuts already guaranteed to multinational wood industries. As a result, despite high expectations raised by the sustainable harvesting methods introduced in the 2010 Forest Management Plan, communities are still faced with a worsening of their living environment due to the Quebec provincial government’s unwillingness to concretely apply its own ecosystem-based approach.
“The current forest management plan is very good, and the sustainable forest development law is excellent,” says Desmarais. “But in reality, it is not applied in the field. Any cutting plan that could satisfy everyone but would have an impact on timber harvesting possibilities is systematically rejected.”

The awareness of the desolation left by large cut areas on the forest landscape is mostly felt for now by those who venture into the woods outside the main sensitive areas identified by landscape planners. This planned visual framing can be seen negatively by communities strongly connected to the forest, as it can be perceived as being deceived by concealing measures.

“The wooded layer, it’s cosmetic,” says Henri Jacob, ecologist and president at Action Boréale in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. “It does nothing for the decrease in biodiversity and fauna habitats caused by large-scale industrial logging. We cut faster than the forest can regenerate.”

The less well-informed citizens driving to national parks, main towns, and busy tourist areas are still spared the disturbing views and kept in some form of ignorance by being locked in these green buffer zones. However, the projected increase in wood harvesting might put in plain sight what is going on behind the visual barriers. No longer able to hold some shield if quotas have to be honoured, the Ministry may start playing in visually sensitive areas secured in the past.

“The Ministry is in a bind. It seems like they can’t keep the promises they made to the population. They have to deliver the timber to the industries,” says Boudreault.

On my next road trip through the peninsula, I got out of the car on a quiet Sunday morning and walked through the dense strip of evergreen trees lining the road. Coming out on the other side, the smell of fresh, damp moss shaded by the trees had disappeared, giving way to the hot, dry earth of a devastated field.
“The new forestry plan was supposed to put the citizen back at the heart of forest management,” says Boudreault. “Twenty years after L’erreur boréale, this is something that has not been achieved.”

When Canadian singer Grimes appeared on a segment of Tout le monde en parle in 2015, she was the only guest on the Franco-Canadian talk show answering questions in English. When co-host Dany Turcotte discovered she had lived in Montreal for six years, he asked if she had learned any French. “No,” she replied smirking, “…actually my last name is Boucher, so my grandparents are super-pissed at me still.”

If this exchange sounded a little tense, then know that Turcotte and host Guy A. Lepage like to push their guests’ buttons, but just a little. The atmosphere of the panel show strikes a perfect balance between amity and friction. It’s how Lepage and Turcotte steer their most candid interviews.

On average, 1.3 million people tune into Tout le monde en parle every Sunday night, on ICI Radio-Canada, for that two-hour entre-nous experience. The show’s format was adapted from the original French version, which aired on France 2 from 1998 to 2006. It replaced Du fer dans le épinards, another panel show where host Christophe Dechavanne and guests debated both serious and light-hearted topics. In its first season, the original French Tout le monde en parle harkened back to its predecessor by leading panel discussions and political debates. By the second season, though, producers reformatted the show to include interviews with guests from different cultural milieus. The show quickly gained notoriety for probing its interviewees with very personal and often inappropriate questions. One of its better-known incidents was in 2002, when host Thierry Ardisson brought up Milla Jovovich’s estranged father, who was in prison for eight years. The actress sat uncomfortably before abruptly ending the interview by slamming a glass off the table and storming off the stage.

Quebec’s version of Tout le monde en parle is very different. In 2004, Radio-Canada’s adaptation debuted with a slightly different setup and dynamic, with Lepage as host and Turcotte as the court jester/co-host. The guest list, for the most part, is comprised of Quebecers and international guests, and includes a mix of both famous and lesser-known figures in politics, sports, academia, journalism, film, television, and music. Unlike his French counterpart, Lepage’s aim is to make guests comfortable enough that they can express themselves freely—sometimes to their own disadvantage. Still, he asks tough questions, and Turcotte relieves the tension with quips and jokes. It’s important to note that Turcotte and Lepage have backgrounds in comedy, so they know how to read the room. As Lepage pointed out in a 2014 Globe and Mail article: “My show is very Quebecois, in the sense that we can have disagreements and still talk about them. Quebecers,” he expounded, “don’t like chicanes, but they want to understand.”

In order to strike that balance—to get people to open up and listen to each other—Lepage can’t dominate the interview. The more he talks during an episode, the less he’s happy with the end result, he told La Presse. The goal is to get the guests asking each other questions. “As an interviewer, if I antagonize a guest, I won’t get anything out of them,” he said. “It would make for a great smoke show, but nothing would come of it.” In the episode with Grimes, another guest, TV host Maripier Morin, would asked follow-up questions in English right after Turcotte called her out for not speaking French. If and when things do get tense, other guests will often chime in to keep the conversation going.

But the success of the show hinges on how Lepage and Turcotte moderate these different personalities, situations—and each other. To date, no one has stormed off their stage, but the show has been known to make or break a career two. Just ask any politician who has turned down a guest appearance on the show, or former Parti Québécois leader Pierre Karl Péladeau, who stepped down after his ex-wife, Julie Snyder, opened up about their relationship and divorce on the show. (Neither one of them had openly discussed the divorce before. Snyder’s candour was later described as “à coeur ouvert,” open-hearted.) The tougher lesson to learn as a guest is that your words are completely open to interpretation. Péladeau stepped down the next day.

***

As much as the talk show covers the news, it has, over time, become the news. The show is unlike any other in that it has a well-defined audience, and that audience, in turn, wields its own power at the water cooler or on social media the next day. Everyone in Quebec is talking about Tout le monde en parle, and the show’s audience is now the most coveted among politicians, journalists, up-and-coming artists, and anyone else with a platform.

Not only is there no English talk show equivalent in Canada, but English-speaking guests are now being booked for the show and trying to speak as much French as they can throughout their interviews. This comes at a pivotal time when Netflix is desperately trying to corner the Francophone market in Quebec only to be met with resistance. This was made especially clear in an episode that aired in 2017 featuring then-minister of Canadian heritage Mélanie Joly, who signed a deal with Netflix. Joly was scrutinized for the deal; while Netflix would invest in Canadian content, it was under no obligation to develop Francophone programming. There were also talks that Netflix would be exempt from a federal tax. (Starting January 2019, Quebec will be imposing a provincial sales tax on Netflix.) Franco-Quebec audiences are loath to adopt streaming services like Netflix because they want something made by them and for them. A 2016 study by eMarketer, a market research company that provides consumer insights on digital media, even showed that French-speaking Canadians spent more than double their time watching TV (32.8 hours per week) than logging time online (16.1 hours per week). Despite airing shows like Série Noire, Vertige, and 21 Thunder, Netflix only started reaching out to Quebec production teams in April. It is still unclear whether it will fund any original programming.

In 2011, La Presse television critic Hugo Dumas sparked a debate on Twitter asking if an English-Canadian version of Tout le monde en parle could ever work. Focusing heavily on the celebrity guest list, the debate never really unpacked what makes Tout le monde en parle work in the first place—what made it so much more different than even its French predecessor. What has contributed to its success is its hosts, its blueprint, and the intimacy it creates between its guests.

Currently, the CBC has something somewhat close: The Debaters, a show where two comedians dispute a range of light-hearted “comedic topics,” such as Scientology or showers versus baths. The format is nowhere near as intimate as Tout le monde en parle: Host Steve Patterson is more of a referee compared to Lepage and Turcotte. He isn’t directing a conversation or mediating guests. And those guests aren’t debating hot topics.

As Kate Taylor pointed out in her piece for the Globe and Mail, “Talk TV: Why English Canada can’t get it right,” English-speaking Canadians are “notorious talk-show agnostics,” and the challenge for a Toronto talk show compared to, say, a Quebec or Los Angeles one is that it has a “great deal of difficulty gathering an audience around a single cultural hearth.” English Canada is constantly pulled by the appeal of U.S. late-night talk shows (after Canadian newscasts)—The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon—and British panel shows like 8 Out of 10 Cats, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, Have I Got News For You. Tout le monde en parle has a clearly defined audience, and the show speaks to it every week. The magic is in the connections it creates between the hosts, their guests, and that audience.

When asked about Quebec’s future in 1972, Marshall McLuhan said that its “secession ha[d] already occurred” psychically. And while it’s felt like Canada and Quebec have been constantly compromising with each other, Quebec has still carved out its own culture and take on the public debate. It may not be bloodsport debate à la William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal, but it’s created a public venue for unpacking issues and disagreeing.

Tout le monde en parle is not in any way perfect, but it’s managed to cultivate an atmosphere where celebrity and politesse are disarmed so that people can, simple as it is, talk to each other

While it’s been clear since the May leadership contest that conflicts between Bernier and Scheer persisted—with Bernier removed from the CPC shadow cabinet for publicly challenging the party on supply management in Canada’s dairy sector—this move came as a surprise given that it coincided with the start of the party’s policy convention.

Bernier made his move to maximize both media coverage and pressure on his former party, one he’s accused of “abandoning” Canadian conservatives. The question now is just how effective Bernier’s new party will be, and, if it can find success in time for the 2019 election, how will it affect the CPC and wider federal politics?

Bernier’s new party has potential, if for no other reason than he won more than 49 per cent support in the 2017 leadership contest, meaning that many Canadian conservatives are sympathetic to Bernier’s vision for Canada.

Caucus support?

But there’s no real sense if Bernier has support from key influencers in the CPC. Indeed, Bernier said in his departure news conference that he had not discussed his move with his caucus mates. This doesn’t mean failure is inevitable, but it may be that, however popular Bernier is with segments of the Conservative electorate, he won’t have the institutional muscle to launch a viable party, especially so quickly.

Furthermore, it’s not yet clear just what sort of platform Bernier will offer to Canadians.

In 2017, Conservatives looked to Bernier as the libertarian candidate who ostensibly fit the “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” archetype. During that campaign, when hopefuls like Kellie Leitch and Brad Trost made staunch pitches to social conservatives, Bernier highlighted economic issues, namely limiting government intervention.

If this is the basis of his new party, he may well pull support from his leadership backers, as well as right-leaning Liberals who can’t stomach Conservative social policy.

Nonetheless in recent months, Bernier has merged his laissez-faire economics with an approach to cultural and social issues that aligns him much more explicitly with the far right than he did during the 2017 contest.

Most recently and notably, he has become a high-profile critic of what he called the Liberal government’s “extreme” approach to multiculturalism and diversity, which supposedly puts at risk the sanctity and meaning of Canadian identity.

Bernier has intertwined this with his anti-government ideology, saying that the Liberal approach to diversity creates little tribes that “become political clienteles to be bought with taxpayers $ and special privileges.”

What will his platform be?

In a sense, Bernier is keeping many of his libertarian policies while making an overture to those Canadians wary of diversity, immigration and multiculturalism. The question is: Can he convincingly combine these beliefs into a coherent policy suite that appeals to Canadians, or will he end up with a platform that pleases no one sufficiently to win any significant support?

But with all this in mind, let’s say Bernier wins meaningful support in 2019. What will the potential impact be?

In short, the conventional narrative is that this is a boon to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. Before this split, the CBC poll tracker had the Liberals and Conservatives nearly tied in the popular vote, but with the Liberals’ vote efficiency putting them on the precipice of another majority government.

Even if Bernier’s new party wins just five per cent of the electorate in 2019, and a majority of that comes from current CPC voters, it will benefit the Liberals (as well as the New Democrats, to a lesser extent, in some regions where they run second to the CPC).

So if one identifies as an anything-but-Conservative voter, Bernier’s move could be welcome news. The risk, however, is that while a more stridently conservative party led by Bernier will feud with Scheer’s CPC, it may also incubate experimental right-wing ideas that could be eventually incorporated into the CPC’s platform.

Poaching ideas

Such a scenario would be reminiscent of when the New Democrats have championed progressive social and economic ideas like pharmacare before they gained mainstream acceptance, but in so doing gave legitimacy to the ideas, which were then poached by the Liberals.

It isn’t inconceivable that Bernier’s new party could fuel attacks on things like Medicare and multiculturalism, which may allow the CPC to take up those ideas, even just partially, and appear as relatively moderate to the electorate in doing so.

Ultimately, we have no real sense of how Bernier’s plan will unfold, or if it will find even modest success. History tells us that the vast majority of political parties in Canada fail due to our first-past-the-post system. Indeed, only three federal parties have official party status right now; two with roots back to Confederation and one with roots in the Great Depression.

But don’t count Mad Max out. If politics has taught us anything over the past few years, it’s that the impossible is a lot more likely than we’ve previously thought.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Photo by Christopher Curtis/Montreal Gazette.

The ban on face coverings is the latest move by Quebec politicians to impose neutrality on residents. A previous suggestion, seen above, included a ban on all conspicuous religious symbols in the public service. Photo courtesy of the Government of Quebec.

Jacques Cartier, right this way
I’ll put your coat up on the bed
Hey, man, you’ve got the real bum’s eye for clothes
And come on in, sit right down
No, you’re not the first to show
We’ve all been here since, God, who knows?

Gord Downie’s passing this week hurt many of us because he brought us together as Canadians to experience this country only as we could. He was a musician, a historian, and a storyteller who captured particular narratives that resonated with many of us who recognized our stories in his songs.

But it was his optimism about the future of Canada that captured so many hearts—especially as he dedicated his final project to shining a necessary light on Canada’s shameful history with the Indigenous peoples of this land. When once asked whether he believed Canadians were racist against the country’s original inhabitants, he adamantly replied in the negative, clinging to the belief that people simply had too little “exposure.” Whether or not one can accept that premise is beside the point. He wanted to believe the very best about each and every one of us—and he put his heart and soul into teaching empathy by sharing a poignant story that he hoped would make all of us come to understand the awful injustices perpetrated against innocent children and communities for far too long.

While it would be an incredible testament to his memory, it’s hard to hold on to that optimism in light of the news that broke the day after his death. Quebec’s provincial government passed a law banning anyone covering their face from giving or receiving public services. While the government claims its new legislation isn’t about targeting any one community, only the most naive and gullible would fail to see this as a clear attempt to win favour among those Quebecers who strongly dislike outward displays of religion—particularly Muslim ones.

The further painful irony of the ban is that it was announced on Persons Day, a Canadian commemoration of the decision to include women in the legal definition of “persons.” Rather than continue to look for ways to remove systemic barriers that may prevent vulnerable and marginalized communities from further participating in our communities, this bill does the very opposite, forcing women to choose between their religious beliefs and access to public services. It is impossible to fathom how, in 2017, such a choice would be foisted on anyone.

What’s infuriating is that the move could simply be a ploy by the Quebec Liberals to pander to populist and xenophobic tendencies of its population, while knowing full well the legislation may not hold up in court. Already constitutional lawyers and civil liberties organizations have come out strongly against the bill. Whatever the outcome, the damage has been done: Muslim women are being victimized and threatened in a proxy war they never signed up for, a battle over so-called state neutrality and religious freedom.

We’ve seen this before. Who can forget former prime minister Stephen Harper’s obsession with the issue of a woman wearing a face veil while taking a citizenship oath?  It was made out to be a central issue in the 2015 federal election. Journalist Davide Mastracci found that the niqab had significantly higher coverage over a specific a seven-day period than even the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an issue with much wider implications. Equally exasperating was the previous government’s claim that it was limiting a woman’s freedom of choice in the name of women’s rights—while that same government slashed funding to organizations that actually served women and had refused to launch in inquiry into the high numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

With this latest ban, visibly Muslim women are again more vulnerable to harassment and attack, as we saw during the last election, during which human rights organizations and police services noted a spike. Statistics Canada would later report a 60 percent increase in hate crimes targeting Muslim communities that year.

The horrific attack on a Quebec mosque in January should have put a stop to all of this. The shootings took the lives of six men and left several more seriously injured. There was a real opportunity for the province to end the anti-Muslim narratives that permeate its airwaves, television channels, newspapers, and social media platforms. It was chance for the political class to finally rein in the xenophobic machinations that emerge from time to time.

And certainly, that painful event did soften attitudes towards Muslims for the first time in that province, according to an Angus Reid poll following the murders. But alas, the governing party has now demonstrated it cares more about winning elections than about the well-being and human rights of its own citizens.

With that same party also reneging on holding a meaningful commission on systemic racism, there isn’t much hope left that it’s truly committed to equally serving all its residents. It’s like watching history repeat itself, dominated by the same chauvinistic and arrogant characters of yore.

How do we remain optimistic that this won’t be the type of stories our future songwriters memorialize? One word: Courage.

A photo in Beauce, Que.

When I talk to the student in the English classes I teach in Saint-Georges, Que., I try to be as open and approachable as possible. I started the job in September 2016 as part of a program teaching English to French-speaking students, and spent most of my first two months making introduction presentations about my life. I talked about my cultural background; what my life was like in the Toronto area, where I lived before I moved to Quebec; and the jobs I worked before the gig.

During one presentation, I let students know that I am trilingual and that I juggle English, French, and Tamil on a daily basis. My teacher interrupted me. “When you say Tamil, do you mean, tamoul?” he asked. Many students started sniggering and speaking in hushed tones. “I don’t know if you know this,” the teacher added, “but tamoul is a bit of a slur around here to describe any person that is brown or non-white.”

The term originated in the mid-1980s, following the exodus of Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka. It is used today as a slur, particularly toward Arab and Muslim people. I stood shocked, trying to compose myself to finish the lesson.

Before arriving, I knew that racism was an issue in Saint-Georges. I tried not to judge—racism, after all, is a problem in Toronto, too. Still, the adjustment from urban to rural was jarring. I was born in India, raised in Dubai for my first few years, and lived in Toronto ever since. I have had the privilege of living in bigger cities my whole life, where I have interacted with people from different communities and backgrounds. When I moved to SaintGeorges, it was the first time I would be living in a small city. I was unsure of how my brownness would be perceived and how I would be treated by others.

The classroom situation is just one example of the cultural challenges I have faced in Saint-Georges—one that has illuminated the differences between my former urban homes and the small rural city I was learning to call home.

I only heard of Saint-Georges when I received my acceptance letter for the position; during the interview process, I was not told where I would be placed, just that it would be in New Brunswick or Quebec. Naturally, I started looking for everything I could about the region and the city. When I asked on a Quebec Reddit forum about Saint-Georges and Beauce, the region it is located in, one user answered: “Beauce is known for three things: farms, small businesses, and ‘rednecks.’”

I knew I was about to enter a very white region—white enough that Saint-Georges’ riding of Beauce has the highest percentage (99.3 percent) of residents who identify as white/Caucasian, as per the 2011 National Household Survey. Maxime Bernier, now a frontrunner in the federal Progressive Conservative leadership race, is the riding’s Member of Parliament. I wondered days before the move how I, a queer, left-leaning, brown, bearded immigrant would survive, let alone adapt.

I packed up and moved anyway.

***

Learning that part of my identity is considered a slur in Quebec made me frustrated with the cultural ignorance of those around me. I know it is largely a product of the fact that few people in Saint-Georges look like me, let alone understand the intricacies of my culture. Most people that I have spoken to about this, many of whom are college-level students, say that prior to meeting me, they had no idea what being Tamil was, but knew what the word meant to them. It upset me that so many people chose not to look into what the word’s origins were or what it actually means, regardless of age or education.

I spent days dwelling on the moment I learned tamoul’s connotations: the way the students snickered, my shock and unease. I know that my brownness is immediately visible, and I began to wonder if tamoul is what goes through people’s heads when they see me for the first time.

I refused to stay silent. I decided to talk to my class about the meaning of the word. My duty is to be an educator, and this was a teaching moment. For the next few weeks, I would make sure to address tamoul to the class.

“How many people here have heard of the word, les tamouls, before?” I asked my students in the weeks following that initial presentation. They giggled, raised their hands. I then asked if anyone wanted to explain what it meant. The laughter turned into visible discomfort. Few wanted to address it.

“It’s a racist word. We use it to describe, like, Muslims and terrorists here,” one student responded. More digging revealed most students didn’t understand the origins or meaning of the word. One student thought tam referred to Taliban and moul to Muslim, relying on stereotypes to fill in the blanks. Educating these students about my identity and history was exhausting, as a result, but worthwhile: I realized if it were not for me, there was a good chance many of those students would have never known what Tamil actually means.

***

Quebec’s identity as a French province in an overwhelmingly English continent has created a culture of fervent protectionism of anything French. To be Quebecois is widely interpreted as to be a descendant of the white French settlers who started arriving in the 16th and 17th centuries. While there are elements of globalism that affect society in all regions, there are also many regions, such as Beauce, where the majority of residents are born and raised here and tend to interact almost solely with their neighbours. Immigration has been a controversial issue for decades. The nationalist movement goes through waves of support and decline, but most people here sincerely view themselves as a nation within a nation.

It’s with this in mind that I continue my work in Beauce. I remind myself every day that there are few others like me here, and that there is still much work to be done to tackle racism. Education is a great starting point.

On the same day I learned about the connotations of the word tamoul, my teacher made it a point to tell the class why I was there in the first place. “How many of you know of people who are not from Beauce?” he asked. In the class of 20, I saw two hands go up. The teacher then explained it further. “We don’t realize it often, but we are a very insular region,” he said.

It was after that presentation that I wanted to understand more about the region. Doing so has made it easier for me to deal with micro-aggressions that I rarely encountered in Toronto. It has also helped me realize that living in a big city is a privilege. It is a privilege to be able to live in a place where there is diversity, where multiculturalism is celebrated, and where there is immediate access to multiple forms of information and education.

Still, I’m grateful for the opportunity to see how different things are in a region that is just a 10-hour drive from my home.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that French settlers began arriving in the 15th century. This regrets the error.

Canada is a nation of wild, legendary rivers. The Mackenzie, the Fraser, the Churchill, and dozens more all empty into our national identity. They flow through our landscape, history, and imagination. They are vital to any history textbook, Group of Seven exhibit, or gift-shop postcard rack.

Canada is also a nation of river-tamers. We revere our waterways—but we also dam them. Trudeau canoed the epic Nahanni and two years later presided over the opening of the mammoth Churchill Falls hydroelectric dam in Labrador. We are, as the Canadian Hydropower Association says, a “hydro superpower.” Almost 60 percent of our electricity supply comes from dams—compared to just 16 percent globally—and only China squeezes more electricity out of its rivers than we do.

The heyday of big dam construction in Canada began around the late 1950s. What followed was an exhibition of progress in the raw. Surveyors and bulldozers headed to the frontier. Mighty men tamed mighty rivers. Engineering prowess replaced natural grandeur.

As rock was blasted and cement poured, legacies were forged, both geographical and political. In Manitoba, the two largest rivers and three of the five largest lakes were dramatically re-engineered. In Quebec, 571 dams and control structures have altered the flow of 74 rivers.

The construction phase lasted through the ’80s, then slowed, even though the country’s hydro potential had only been half tapped. Now, after two decades of limited construction—with the exception of Hydro-Québec, which kept on building—the dam-builders are rumbling to life again.

In the next 10 to 15 years, Canadian utilities will spend $55 to $70 billion on new hydroelectric projects. This would add 14,500 megawatts to Canada’s existing 71,000 megawatts of hydroelectric capacity. Most new projects are in Quebec (4,570 MW), B.C. (3,341 MW), Labrador (3,074 MW), and Manitoba (2,380 MW). The largest of these, Labrador’s 2,250 MW Gull Island project, will produce as much power as 750 train locomotives.

The extent and cost of construction will vary over time, but one thing is certain: the push for more hydro is on.

Most of these projects are driven in large part by the prospect of exporting power to the U.S. American interest in hydropower is linked, in part, to its low cost and its low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this context, the push for more hydro is also a push by the industry to position its product as an answer to climate change.

Jacob Irving heads the Canadian Hydropower Association, which represents the interests of the hydro industry. He says hydropower is “a very strong climate change solution,” because it can displace the use of coal and natural gas to generate electricity. The argument is simple and compelling: use more hydropower, use less fossil fuel. The industry especially touts exports of hydro to the U.S., where 600 coal-fired plants produce 45 percent of the nation’s electricity, with another 24 percent fuelled by natural gas. The CHA says hydro exports already reduce continental emissions by half a million tons a year. They want that number to grow.

Given the dire climate prognosis—emissions in Canada, the U.S., and everywhere else are well above levels in 1990, the year used as a benchmark in the Kyoto Accord—the urgency of reducing fossil-fuel consumption is great. Perhaps Canada’s wild rivers, if harnessed, can be our gift to a warming world. Maybe a concrete edifice nestled in a river valley is just as quintessentially Canadian as a lone paddler on a pristine river.

This presents a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too scenario for Canadian utilities. They can build more dams—obviously still a cornerstone of the corporate culture—cash in on lucrative exports, and enjoy eco-hero status. But is damming more of our rivers an optimal strategy for addressing climate change?

Despite the virtues of hydro power, dams can only reduce emissions indirectly. Their climate value hinges in part on the extent to which they substitute for fossilfuel-fired generation, as opposed to displacing nuclear, wind, or other sources. Though displacement is hard to prove, Irving reasons that “were we not to be sending that electricity down to the United States, the next most logical source of generation to meet their load requirements would generally be natural gas and/or coal.” The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) actually predicts that over the next 25 years, 11 percent of new generation in the U.S. will be coal-fired and 60 percent natural gas (which is roughly half as bad as coal in terms of emissions).

In Canada, most new hydro projects are located in provinces with minimal fossil-fuel-fired generation, so limited displacement will happen here. Exceptions are Ontario, Labrador (where 102 MW will be displaced), Nova Scotia (which will import from Labrador), and possibly Saskatchewan, which could use hydro from Manitoba.

While the fossil-fuel displacement argument has obvious merit, it also has weaknesses. Utilities can argue that hydro exports help save the planet, but critics can say these exports just keep the most wasteful society on earth air-conditioned and recharged. They can say that hydro exports just feed an addiction with more and more cheap power, every kilowatt of which reduces the imperative to curb consumption. The basic argument is that reducing demand must be the obvious and dominant priority in energy policy, rather than endlessly ramping up supply.

Government agencies predict electricity demand in Canada will grow almost 10 percent between now and 2020, and in the U.S. by approximately 30 percent between now and 2035. Ralph Torrie says we can and must go in the opposite direction. “We could double the efficiency with which we use fuel and electricity in Canada,” he says. If you want to see how it’s done, he adds, “just take a vacation to Europe.” Torrie, whose energy expertise is internationally recognized, serves as managing director of the Vancouver-based Trottier Energy Futures Project. In contrast to Irving, who accepts that demand for electricity will grow, Torrie advocates a “new way of thinking about the energy future.”

“There is no demand for electricity,” he says. “Nobody wants a kilowatt hour in their living room.” We want the services that electricity can provide, and we must “focus on how we can best meet the underlying needs for amenity with less rather than more fuel and electricity.” That, he says, is the only hope for “anything we might call a sustainable energy future.”

“We waste half the hydro we produce,” says John Bennett, who heads the Sierra Club of Canada. The solution to climate change is “to use less energy,” he says. “That’s where the major investment should be.”

Torrie says large hydro is environmentally preferable to many forms of energy supply, but still, reducing demand can achieve the same thing at a lower cost, and without the decade-long turnaround time for planning and construction. He views conservation as a resource. “There’s almost always a kilowatt of electricity that can be saved for a smaller cost than building the ability to generate a new kilowatt.” Plus, the resource gets bigger with every new innovation in efficiency. As Torrie puts it, “The size of the resource goes up every time somebody has a bright idea.”

Cutting electricity demand by half would include a range of technologies, including LED lighting, sensor-driven smart controls that reduce daytime lighting in buildings, and continued improvements to virtually every device that uses electricity.

But even if we as a continent cut our energy use by half, we still need some energy—and should not a maximum amount of that come from low-emission hydro? Can’t conservation and new hydro be dual priorities?

According to energy consultant Phillipe Dunsky, total spending on efficiency and conservation programs in Canada is only about $1 billion per year. Despite that, Jacob Irving says, “energy conservation has to be forefront of all decisions.” Then he adds a caveat: “There’s a lot of analysis that says energy consumption will grow, and so we need to be ready for that.” Whether demand shrinks or expands, the simple prohydro argument—more hydro equals less fossil fuel— still stands.

But for Tony Maas, who works for the Canadian branch of the World Wildlife Fund, it’s not that simple. He says new hydro projects must be part of an overarching plan for “net reduction in GHG emissions.” He cites Ontario’s Green Energy Act as an example of a plan that commits to overall GHG reduction.

But, as John Bennett points out, “we don’t have a North American plan to reduce emissions,” so new hydro projects “can’t be part of that plan.” The EIA predicts that without policy change, coal use as well as GHG emissions from electricity generation, will continue to increase over the next 25 years. Bennett says building more dams to meet increasing demand is like doubling the fuel efficiency of cars so that people can drive twice as much.

In a release this April, Hydro-Québec, Canada’s largest generator and exporter of hydropower, said, “The major environmental challenge facing North America is to replace coal to generate power and oil used in transportation.” While climate change may be the “major” environmental challenge of the day, it is not the only one. Just because hydro dams do not have highly visible carbon-spewing smoke stacks does not necessarily make them environmentally friendly. Behind the question of whether dams are a climate solution lies a more fundamental question: is hydro actually clean, as utilities and governments regularly assert?

Jacob Irving says, “When people refer to [hydro] as clean, it’s in the context of air emissions.” But rarely is this specified. The categorical use of the term by utilities, without caveat or qualification, is misleading. Tony Maas says he gets “nervous” when hydro is called clean because “it almost implies there are no impacts.” But dams harm the environment. A dam is not an environmental improvement or solution for a watershed.

One of the main impacts is the disruption of the natural “flow regime” in a waterway. Maas says the natural fluctuations in water levels are the “master variable in organizing a river ecosystem,” giving key “cues” to other species. Thus, a WWF report says, “Dams destroy the ecology of river systems by changing the volume, quality, and timing of water flows downstream.” The evidence of this is visible in dammed Canadian rivers, as it is in the hundreds of millions of dollars paid to mitigate and compensate for damages caused by dams. Manitoba Hydro alone has spent over $700 million to address damages from its “clean” hydro projects.

The WWF takes a more nuanced approach. It says some hydro projects can be built without unacceptable harm, but its 2011 global energy plan still “severely restrict[s] future growth of hydro power to reflect the need for an evolution that respects existing ecosystems and human rights.”

Similarly, a 2011 report about Canada’s boreal forests by the Pew Environment Group considers both pros and cons of hydro. In a section about hydro called “How Green Is It?”, the report says:

Although [hydro dams] are comparatively low carbon emitters in comparison to many conventional energy sources, hydropower projects have resulted in significant impacts to wildlife habitat, ecological processes and aboriginal communities.

In a later section, the report states:

While it is clear that allowing our societies to be powered by carbon fuels is not sustainable, this does not mean that alternative or renewable energy sources can simply be viewed as having no cost whatsoever.

The report, entitled “A Forest of Blue,” does not offer a simple verdict. Rather, it says, “We must understand as many of the implications and complexities of the issues as possible.” The candour and openness to complexity demonstrated in the report are exactly what is needed in the assessment of any climate-change strategy.

In keeping with the Pew report’s frank and thorough nature, it also discusses the role Aboriginal peoples play in hydro development. This is an essential part of any discussion of hydropower in Canada since virtually all hydro projects occupy lands to which First Nations have rights. In the past, Aboriginal people vehemently (and mostly unsuccessfully) opposed major dams. That has changed: in some cases Aboriginal opposition has succeeded. The $5 billion, 1,250 MW Slave River project in Alberta has been “deferred” after project proponents were unable to reach a deal with Smith’s Landing First Nation last year.

The proposed Site C Dam, a 1,100 MW, $7.9 billion project planned for the Peace River in B.C., faces resolute opposition from four First Nations in the area. But the outcome of that David-and-Goliath battle will not be know for some time.

Elsewhere, opposition has given way to participation—David and Goliath have become allies. Most recently, members of the Innu Nation in Labrador voted in June to allow the massive Lower Churchill River projects—Muskrat Falls (824 MW) and Gull Island (2,250 MW)—to proceed. In exchange, the 2,800 Innu receive $5 million per year to assist with their process costs during and prior to construction, up to $400 million in contracts during construction, and share of project profits thereafter (5 percent of “After Debt Net Cashflow”).

The broad Tshash Petapen (New Dawn) Agreement, in which these provisions are contained, also includes an agreement in principle on land claims and $2 million a year as compensation for damages related to the existing Upper Churchill Falls dam.

Meanwhile, the Inuit (distinct from the Innu), who are concerned about downstream impacts in their territory, say they have been largely left out of the process.

In Quebec, the James Bay Cree receive over $100 million a year in hydro, forestry, and mining royalties as a result of the 2002 Peace of the Braves agreement. In it they consented to the Eastmain-1-A/Sarcelle/Rupert Project (918 MW) while securing the permanent abandonment of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert project, which would have flooded 6,000 square kilometres.

First Nations near proposed dam sites in Manitoba have been offered lump-sum compensation packages, along with the opportunity to invest in projects. For instance, the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, with its 4,500 members, will be entitled to a third of the profits of the nearly completed Wuskwatim Dam if they can come up with a third of the $1.3 billion cost of the dam. They also benefit from $60 million of employment training.

In June, four other First Nations joined Manitoba Hydro in announcing the start of construction on the 695 MW, $5.6 billion Keeyask dam. Like Nisichawayasihk, they will be offered the chance to invest in the dam, as well as employment opportunities.

What’s clear in all these cases is that Canadian utilities cannot ignore Aboriginal demands. “We can stop development,” says Ovide Mercredi, former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations and the recently retired Chief of the Misipawistik Cree Nation in northern Manitoba. His community sits right next to the 479 MW Grand Rapids Dam, which floods 115,700 hectares. In reference to the water flowing through that dam, Mercredi’s message to the province is simple: “That’s not your water, it belongs to our people and we want a share of that money.” The dam’s 50-year provincial licence expires in 2015 and Mercredi wants licence renewal to be contingent on public acknowledgement of the harm, increased mitigation of damages, and a revenue-sharing agreement. In part, the message is that if utilities do not deal with Aboriginal concerns now, they will have to later.

Whether First Nations are defiant or eager for new dams to power their economic future, the broader environmental questions remain. While Aboriginal influence has led to a reduction in the size of dams and increased environmental mitigation, and First Nations consent improves the general ethical perception of a project, there is still no tidy way to pour thousands of tons of cement into a river.

No matter who is involved, the merit of the case for hydro as a climate solution can be tested by the assumptions it rests on. These assumptions are that hydro is clean; that demand for electricity will grow; and that the primary alternative to more hydro is fossil-fuel generation. Are these solutions part of the solution or the problem?

Ultimately, the solution to climate change, as well as to watershed health, may never be found unless we move past these assumptions and replace them with better, more accurate premises.

First, dams are not green or clean in themselves. To disrupt the flow of a river and blaze a transmission corridor through kilometres of forest is, in itself, bad for the biosphere. To solve one environmental problem (global warming) with another (pouring hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cement in a free-flowing river) is counterintuitive. That said, desperate circumstances may require desperate measures.

Second, energy demand can and must be substantially reduced. The logical outcome of letting demand increase indefinitely and meeting that demand with ever more hydro and other renewables is to have every river dammed, the landscape saturated with wind and solar farms, and consumption still increasing. The ultimate, unavoidable solution is to use less energy. This must be the dominant priority.

Finally, dams do not reduce GHG emissions per se. They increase energy supply. Apart from a demonstrated continental commitment to dramatically reduce emissions (and energy demand), the case for hydro as a climate solution is, for the industry, a rather convenient truth. Hydropower can’t be part of the climate-change solution if there is no solution.

Climate change is one of humanity’s greatest challenges, and to address it we may need to conjure greater creativity than just reviving electricity generation megaprojects conceived of decades ago. Dan McDermott of the Sierra Club’s Ontario Chapters says, “The age of big dams is over.” According to him, hydro proponents “have their heads turned backwards attempting to mortgage the future to maintain the past.”

The large hydro projects currently in the works were envisioned before global warming concerned anyone, in an era summed up by former Manitoba premier Duff Roblin when he rose in the legislature in 1966 and prophesied a grandiose future for hydropower, saying, “We can have our cake, we can eat it and we can make a bigger cake, and sell part of that.”

Though hydro prospects are framed differently now, dam proponents still appear to share Roblin’s belief in limitless, consequence-free development. Now the question of whether taming more of our iconic rivers will help the climate becomes a question of whether Roblin was right.

Pierre-Luc Dusseault, 20 (Sherbrooke)

@PLDusseault — Canada’s youngest-ever MP, Dusseault, a self-professed “political junkie” who turned 20 on May 31, recently completed his first year in applied politics at l’Université de Sherbrooke. Dusseault campaigned actively and debated Liberal MP Denis Coderre and former-Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe over Twitter. Standing up in the House may be different, but Dusseault is confident. “Maybe some won’t take me seriously in the beginning,” he told Canadian Press, “but I’m ready to work hard and earn my spot.”

Mylène Freeman, 22 (Argenteuil/Papineau/Mirabel)

@MyleneFreeman — This soon-to-be McGill University grad started her political resume working on Thomas Mulclair’s 2008 campaign, and then running for councillor in Montreal’s 2009 municipal election. Fully bilingual, Freeman has worked to engage youth and women in politics. She is the former coordinator of McGill’s “Women in House” program, where young women shadow female MPs in Ottawa for two days.

Matthew Dubé, 22 (Chambly/Borduas)

@MattDube — Co-president of McGill’s NDP group alongside fellow MP-elect Charmaine Borg. The political science student has said he wants to increase federal funding for post-secondary education, especially given Quebec’s announced annual tuition increases of $325 through 2017. On the NDP’s electoral success, he told the McGill Daily: “A lot has been made of the different backgrounds [of the rookie MPs], that we’re somehow less competent. The whole point of democracy is to be representative. People don’t want to elect 308 lawyers.”

Laurin Liu, 20 (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles)

@LaurinLiu — Liu is a history and cultural studies undergrad at McGill. While she did not visit her Rivière-des-Mille-Îles riding during the campaign, she says strengthening connections to her constituents is now top priority. Liu has already criticized the media for ignoring how much energy youth bring to politics, and nailed them for hypocrisy. Why bemoan the dearth of youth in politics, she asked, and then ridicule them when they are elected to Parliament?

Dany Laferrière. Photo by Karen Bambonye.

It seems strange to be given the task of “introducing” a man who has written more than 10 books and recently won major literary prizes in France and Quebec, but there it is: I, and presumably many in English Canada, had forgotten about Dany Laferrière.

I’d been a big fan of his a decade ago. I’d read all his books. I’d included a section from his autobiographical novel A Drifting Year—a wondrously sparse book about a Haitian immigrant’s first long cold year in Montreal—in Concrete Forest, the anthology of urban Canadian fiction I edited in 1998. But since then, nothing. Between 1997 and 2009, there were no new English translations of Dany Laferrière’s books and, consequently, I forgot all about him.

What happened to Laferrière? I didn’t realize how productive he’d been until just recently, when I came across some mention of his work and looked him up. And there he was—living in Montreal after a stint in Miami, enjoying, at 58, an impressive resurgence. While most of us weren’t watching, Laferrière had written seven more books, including one that was turned into a 2005 feature film starring Charlotte Rampling (the film shares a title with his provocative novel Heading South). In 2009, without most of us even noticing, Laferrière won the major French literary award the Prix Médicis for his part-novel, part-memoir L’énigme du retour, in which the death of an author’s father prompts a return to Haiti 30-plus years after he left the country of his birth.

I’m anxious to read the book but my French is pathetic. And, two years later, there is still no translation, a state of affairs to be parsed at length some other time. Right now, I’m here to (re)introduce you to the works of Laferrière. I recently pored over the two new books that publisher Douglas & McIntyre released in translation. One was the previously mentioned Heading South, a book set in Baby Doc’s Haiti that looks at the lives of middle-aged Western women and the Haitian rent boys who service them. The other is the 2010 release I Am A Japanese Writer.

Both are classic Laferrière. Written in sparse yet poetic prose, sly and earnest at the same time, they parse the mixed messages of post-modern identity with lustful exuberance. I recommend both, but Japanese Writer is the better book and the better example of why Laferrière is so worth reading. In this restrained novel, told in short chapters of three or four pages each, the author creates an alter-ego who has, based solely on the title of his proposed book—“I Am a Japanese Writer”—scored himself an advance. Word spreads about this non-existent book and controversy grips Laferrière’s imagined Japan, a country at once provoked and obsessed with the idea of a black man who had never even set foot on their soil daring to proclaim himself one of them. This is what Laferrière does. He writes movingly and cleverly about race, nationality, and, ultimately, the multiple conflicting ways we form our identities. His prose, in this case ably translated by his longtime translator David Homel, is deadpan and devious.

It drives us forward into narratives that defy us to come to easy conclusions. “I don’t give a shit about identity,” our protagonist tells the woman sent to his apartment to photograph him for a Japanese magazine. “Look me in the eye: there is no book.”

Lucky for us, after a decade-long absence, there is a book. Look me in the eye and tell me there’s another Canadian writer with as deviously delicate a take on the post-colonial diaspora and the perils and potentials of multiculturalism.

Institution out of time: A Catholic convent and boarding school circa 1880. Photo courtesy Canadian National Archives.

In Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan, parallel education systems still exist: the secular public school boards, and separate Catholic school boards. It is time to abolish that system. The problem of separate school boards is not their Catholicism; it is their separateness. Public funding elevates one religious tradition above all others, and in secular, multicultural contemporary Canada, that is no longer a viable option.

The propriety of the Catholic school system was up for debate recently when the Halton Catholic District School Board banned gay-straight alliances because, as the chair Alice Anne LeMay said, such student groups are “not within the teachings of the Catholic Church.” An investigation by the gay and lesbian newspaper Xtra! later found that such groups are effectively banned in all 29 of Ontario’s Catholic school boards. Just a year ago, Catholic leaders, including Catholic school board trustees, led the charge against a new sexual education curriculum for all Ontario public schools, and successfully scuppered the new scheme.

These episodes are troubling, but keeping score of who wins which policy scuffle is beside the point. These problems stem from the overarching fact of constitutionally entrenched religious public schools. Separate school boards for Protestants and Catholics are a function of Article 93 of the 1867 Constitution Act, intended at the time to protect minority religious rights. The reasons that a 4th century European institution should have been embedded in our 19th century constitution may have made sense at the time, but that time is long past.

The precedent for ending separate education exists. Quebec secured a constitutional amendment exempting it from Article 93 in 1997, and thereafter reorganized its school boards along linguistic lines, not religious ones. Newfoundland and Labrador merged their school boards into one non-denominational system in 1998.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has already urged Canada [PDF] to “adopt steps in order to eliminate discrimination on the basis of religion in the funding of schools in Ontario.” Polls find significant public support for the idea, and it would undoubtedly save millions in administrative overheads. But pressure from the UN, public support, or financial incentives are all secondary to the simple truth that creating a singular, secular public school system is the right thing to do.

The problem is political will. No party is willing to touch the issue, especially after Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory’s disastrous 2007 campaign promise to fund all religious schools, for which he was widely ridiculed. Party leaders fear, probably correctly, that proposing a merger of the separate and public school boards would be labelled as anti-Catholic. It is not. It is an acknowledgment that times have changed and state-sponsored religious education of any type or denomination is no longer appropriate.