This is not what I thought I’d be doing in this election. All week, I’ve found myself being asked to comment on the prime minister’s brownface moment. I’ve recorded a long press conference, written a thought piece for a major American paper, and appeared on more national and international media outlets than I can count.
While the vast majority of feedback has been positive, there have been critics on every side of the spectrum. Some have accused me of letting the prime minister off too easy, others have said I’m being too hard on him. Some have even said I’m being hypocritical, given how I’ve called out racism and religious bigotry in the public sphere before.
All these criticisms along with all the political hot takes on what this means for the prime minister’s future spectacularly miss the point. They’re not really what this issue should be raising for Canadians, and certainly not why this matters for our country.
What Justin Trudeau did was stupid. It was stupid in 2001 and it’s stupid now. At the same time, he’s been a powerful force for human rights during his political career. This is complex and confusing because people are complex and confusing. And like everyone, the prime minister deserves to be judged on the totality of his record. The voters will decide that next month.
What is undeniable, though, is that this conversation is happening against the backdrop of something dark, something dangerous and something different in Canada.
Hate crimes are way up (47 per cent increase in Canada between 2016 and 2017), incidents of divisive language are becoming more common online and in line at the Tim Hortons, and those aspiring to political leadership are either silent or mouthing platitudes to rationalize it all. This should worry us all as Canadians.
I’ve been reflecting a lot on my own experience. I grew up in Calgary. As I’ve often said, my family didn’t have a lot of money, but we made up for it in opportunity. I graduated from excellent public schools, haunted the public library, learned to swim — sort of — in a public pool. I never once felt there was any job or any career option closed to me because of the colour of my skin or because of my faith.
Of course, I had racist things happen to me. Some were big, some were small. Some hurt, some were easy to shrug off. But that’s the deal for everyone who’s part of a minority, Yes, we know that the security guard in the store will pay a little more attention to us when we walk through, that we’ll always face extra questions when we get a new job, that people visibly exhale when they hear us speak with a “normal” Canadian accent. And we have jokes. SO many jokes. Go back to where I came from, you say? But houses are so expensive in Toronto now!
It’s all part of the deal. In return for putting up with all of these irritations, we get to live here, in the single place on earth where we and our kids will have the best possible chance to succeed.
But as someone wise told me last week, a tonne of feathers still weighs a tonne. And sometimes those feathers are particularly pointy.
I was surprised, for example, when during the 2017 election, I was exposed to far more racism and hateful comments than in the previous two elections combined. By a factor of 10. When I mentioned it, I was accused by a columnist in this newspaper of “playing the race card,” which is about the most offensive thing you can say to someone who is trying to highlight prejudice. Trust me, the “race card” is rarely part of a winning hand. I’m a big boy and I can handle this kind of stuff, but if someone is talking to you about their lived experience, you should actually try to listen to them, not tell them to toughen up and ignore insults.
Which brings us to Bill 21 in Quebec. We now have a law in this country, in 2019, that restricts what job you can have based on your faith. Exactly the opposite of what I believed growing up. There are those who say that this is about religious neutrality. Make no mistake. It is not. This is a law that targets three groups of people: Muslim women who cover their heads, baptized Sikhs and Jewish men who wear a yarmulke. No other sizable religious groups in the province have to wear anything as part of their religious faith. Those who wear modest dress can simply claim it is their personal style, not a religious garment. Those who have long beards can claim they are simply hipsters. A small cross can be worn under the shirt; a turban cannot.
What this ban says is that people of certain faiths, and only these faiths, can’t be trusted to do their jobs. It tells schools and municipalities that they can’t hire the best people. It says that kids in public schools can’t be exposed to people different than them.
Some say that we should not speak about this. Our national political leaders could not run away faster from this issue. They’re scared of losing votes. They’re scared because this law is popular in Quebec, and probably in other parts of the country. Even the federal leader who wears a turban suggests he doesn’t want to be divisive by opposing this actively.
This is wrong. There is a lot the federal government could and should do about Quebec’s law. It could use its constitutional power to disallow or reserve the legislation. It could do what the U.S. government did with states that refused to acknowledge civil rights and withhold federal funding from any province that violates the Charter of Rights.
When we close our ears and our mouths to injustice, we allow it to fester. I challenge anyone to listen in to the phone calls or read the emails and social media posts that come into my office about sharia law and sending “them” home and remain optimistic about the community in which we live.
But I am optimistic. Every day. One of my favourite volunteer jobs is to serve as a member of the jury for the Global Pluralism Prize. I’m on the jury because I’m Canadian. I get to learn about people in communities around the world doing amazing things to bring people together and create opportunity. In almost every case, they look to Canada as an example. Let’s live up to that.
Naheed Nenshi is the mayor of Calgary.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/nenshi-theres-something-more-threatening-than-trudeaus-blackface/wcm/2ea1c208-bbcc-43a5-831b-5c6a0a893e7a
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