The Bouchard Taylor commission
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The Bouchard-Taylor Commission was established in 2007 in response to growing discontentment among French- Canadian Quebecers regarding their fear of losing Quebec’s national history to immigrants and minorities following cases that highlighted clashes between the cultural and religious practices of immigrants and Quebecois way of life. After extensive research, the commission released their final report and 2008 and concluded that “the perception that Québec identity is under threat was mistaken and that ‘collective life in Québec is not in a critical situation’” (Mahrouse, 88)
While the commission took pride in its citizens’ forum as a means of reiterating their commitment to an open, unbiased and inclusive process, Mahrouse argues that in allowing a platform for various ideologies and perspectives, the commission failed to account for the invisible ways in which this forum reinforced the very social hierarchy it wished to address. The dialogues on the forum were set up in a way that immigrants ended up justifying their existence and defending themselves to the French-Canadian Quebecers who took on the role of self proclaimed flag bearers of Quebec nationalism in charge of judging who was worthy of being in Quebec. This resulted in the ostracisation of immigrants and racialised folks as a separate, distant entity. In essence, the citizens’ forum that the commission placed at the forefront of their claims of an inclusive process in turn reiterated the existence of a dominant group as the ones whose existence is rightful and a subordinate group as the ‘other’.