[8][9] Quebec-bashing has been denounced as dishonest,[10] false,[10] defamatory[11] prejudiced,[10][12] racist,[9][13][14][15] colonialist,[9][16] or hate speech[17] by many people of all origins[18] and political colours[19] in Quebec.
[citation needed] An early Quebec nationalist movement emerged in the 1820s under the Parti Patriote, which argued for greater autonomy within the British Empire and at times flirted with the idea of independence.
The Military Service Act was passed in July, but there was fierce opposition, mostly from French Canadians (led not only by firebrand Henri Bourassa, but also by moderate Wilfrid Laurier).
In 1914, the drive to create the 22nd Infantry Battalion (French-Canadian) had necessitated large rallies of French Canadians and political pressure to overcome Minister Sam Hughes' abhorrence of the idea.
The protective language law outlawed the public display of English, making French signs obligatory, regulations that would later be overturned following court challenges.
[citation needed] Historian and sociologist Gérard Bouchard, à co-chair of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, has suggested that the francophones of Quebec or French Canadian descent consider themselves a fragile and colonized minority.
A French Canadian who seemed until the early 1980s to have some degree of support among the Quebec people, he believed that Canada needed to abandon the "two nations" theory in favour of multiculturalism and insisted on treating all provinces as inherently equal to one another.
[38] Professor Kenneth McRoberts of York University stated that the Trudeau legacy has led the "rest of Canada" to misunderstand Quebec nationalism.
In 1991, McRoberts argued that the effect of Trudeau's policies of official bilingualism, multiculturalism, and entrenchment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, coupled with provincial language laws in Quebec establishing "the preeminence of French within its own territory," has created an appearance of Quebec having acted "in bad faith" in violation of "a contract which it had made with English Canada whereby official bilingualism would be the rule throughout the country.
[citation needed] In 2000, a further storm of criticism erupted as a result of remarks made about Jews by Yves Michaud, a prominent Quebec nationalist public figure; they were interpreted by some[41] as being anti-Semitic.
[citation needed] On April 17, 1977, five months after the first accession of the Parti québécois to power, The Washington Post published an op-ed piece, entitled "What It Means to Be French In Canada," by the journalist Robert Guy Scully.
"[46] He described Quebecer society as incurably "sick" and pointed to the economic poverty found in the French-speaking eastern part of Montreal: "No one would want to live there who doesn't have to....
"[45] Esther Delisle, a French-Canadian PhD student at Université Laval, wrote a thesis that discussed the "fascist" and anti-Semitic published writings by intellectuals and leading newspapers in Quebec in the decade before World War II.
She published a book, The Traitor and the Jew (1992), which was based on that work and examined the articles and beliefs of Lionel Groulx, an important intellectual in the history of French-Canadian Catholicism and nationalism.
In her book, Delisle claimed that Groulx, under the pseudonym Jacques Brassier, had written in 1933 in L'Action nationale: Within six months or a year, the Jewish problem could be resolved, not only in Montreal but from one end of the province of Quebec to the other.
[49] Gérard Bouchard of the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi identified several dozen errors, including incorrect citations and references that could not be found in cited source material.
Pierre Lemieux, an economist and author, wrote: "The magazine's attack is much weakened by Claude Ryan, editor of Le Devoir in the 1970s, declaring that he has changed his mind and come close to Delisle's interpretation after reading her book.
The claim was repeated on television by a former Parti québécois cabinet minister, Claude Charron, who was introducing a 2002 broadcast on Canal D of Je me souviens, the Eric R. Scott documentary about Delisle's book.
[52] Referring to Groulx and to the Le Devoir newspaper, Francine Dubé wrote in the National Post on April 24, 2002, that "the evidence Delisle has unearthed seems to leave no doubt that both were anti-Semitic and racist.
The well-known Montreal author Mordecai Richler wrote essays in which he decried as racism, tribalism, provincialism, and anti-Semiticism among nationalist politicians in French-speaking Quebec, notably in a 1991 article in The New Yorker and his 1992 book Oh Canada!
"[62] Left-leaning politicians, French advocacy groups, and media commentators from Quebec criticized Cherry and CBC Television on numerous occasions after the statements.
In 2004 the CBC put Cherry's segment, Coach's Corner, on a seven-second tape delay to review his comments and prevent future incidents.
The controversy ended once the hospital board refused to back down, and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien defended freedom of thought in a democratic society.
"[66] Three days later, Kay published "The Rise of Quebecistan" in the National Post, claiming that the French-speaking politicians had supported terrorism, Hezbollah, and anti-Semitism for votes from Canadians of convenience.
[91] Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was particularly critical about the Jan Wong article that linked the Dawson College shooting incident to allegations of racist attitudes on the part of Quebecers.
[97] The journalist Normand Lester wrote three polemic volumes of The Black Book of English Canada in which Quebec-bashing is denounced and in which acts of discrimination, racism, and intolerance towards people who were not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are itemized.
[100] In 1998, under the leadership of Gilles Rhéaume, the Mouvement souverainiste du Québec filed a memorandum to the International Federation of Human Rights in Paris that mentioned anti-Quebec press articles.
In 2000, Rhéaume filed a memorandum to the United Nations regarding "violations by Canada of the political rights of Quebecers," including media defamation.
The petition denounced many incidents when the Quebec sovereignty movement was compared to the Nazi regime and it also denounced many English media outlets and many social media sites such as Facebook, including some recent pages which were titled "I hate Pauline Marois" (retitled "Down With Pauline Marois") and another page which was titled "The Lac-Mégantic train disaster was hilarious.
Chantal Hébert noted that commentators such as Graham Fraser, Jeffrey Simpson and Paul Wells, who are more positive with regard to Quebec, were frequently called upon by the Canadian media since the 1995 referendum.