Month: May 2022

Fearing the erosion of the French language in the province of Quebec, the right-leaning government of François Legault passed Bill 96 on May 24, 2022, which was the culmination of months of public debate over the Bill’s reach and scope. The government claims that Bill 96 would protect the use of French in the public sphere, while opponents charge that it would infringe on the rights of linguistic minorities, such as anglophones and Indigenous communities. Regardless of the Bill’s impacts, it is broadly popular in Quebec: 62% of residents support the law, with 38% opposing. No doubt, François Legault’s ability to pass popular and far-reaching reforms like Bill 96 helps his electoral prospects; he appears to be heading to another safe majority government in elections scheduled for October.

The dispute over Bill 96 is more than a polite disagreement about policy, however. Moral values permeate the debate, most visible on the extremes. Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne called it a “hideous new language law” and claimed that the Bill challenges whether or not Canadians are “a genuine political community, with moral obligations to one another”. On the other end of the spectrum, the leader of the Parti Quebecois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, opposed the law because it didn’t go far enough in protecting the French language. He called the firm protection of the French language a “moral duty” and argued that the government of Quebec was too soft. Interestingly, both Andrew Coyne and Paul St-Pierre Plamondon believe their causes to be morally right, despite disagreeing about seemingly every aspect of this debate. This suggests a difference in underlying values rather than in policy preferences, and when emotions run hot, we should use values analysis to better understand the issue.

If you haven’t heard, Elon Musk intends to buy Twitter and unlock its potential as “the platform for free speech around the globe.” As Musk tells it, an overbearing and biased board of directors at the social media site has stifled conversation and unfairly targeted conservatives. Under his private ownership, such censorship would be relaxed – even former President Donald Trump would be allowed to return.

No doubt, Elon Musk believes in his cause, and he has described it in terms of a moral crusade. In his letter to the board of directors announcing his intention to purchase the company, Musk called free speech a “societal imperative for a functioning democracy.” To him, Twitter’s ban of former President Trump was “morally wrong and flat-out stupid”, as it undermined trust in the platform and restricted speech.

With the Great Recession, the European Debt Crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the past fifteen years have been remarkably difficult for the European Union. In early 2022, the next major challenge emerged: the Russian Invasion of Ukraine and the resulting refugee crisis. As of writing, there are currently more than five million Ukrainian refugees in neighbouring European countries. An additional 6.5 million are displaced within Ukraine itself, and as the war progresses, it is possible the situation will worsen, as more and more people cross international borders to find safety. Most deeply affected will be those countries that border Ukraine to the west: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania.

Prior to the invasion, you would have been forgiven for assuming that Eastern European countries would resist a major influx of asylum seekers. After all, in 2015, when the EU was struggling to manage a huge wave of refugees (arriving from primarily Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan), these four countries in particular were hesitant to open their borders. The Polish government, magnanimously, offered to accept just 100 Syrian refugees between 2016 and 2020, hardly an outpouring of support. Not to be outdone, Slovakia offered to take 200, but they had to be Christian, and Romania was willing to accept a few thousand. Hungary’s nationalist government was particularly strict, building a 523 kilometre-long fence to keep migrants out and forcibly removing more than 71,000 asylum seekers who made it into the country anyway. With this historical record, these four countries may have been expected to show a similar unwillingness to grant Ukrainians asylum in 2022.