How to Get to Hérouxville

Abstract

This paper explores “reasonable accommodation blowback” in Canada and, in particular, the province of Quebec. As will be argued below, the “accommodation crisis” in Quebec resulted from two related developments: i) a misapplication of the term “reasonable accommodation” taken from disability law which has allowed it to be perceived as providing undeserved preferential treatment to minorities and; ii) the practice of interculturalism that then magnifies this perception of preferential treatment as obstructing the integration of minorities into the dominant French-language culture. In part, this explains why the accommodation crisis occurred in Quebec and has sparked a far more virulent blowback in that province than in the rest of Canada. This suggests that, while some might argue that interculturalism is “complimentary” to multiculturalism or “does not contradict the stated multicultural ideology”, multiculturalism can also be in opposition to and even antagonistic to the goals of interculturalism.