Tremblay reflects local 'silent majority,' mayor says

Another Quebec mayor has come out blazing with comments about the province's religious traditions and ethnicity, as inflammatory statements from one of his peers continue to simmer.

Trois-Rivires Mayor Yves Lvesque affirmed that he thinks remarks by Saguenay Mayor Jean Tremblay might go too far.

Tremblaysaid this week he's peeved by having "someone whose name I can't even pronounce come from Algeria [and] make the rules."

Tremblay spurred a series of reactions after voicing his opinion, including peopleridiculing his comment on YouTube.

But Lvesque said Tremblay still reflects a "silent majority" in Quebec who don't want crucifixes removed from public buildings or prayers abolished at city halls.

And he bridled that often those who do are "not even immigrants" but "people from here."

The typically outspoken Tremblay said Tuesday night he's angered by the Parti Qubcois's election campaign proposal to draft a secular charter that would remove conspicuous religious symbols from public institutions.

He accused the party of letting a PQ candidate "who doesn't understand our culture at all" guide the non-religious movement.

The PQ candidate in Trois-RiviresDjemila Benhabib, who has Cypriot and Algerian heritagewas a prominent face when the party announced its plans for the secular charter. She has previously stated the Quebec national assembly should remove the crucifix over the Speaker's chair, but now says she's fine with her party's view that it can stay.

Lvesque said that Tremblay's comments might have pushed the limit, but he maintained that religion shouldn't be scrubbed from public life.

"Sometimes he goes too far, but we know he's that way. And I think it depicts the situation somewhat what the majority of people think, the silent majority in Quebec, about this whole thing about a secular charter," Lvesque told Montreal radio station 98.5 FM on Thursday in French.

"We have traditions in Quebec that have existed for a very long time, and it's a shame to see that the minority are succeeding in stopping those traditions. It's not even immigrants, often. Often it's people from here."

Lvesque pointed to a case brought before Quebec's Human Rights Commission where a French-speaking white woman succeeding in forcing Trois-Rivires city council to cease from opening all its meetings with a prayer led by the mayor.

"It was a Qubcoise pure laine who got prayer shut down at city hall," Lvesque said, using a term sometimes employed in Quebec, albeit divisively, to refer to people having distant French-Canadian ancestry.

"Often it's not immigrants but old-stock Qubcois who want us to make public institutions secular."