One shouldn’t push parallels too far. But some between Stephen Harper and Pauline Marois are inescapable.

In calling the Quebec election for April 7, Marois broke her own fixed election date legislation. In calling the 2008 election, Harper ignored his own 2007 law setting fixed election dates every four years.

Both use phony wedge issues to consolidate their base and polarize the public. Neither cares for the long-term consequences of deeply dividing society. Her charter of Quebec values dealt with a crisis that did not exist. He spent billions on “tough-on-crime” initiatives when crime has been going down.

Both exploit prejudices against minorities. Marois was crude in going after Muslims, Jews and Sikhs in the name of secularism. He is clever in isolating Canada’s one million Muslims in the name of fighting terrorism. Both use the same tactics of hand-picking totally unrepresentative Muslims to attack the community.

Both copy the Republican Party’s dirty tactics of suppressing the votes of groups that are likely to vote for the opposition. For years, the GOP has been making it nearly impossible for blacks, Latinos and the young to vote. The PQ government made it difficult for Anglos, especially students, in Montreal to vote. The Harper government is changing election laws to try to disenfranchise about 500,000 people who are not likely to vote Conservative.

Both use Orwellian terminology to peddle their wares. She called her signature issue the charter of secular values when, in fact, it violated the most fundamental secular value, the right to religion. He calls his plan to make elections unfair “the Fair Elections Act.”

Both control information and pack institutions with their own appointees in order to squelch dissent. When the Quebec Council for the Status of Women was deeply divided over the charter, Marois repacked it with four new pro-charter appointees. Harper has demonstrated the same instinct with ever more partisan appointments, from the Senate and the courts to tribunals and other federal institutions.

Both ignore expert advice.

She pushed for the charter against the advice of the provincial justice ministry, the human rights commission and business groups. He killed the gun registry against the advice of police chiefs across the nation, pushed his crime agenda against the advice of criminologists, and axed the mandatory long-form census against the advice of his own finance minister (Jim Flaherty) and virtually every expert, including the chief statistician at Statistics Canada who quit in protest.

Harper and his ministers also launch vicious personal attacks on experts. The latest example is Pierre Poilievre’s tirade against Marc Mayrand, the chief electoral officer, that he is opposing the changes to the elections act merely to amass more power, a bigger budget and escape accountability.

Both Marois and Harper spend government money on advertising campaigns promoting programs that advance their partisan purposes — she in pushing the charter, he in spending at least $200 million on his Economic Action Plan and other initiatives central to the fortunes of the Conservative party.

Both treat the opposition not as adversaries but enemies. Anyone who does not agree with her is not a true Quebecer; anyone who does not agree with Harper is not a Canadian patriot.

Both dislike multiculturalism.

Marois reflects the long-standing Quebec opposition to it and preference for “interculturalism,” with its implicit supremacy of not only the French language but also French culture.

Harper, on the other hand, is the first prime minister to disrespect the federal law of the land — Section 27 of the Charter and the Multiculturalism Act. Either he does not believe in that policy or thinks of it as a Liberal achievement that should be ignored, as he has tried to do with the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights.

He and his ministers prefer the term pluralism to multiculturalism. Harper said so, slyly, on Feb. 28 when welcoming the Aga Khan in Toronto.

“His Highness is likewise dedicated to pluralism, a foundational principle of Canadian governance. I am not speaking here of the food and festival multiculturalism of recent decades. Rather I refer to a much older consensus born on the frontier, in which your character mattered more to your neighbours than your lineage.”

This is triply dishonest.

The “multiculturalism of recent decades” is decidedly not about food and festivals but rather constitutional equality for everyone, precisely what many in his Conservative base cannot quite stomach — like many in Marois’ constituency. “The older consensus” that he’s nostalgic about placed minorities at the mercy of the majority, just as Marois and Co. still want. As for “character,” he is implying that multiculturalism dilutes it.

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Even Quebecers have just rejected such outdated ideas. In the rest of Canada, people see multiculturalism as central to our identity, second only to medicare but ahead of hockey.

Marois has been sent packing. We wait to see what Canadians have in store for Harper.

Haroon Siddiqui’s column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca

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