By Beryl Wajsman, Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Najib Slaoui, Joanne Gaudreau and Michael Gardner are the quintessential trio that Quebec is constantly propagandizing that this society reflects. An allophone, a francophone and an anglophone who have been thriving as entrepreneurs since 2000 running the Formule 1 Emporium on Crescent St. When we visited on Sunday it was bustling and they were serving customers in a polyglot of languages. A Quebec success story sociologically and economically right? Wrong!
As of last week, they are now enemies of the people because some of the wares they sell have the names of cigarette brands on them. Their store sells new and used automobile memorabilia and collectibles. Some of the most sought after are used t-shirts, racing suits, lithographs and rare model cars that come intricately detailed including the logos of sponsors. And some of the sponsors were cigarette makers. And that just doesn't sit well with the tobacco police from Quebec's Health and Social Services Department.
Last week an inspector walked in and, without identifying himself, bought a nine-year-old shirt bearing a Rothman's logo. Only later did he come back with another inspector and angrily announced to the startled owners that they were breaking the law. Among the other products he objected to were racing lithographs dating from the 1990s by the well known Belgian artist Benoit Delige, which depicted racecars with cigarette logos on them.
Another was a hand-painted figurine of Jacques Villeneuve in the uniform he wore when we won the Canadian Grand Prix in 1997. It also had a Rothman's logo. Co-owner Joanne Gaudreau put it best when she said, "This is art. That's the way things were then and I can't modify them." And that's the threat that all citizens of Quebec must be on guard against. What's next? Prohibiting Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings because he depicts people smoking? Genevive Villemure-Denis, spokesperson for the anti-tobacco measures division of HSS said, "The law does not make exceptions for collectable objects." I hope museums are paying attention to their catalogue, poster and souvenir sales. Where is George Orwell when you need him?
When a state seeks to wipe out institutional memory in history, art, opinion, it is a state gone mad with the intoxicating power of mind control. We've seen too much of it lately in this province. Quebec press council decisions demonizing editorialists. A new history "pedagogie" from the Education ministry that glosses over, or totally eliminates, seminal events because they may be too "controversial". But perhaps the most dangerous arrow in the government's quiver is the enforcement of law retroactively.
We see enough of it in revenue regulations that suddenly change rules going back one or more years. No wonder the entrepreneurial spirit is dead in Quebec. The current anti-tobacco law was enacted last May. Article 27 of it prohibits the sale of non-tobacco objects that have a name or logo associated directly with a tobacco product.
Putting aside the insupportable breadth of the law itself, if this Article is to be applied retroactively to products acquired by merchants into inventory pre-dating the law, as was the case here, then on top of whatever fines the tobacco police choose to levy – which run from $1,000 to $2,000 for a first offense - merchants also have to absorb an immediate financial penalty by dumping paid-up inventory. That is more than a breach of freedom of commerce. It is even more than the commonly made comparison to double taxation. It is nothing less than the state invading your private domain and destroying your property. It is a violation of the spirit as much as rape is a violation of the body. But it seems that in Quebec even state rape can be "retroactively" legalized!
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