Trudeau blasts ‘Quebec bashing’ after U of Ottawa prof calls province’s government ‘white supremacist’

Dr. Amir Attaran, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, made the controversial comments over Twitter last week, asserting that Quebec has a "white supremacist government" and referred to it as "the Alabama of the North."

"Enough with the Quebec bashing," Trudeau declared in French during a joint press conference with Quebec Premier Francois Legault.

"This is unacceptable," Legault chimed. He expressed "disappointment" with the refusal of the university to condemn their own professor.

The Parti Quebecois had demanded an apology from the professor and a condemnation from the university shortly after the comments were made.

At the federal level, Bloc Quebecois MP Alain Therrien referred to Attaran's comments as "hate speech without any consequences," further describing Attaran as "ignorant" and a "Francophobe."

The university, however, stood its ground, with University of Ottawa president Jacques Fremont saying that "I deplore these kinds of highly polarizing statements made in public forums, particularly on social media... Nonetheless, freedom of expression, we will agree, is not a buffet where one can pick and choose what kind of speech is deemed acceptable or not."

Attaran also doubled down following the demand from the Parti Quebecois, asserting that Quebec's willingness to ignore what he describes as "systemic racism" make their government "white supremacist."

"Accusing the nation of Quebec of being systematically racist, that is not, to most, a difficult proposition — although it has proven extremely difficult for Mr. Legault and his government," Attaran insisted in an interview on Monday.

"It merely means you treat whites as supreme. And Quebec undeniably does so, as when a government hospital advertises for 'white women only,'" he continued, pointing to the same job posting his tweet referred to. It is unclear how a single incident reflects upon an entire province.

He also took to Twitter to criticize Quebec for its "inferior academic freedom," referring to the Andrew Potter affair, when a the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada was forced to resign from his position after describing Quebec as having "social malaise."

"Just because Quebec has inferior academic freedom doesn't mean the same ethnocentric browbeating produces results in Ontario," he wrote.

Following the remarks from Trudeau, Attaran once again took to Twitter to attack the Prime Minister, pointing to his blackface scandal and declaring Trudeau to be "an ally of white supremacy."

"#Blackface wasn't an act. It's the real [Justin Trudeau]," he declared in another tweet.

He also doubled down on calling Quebec's government a "white supremacist government" following Trudeau's remarks.

Trudeau and Legault have not made further comments on the matter since the Monday press conference.

The University of Ottawa has previously been the subject of criticism after defending the academic freedom of a controversial professor.

After Dr. Verushka Lieutenant-Duval has used the N-word in an art and gender class in September of 2020, University of Ottawa's president defended her use of the slur. "Freedom of expression and academic freedom are essential to the functioning of any university," president Fremont said in the wake of the incident.

Many of Lieutenant-Duval's colleagues also defended the embattled professor, with many signing a petition to support her academic freedom.