Little Herouxville, a village of 1,300 in Quebec’s Mauricie region, has been in the news worldwide since its town council adopted a set of standards aimed at immigrants, spelling out what is acceptable comportment in the municipality and what is not.

What grabbed the most attention is that the list includes a specific prohibition against stoning women in public and burning them alive and an interdiction against face covering, except at Halloween - measures clearly aimed at Muslims, even though the town is almost entirely old-stock Quebec francophone and there isn’t a single Muslim resident.

Andre Drouin, the town councillor who instigated the measure, raised the ante on the weekend when he appeared on a popular Quebec TV talk show and called on the provincial government to declare a state of emergency to protect Quebec culture from distortion by foreign pressures.
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Louise Trudel, who also attended the meeting, insisted there is nothing racist about the Herouxville initiative.

“I have nothing against immigrants, I know a lot of immigrants. But at one point there has to be a limit to accommodating them. If they came here, it must be because they like the way we live.

“We took our religion out of everything, the schools, the government. Why should they try to bring in theirs?”

The most common attitude in town is foursquare behind the council initiative.

“You either do catch-up or you do prevention. We’re doing prevention,” said Claude Veillet, a retired police officer. “We don’t want this to turn into a tower of Babel.”
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