French-speakers in Ontario have little leverage

Voting patterns, separatism’s decline leave francophones in ROC vulnerable

It makes perfect sense that Ontario Premier Doug Ford has taken aim at many of the rights and institutions of his province’s linguistic minority. The practitioner of what looks like a particularly cynical brand of populism, Ford is also adept at retail politics. And as Ontario’s electoral map shows, Ford hardly needs the province’s 550,000 French-speakers to stay afloat. Broadly speaking, Ontario francophones are clustered around Ottawa as well as in the province’s north — areas mostly coloured Liberal red and NDP orange, respectively. In the zerosum game of Fordian politics, francophones bet on the wrong horses. Ergo, they form not a population but a budget line item, to be struck out when times are tough. As Ford himself put it last week, “I love francophone Ontarians. I love francophones right across the country. We don’t have the money. It’s not personal.” Not personal, and not necessarily be limited to Ontario, either. There are four conservative provincial governments outside Quebec, all of which have cried poverty in one way or another. By cutting its plan for a francophone university and the province’s language commissioner off at the knees, Ford has telegraphed the political viability of snuffing out the linguistic survival of francophones in other provinces — the majority of whom, like their Ontario brethren, tend not to vote for right-leaning parties. The francophones in New Brunswick are particularly vulnerable. French-speakers make up 32 per cent of the province’s population, by far the highest percentage of any province outside of Quebec. And yet, despite their significant demographic weight, francophones regularly fight for the right to exist. Some English-language groups in New Brunswick have denounced the province’s policy of official bilingualism as an expensive extravagance that disproportionately favours French-speakers. The People’s Alliance of New Brunswick, a political party bathed in this simmering resentment, currently holds the balance of power in the province’s minority government. New Brunswick is also $14.5 billion in debt, making a tempting scapegoat out of anyone who speaks la langue de Daft Punk. For another, albeit less-spoken, reason why cutting French services outside of Quebec is suddenly politically viable, one only need look to Quebec and the veritable collapse of the separatist movement. This movement often views francophones outside Quebec at once as victims and useful idiots oblivious to their own assimilation — a forever shrinking cautionary tale about Canada’s assimilationist mores. Simplistic as it was, it put a political price to cutting linguistic minority services in Canada, as support for separation in Quebec would increase when francophones outside the province were persecuted. In 1997, when the Ontario government attempted to close Ontario’s only French-language hospital, Ottawa’s Montfort, the debate took on national-unity implications. The hospital stayed open. Not coincidentally, this feedback loop has faded alongside the threat of Quebec separation. In Ontario, closing a French hospital in 1997 was politically fraught; in 2018, cutting plans for a French university is a lead-pipe cinch. Oddly enough, Canada’s one million francophones living outside of Quebec seemed to get more respect when Quebec’s 6.8 million francophones were threatening to leave en masse. Now, in the absence of that threat, the tide seems to have turned and rights are being eroded. And say what you will about the Parti Québécois of yore. At least it was the first to name a minister for anglophones, in 2012, and even before that, recognized the importance of linguistic-minority institutions. As such, despite a combined 17 years of rule by the allegedly evil separatists since 1976, the province has thriving English-language universities, CEGEPs and school boards. The huge MUHC hospital, offering service in both languages but commonly known as the English superhospital, is a proud if ugly exclamation point on Montreal’s horizon. Undermining linguistic rights and institutions is wrong. Yet Doug Ford isn’t likely to suffer as he might have even a decade ago. With political leverage limited, the best option for francophones in Ontario would be to turn to the courts.