No Quebec help for francophones in ROC

In a familiar ritual as Canadian as drunken curlers, the premiers of Quebec and Ontario exchanged jerseys for the cameras before their first meeting in Toronto this week. From Quebec, the business-as-usual mood of the visuals looked surreal, considering that François Legault had been expected to deliver a stern message to Doug Ford. This province’s politico-media class was in an uproar over the Ford government’s cancellation of what would have been Ontario’s first allFrench university, and abolition of the office of advocate for public services in French. There was no question, however, of postponing until a happier time the friendly public exchange of the Canadiens and Maple Leafs jerseys personalized with the recipient’s name and his number in the order of his province’s premiers. To satisfy his audience back home, Legault dutifully requested that Ford reconsider his government’s actions affecting his province’s linguistic minority. Ford declined the request, as Legault would have done in similar circumstances. And that was that. Legault would not allow the Ontario francos’ problems to disrupt the important business of the meeting, which was business between the two provinces. The truth is, despite the different colours, the Hockey Jersey Summit showed that Legault and Ford are on the same team: provincial governments defending their jurisdiction over their minorities. Quebec anglophones understand that Canada’s official-language minorities are linked: a setback for one is a setback for all. The Montreal Gazette editorial board, the Quebec Community Groups Network, and Liberal Kathleen Weil, the senior anglo member of the National Assembly, were quick to express solidarity with the Franco-Ontariens. Of course, they acted in their community’s self-interest. But that self-interest makes the anglos more reliable allies for the franco minorities than Quebec is, as Legault demonstrated in Toronto. For Quebec long ago turned its back on the francos in the other provinces. In the late 1960s, Quebec nationalists who dominated the national francophone conferences called the Estates General of French Canada formally abandoned the minorities to their fate, while they fell back on franco-controlled Fortress Quebec. They essentially separated Quebec from French Canada, to create a new Québécois nation. Since then, they have shown little interest in the remaining French-Canadians, except to use their condition for domestic political purposes, in arguments either for Quebec’s secession or against the “privileges” of its Best Treated Minority in North America. Quebec hasn’t just abandoned the franco minorities, however. It’s also betrayed them. Recognition of the rights of Canada’s official-language minorities depends upon acceptance of the country’s founding principle of English-French duality. Ford, in his expressed opinion that French-Canadians are entitled to no more consideration than Chinese- or Italian-Canadians, rejected that principle. But so has Legault’s province. It has done so since the 1970s, in legislation making French supreme over English, including declaring the province officially French only, and, from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, banning English from commercial signs. Francos in the other provinces were unintended collateral victims of those actions. In another area, however, Quebec’s betrayal of the franco minorities has been deliberate. When the francos have gone to court in cases that might extend minority rights in this province as well, they have found Quebec siding with their governments against them. In 2015, Quebec’s former Liberal government supported the government of Yukon in successfully resisting an attempt by the territory’s small French-speaking minority to ease restrictions on admission to its schools. (Sound familiar?) This leaves the Trudeau federal government as the only effective political ally of the linguistic minorities. This week, in response to the Ontario incident, it announced the revival of a program that funds minority-rights court cases. That might not save a French-language university in Ontario that doesn’t exist yet. But it might help Quebec anglos resist legislation promised by the governing Coalition Avenir Québec party that would weaken their control over their schools or their effective political representation.