Are anglos ready for language reforms?
Activism muted as provincial and federal governments plan to introduce legislation
This is the first instalment in a six-day series called Quebec Anglophones in 2021. Look for the other elements in the series on our editorial page starting Tuesday.
The sense of concern, even alarm, is clear in Robert Libman's voice when asked about the mood of Quebec's English-speaking community these days.
“It looks as if we are being drawn into another intense language battle in 2021, and we're being drawn into this alone and unarmed,” Libman said last week in an interview with the Montreal Gazette.
“It's very disconcerting. We're political orphans. We're completely marginalized politically right now. There is a sense either of apathy in our community or a sense of resignation.”
A veteran of Quebec's language debates in his past role as leader of the now defunct Equality Party, which fought for language rights in the early 1990s, Libman has seen his share of highs and lows in what is a quintessentially Quebec issue — dating back 44 years to the creation of the French Language Charter with Bill 101.
Now, at the start of a new year, the issue will be front and centre again as the two-yearold Coalition Avenir Québec government acts on a promise to beef up Quebec's language laws in the name of protecting French, which it believes to be in decline.
Simon Jolin-barrette, the minister responsible for the French language, is promising a “robust” package of reforms to the laws that cover everything from commercial signs to the language used in the workplace and shops.
For the record, the minister has no plans to legislate the use of the “Bonjour-hi” greeting used in so many Montreal shops, even though he does not like it.
Parallel to these provincial actions are the federal government's plans to overhaul the 50-year-old Official Languages Act, which states French and English are the official languages of Canada and offers protection for linguistic minorities.
Language became a political football in Ottawa before Christmas, with all parties jockeying for Quebec's nationalist votes prior to the looming federal election.
The result is that, ready or not, language has crept back into the news. Caught in the vortex is Quebec's English-speaking community, which has gone to the barricades many times to defend what it feels are its fundamental rights.
This time, with many of the community's stalwarts retired or otherwise gone, and a new, more bilingual generation less interested in the issue, it would be a stretch to say the same zeal exists.
“That's what I find frustrating,” Libman said. “(The debate is) being driven by a certain nationalist rhetoric that is not prevalent in the larger population, especially in young people. You know young people aren't as fearful anymore — they have the North American reality in the palm of their hands.
“Smartphones are their entry point to the North American reality, where the notion of the English language isn't so much of a fear factor. They also aren't burdened by some of the historical linguistic baggage.”
Nevertheless, Libman said it has become politically incorrect to speak up about some concerns.
He mentioned the fate of Liberal MP Emmanuella Lambropoulos, who got herself in hot water in Ottawa in November when she suggested she needed to see proof that French is in decline in Quebec, as nationalists and indeed the CAQ government say is the case.
“Her own party threw her under the bus and she didn't even defend herself,” Libman said. “She backed off and apologized instead of provoking a debate about whether some of these measures or some of these fears go too far.”
Now 60, Libman made his name in politics with the language issue. In 1988 he co-founded the Equality Party as a protest against the Liberal government's decision to extend a ban on English on commercial signs.
In a historic electoral upset and snub to the Quebec Liberals, Libman and three others — Richard Holden, Gordon Atkinson and Neil Cameron — were elected to the National Assembly where, unfettered by party lines, they pushed the Liberals into softening some linguistic measures.
Of the four, only Libman is left. Atkinson, Holden and Cameron have all died.
Other players from those days have also passed, including William Johnson, the militant and vocal former leader of the old Alliance Quebec group, and former Liberal justice minister Herbert Marx, who resigned in protest in 1988, saying he could not accept the suspension of fundamental rights in the commercial sign debate.
Moderate voices who went to bat for the community are also gone, including former MNAS Reed Scowen and Joan Dougherty.
Robert (Bob) Dobie, who fought for the community for years inside the Liberal party, died just after Christmas. Who is left?
“You know, I would agree that anglophones are too docile,” said Keith Henderson, another former Equality Party leader who has tangled with language debates. “Even René Lévesque remarked on it.”
Henderson said he would be surprised if the community organized itself in any concrete way.
“There are too many people who are in the `go along to get along' mood and have been almost training themselves that way for years and years. `That's what you have to do to live in Quebec' is their standard response.”
One thing that has not changed is the traditional linguistic cleavage of Quebec.
A Léger poll commissioned by the Mouvement national des Québécoises et Québécois and the Fondation Lionel-groulx, published in Le Journal de Montréal in November, showed 63 per cent of Quebecers are “very or somewhat” concerned about the status of French.
Among francophones, the rate was 71 per cent — a 17 per cent increase compared to a similar poll in 2018. On the other hand, only 35 per cent of non-francophones felt the same way.
When asked whether the government needs to boost measures to protect French, 77 per cent of francophones agreed, but only 32 per cent of non-francophones did.
There have also been media reports about the lack of French in some Montreal shops. Jolin-barrette quoted a recent study indicating 63 per cent of businesses in Montreal want their employees to be able to speak English.
“We will act,” Jolin-barrette said in November, announcing plans to present a bill this winter to overhaul the French Language Charter. The exact date is not known, but the legislature resumes sitting Feb. 2.
Government officials say the timing of the bill depends on the state of the pandemic, which has delayed much of the CAQ'S political agenda. But they believe Quebecers “have an appetite” for this debate and think the reforms are a good way to relaunch government actions after the COVID-19 crisis.
Jolin-barrette — better known to minority communities as the man who piloted Quebec's secularism legislation, Bill 21 — has made a point of trying to reassure the English-speaking community and Indigenous community that their rights, which are already defined in Bill 101, will be respected in his reforms.
“We will not do anything to reduce the rights of the English-speaking community, about their rights to have services of the government of Quebec or their institutions,” Jolin-barrette said in November.
Minority groups responded by saying the government's vision of protecting minority rights is not necessarily their own vision. A case in point was Quebec's Bill 40, replacing school boards with service centres.
The CAQ'S compromise was allowing the English boards to maintain their elections, but the school board structure is to be scrapped. The bill is being challenged in the courts by the English boards.
In the case of school boards, a coalition of groups rapidly emerged to challenge Bill 40. What will happen when the CAQ tables its language reforms and the federal minister for official languages, Mélanie Joly, tables hers?
“I'm ready to rumble,” said Marlene Jennings, a former Liberal MP and newly elected president of the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN), an umbrella organization linking English-language groups across the province.
Jennings disputes the idea that the English-speaking community has grown apathetic.
“I would say it is really concerned, but experiencing a certain amount of fatigue,” she said in a phone interview. “The fatigue arises from the fact that when language is being debated and considered, it's being done with a political agenda rather than look at the real issues.
“We are used as the kicking ball in order for them to score their political points.”
Jennings said it is unusual for both levels of government to be tinkering with language at the same time, but new leadership on the issue is emerging, as seen in the debate on Bill 40.
She is particularly concerned with what might happen in Ottawa — specifically, the pressure from the opposition parties on the Trudeau government to allow Quebec to extend French Language Charter rules to federally regulated businesses such as banks and communications companies.
The QCGN argues that could endanger federal services to Quebec's anglophones and to francophone minorities outside Quebec, because it would open the door to an asymmetrical approach to rights.
The QCGN wants Ottawa to recognize that minority language groups — including the English-speaking community in Quebec — are “vulnerable,” and that linguistic duality continues to be “a pillar of our country.”
It also believes French should be protected and promoted in Quebec, but not at the expense of the “rights and vitality of the English-speaking community.”
And what of Quebec's official Liberal opposition? Just before the National Assembly recessed for Christmas, they joined Québec solidaire and the Parti Québécois in endorsing a CAQ -sponsored motion calling for a “major reform” of the charter.
Elected leader by acclamation in May, Dominique Anglade has strived to take a harder nationalist line to woo back voters in the regions who fled the Liberals for the CAQ in the 2018 election.
In December, Anglade wrote an opinion piece for the Montreal Gazette saying her party is nevertheless committed to protecting minority rights.
In Ottawa, officials in Joly's office said last week that the minister is well aware of the concerns of the English-speaking community, stressing the package of reforms is not final and does not have cabinet approval yet.
“We want to make sure everyone's rights are respected,” an official said, adding that in the September 2020 speech from the throne, the government said “the defence of the rights of francophones outside Quebec and the defence of the rights of the anglophone minority within Quebec is a priority for the government.”
It also said it considers the situation of French in North America “unique,” and wants to protect French not only outside Quebec but within Quebec.
Both levels of government, however, confirm they are in talks about the issue of federally regulated corporations.
Libman says such assurances amount to little. He believes the only option is to once again form a political party or coalition devoted exclusively to defending linguistic minorities.
Allan Finkelstein, a former Equality Party vice-president, says he recently sounded out the community to see if there were takers for an Equality Party 2.0 movement.
Finkelstein said he concluded there was “zero community support or interest” in the idea.
We are used as the kicking ball in order for them to score their political points.