Lawyer opposes Bill 96 as `a question of rights'
For a law that proposes to override constitutional rights, empower a vast bureaucracy with unchecked authority, and create different classes of citizens, Bill 96 has generated precious little debate, according to Julius Grey.
The respected human rights lawyer laments what he calls the “pensée unique” that has taken hold surrounding the Quebec government's latest attempts to strengthen the language laws.
Bill 96 has been greeted as necessary by most of Quebec society to shore up faltering French. Federal leaders who might once have been counted upon to defend sacrosanct principles are too busy pandering for votes in Quebec on the eve of an election.
Those who dare question the prevailing groupthink are pilloried, like Liberal MP Emmanuella Lambropoulos. Or else they're dismissed as implacable, as is the case with Quebec's anglophone community, a.k.a. “angryphones.” “We have to establish that the debate is legitimate,” Grey said. “We don't even want to engage in a debate. That's a very worrying sign.”
Never one to shy away from Quebec's most heated societal dust-ups, Grey is entering the fray.
After Jack Jedwab, president and CEO of the Association of Canadian Studies, last week shared an examination of census data with the Montreal Gazette disputing the orthodoxy that French is in freefall in Quebec, Grey was moved to do the same. He had already prepared his own legal analysis of Bill 96, which came to similar conclusions.
In his brief “Projet de Loi 96: Justifié ou Non?” (yes, it's written in French), Grey poses three simple questions: Is French really in danger? Will the bill's proposed provisions be effective in strengthening the language? And is the collateral damage justified?
“It's become a mantra in nationalist circles to affirm French is in danger and that Bill 101 has failed to prevent its decline,” he writes. “Certainly English has become the dominant language around the world, which nothing can remedy, at least in the short term, but where are the signs French is faltering `chez nous'?”
Bilingual signs, people seeking public services in English, and the much-maligned `Bonjour/hi!' “do not serve to prove decline,” he says.
In fact, Grey argues, French has made tremendous strides since the Quiet Revolution. Before that, most commercial signs were in English, it was difficult to be served in French in downtown Montreal, and most immigrants adopted English. Those trends have been reversed over the last 45 years.
“By these standards, Bill 101 is a success,” he argues.
Immigrants attend French school and learn French. Many of them learn English, too. But that multilingualism is an asset, not a scourge. Although it takes time for newcomers to integrate into Quebec society, he said this is not a unique phenomenon. First generation immigrants often remain a group apart in the rest of Canada, too. It has nothing to do with language.
Language hawks decry the slight drop in the number of people who speak French at home. But this is natural in a country that welcomes so many newcomers from all over the world.
Even presuming French is on the wane given it is surrounded by North American English, Grey contends the heavy-handed remedies proposed by Bill 96 are neither effective nor warranted.
Reducing public services in English and limiting who is eligible for them is not going to help people master French or adopt it as their own.
Restrictions on the use of English in the legal system are blatantly unconstitutional. In an interview, Grey predicted the requirement of attaching French translations to all English court documents will create such impediments to justice that it will be overturned by the courts one way or another.
Another “regrettable” aspect of Bill 96 is that it discourages bilingualism by restricting francophones and allophones from accessing English CEGEPS.
He denounces the effort to keep French speakers from expanding their horizons and learning other languages (whether English, Mandarin or Spanish, for that matter) as an overlooked “injustice.”
Grey calls it “odious” to lump citizens into different categories with different rights, be they francophones, anglophones, “historic” anglophones or allophones.
“In liberal democratic countries, identity is derived from individual choices and not state decrees,” he states.
Only articles of Bill 96 centred on improving the teaching of the French language are useful, along with promoting Quebec art, literature and culture.
“It's on that and not on restrictions to English services that we should be devoting our resources,” Grey posits.
When a law produces deleterious effects, it must be balanced against the benefits to determine whether it is worth it on the whole. The formation of a vast bureaucracy with extraordinary extrajudicial powers able to intrude on both the public and private spheres is most definitely not worth it, Grey notes. Bill 96 would give Office québécois de la langue française inspectors unprecedented grounds to conduct search and seizures on companies, with no recourse for those targeted to contest overzealousness.
Quebec has never been a police state, but Grey warns it could become one with measures like this.
But of course, the worst aspect of Bill 96 is that it would be difficult — if not impossible — to challenge any infringements on rights, given the pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause.
“The experience with the secularism law (Bill 21) demonstrates that when the government considers a law important, it refuses to permit the application of the Charter,” he writes. “Clearly, Quebec has decided to put constitutional guarantees on the back burner.”
Quebec's descent into majority rule at the expense of individual rights should be worrying to all, not just affected minority groups.
“My position is that it's not an identity question, it's a question of rights and freedoms,” Grey said.
Given the weaknesses of the arguments justifying Bill 96 and its impotence in protecting and promoting French, Grey concludes it should be abandoned entirely.
Discuss.
Reducing public services in English and limiting who is eligible for them is not going to help people master French.