What the hell is Trudeau doing?
To follow Quebec politics, to read a Frenchlanguage Quebec newspaper, is to regularly come across trumped- up or bewildering linguistic angst. A new study or census will show French is in pretty good shape, and the language hawks will immediately start slicing and dicing the data to paint the most dire possible picture. The Habs will appoint a captain who doesn’t speak French. A newspaper columnist will hear a friendly “bonjour-hi” one too many times shopping in downtown Montreal and blow his stack. While First World parents around the world strive to have their children learn as many languages as possible, you still encounter the odd Quebec voice wondering if francophone children learning English represents an existential threat to their society.
Normal civilized Quebecers, meanwhile, live normal civilized lives. They communicate as best they can with the language skills they have. In my experience your average conversation simply evolves naturally into the language or languages of maximum efficiency and mutual comprehensibility.
Indeed, many attempts to “practise” one’s French in Montreal will quickly lead to a conversation in English. This annoys some people, but it’s not rude. It’s polite, practical and helpful. Every now and again, someone will violate this social contract: a few years ago, some jerk Métro attendant posted a sign reading “Au Québec c’est en français que ça se passe!” (“In Quebec, we do things in French!”) And most everyone, language hawks included — if only for the sake of the tourists — said it was quite a bad thing.
Which brings us to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bewildering performance in Sherbrooke on Tuesday, at a stop on his taxpayer-funded listening tour. “Six citizens addressed ( him) in English during the event,” La Presse reported. But Trudeau, who is usually flamboyantly bilingual, did not respond in kind — “not even a single sentence.” And when one woman inquired about the lack of English- language mentalhealth services in the Eastern Townships — a touchy question on at least two fronts — Trudeau put his cards on the table: “We are in Quebec; I will answer in French.”
Justin Trudeau, in other words, suddenly turned into that jagweed Métro attendant.
It raises a question that’s suddenly being asked rather a lot: What the hell is he doing? Even if he thought the anglos in the crowd were being, you know, aggressively anglo, basic political instincts would advise not throwing a tantrum on a question about anglophone mental- health services in largely anglophone Quebec communities.
By the next day, Trudeau had conceded that perhaps he should have answered in both languages, which was halfway to the right answer: he should answer questions from real people in whichever of the two official l anguages the real people ask them — as Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard said Thursday he would be happy to do. It is generally accepted that the prime minister of Canada must be seen and heard speaking both languages in his official capacities. But the ostensible purpose of this tour is to connect informally with real Canadians. And the vast majority of Canadians are not bilingual. Most people in that Sherbrooke audience would have understood a bilingual answer; very few, if any, would have demanded one.
What was Trudeau thinking? Search me. I have no idea what he or his advisers were thinking when they sent him off to the Aga Khan’s island without asking the Conflict of Interest Commissioner about it first, and then refused to come clean until they were dead to rights on every last detail. I have no idea why Trudeau, when asked if he had been to the island before, gave literally the worst conceivable answer: I’m not telling you.
Maybe we’re just seeing what happens when a politician who has never suffered for letting his freak fly tries to govern in like manner. ( That doesn’t explain why he’s not getting better advice.) But to me it confirms a vibe I’ve always gotten from Trudeau and the people in his orbit: they almost religiously believe the various off-the-shelf Liberal Canadian pieties they evince, even if they don’t espouse them out loud.
They never coherently explained why the fighter jets should come back from a battle in the Middle East that they said was worth fighting. One could only conclude they simply felt, as many Canadians do, that the idea of dropping bombs was somehow wrong for us. They have never coherently explained their determination to get Canada involved again in peacekeeping. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has been very forthright that modern peacekeeping involves not much peace; the conflicts in Africa in which we might engage are bloody, hideous, mired in allegations of child abuse by UN forces; fraught with potential for disaster. One can only conclude the Liberals simply think something called peacekeeping is something that Canada should be doing. It is in our DNA.
“We are in Quebec, so I will answer your question in French” isn’t really a Liberal piety. I don’t imagine Trudeau père would be much pleased by it. But again, it seems to come from a deeply ingrained sense of Canadian rectitude that is simply baffling to disinterested observers. Whatever the hell it is Trudeau’s doing, he should probably stop.