No matter how you say it, bilingualism isn’t working.

We got quite a blast from the past last week when Justin Trudeau refused to answer questions in English on his reconnecting with Canadians tour “since we’re in Quebec.” What was the nice man thinking?

OK. Maybe he wasn’t “thinking” in the normal sense of that word. We have long known he tends to stick his tongue in an electric socket when unscripted although he’d managed to resist the impulse lately.

Many observers also detected the familiar aroma of Liberal arrogance increasingly swirling about after a period of successful containment. And while Trudeau arguably lacks the gravitas necessary for true arrogance he certainly manages periodically to show striking signs of conceit in the flippant way he treats serious issues, from offcolour jokes about military procurement to brushing off cash-for-access fundraisers.

But nowhere is his tendency toward harmful frivolity more pronounced than on Quebec.

And here I fear we are into deeper, darker waters.

Part of the problem is just how politics can poison anything. It continues to amaze me that language is so divisive in Canada. Speaking a second language should be one of life’s great joys, and back in the 1970s there was genuine excitement in English Canada about becoming a truly bilingual country with those great packages in English and French that we boasted of while abroad.

It sure went sour fast once the state got actively involved. And yet we apparently retain a naive enthusiasm for big government, and for “national strategies” on any imaginable problem, that should be as dated and embarrassing today as platform shoes, bell bottoms and big glasses.

People, we have a national bilingualism strategy. And it’s not working. Not in the “Rest of Canada” and not in Quebec, where the elite is bilingual and the rest struggle. And where, even more ominously, a troubling, reflexive tribalism around language seems to persist and run so deep that it rarely needs to be spelled out and, hence, causes shock as well as dismay elsewhere when someone blurts it out.

Normally it’s subtle, a soothing undertone, as in the October 2014 Liberal press release offering a look at “‘Team Trudeau on the Issues’ discussing the middle class, the regulation of marijuana, public service and leadership, and local needs in our communities. You may also view our French-language videos addressing les droits des femmes, la classe moyenne, la réforme démocratique, and la culture Québécoise.” A very different list, worldly and progressive, nudge-wink.

Unfortunately Trudeau often lacks finesse, as when many years ago he incautiously told CTV his father had taught his children that “ya know, Quebecers are better than the rest of Canada because, ya know, we’re Quebecers or whatever.” Or when he announced his candidacy as Liberal leader in October 2012, in Montreal of course, saying “We know some Quebecers want their own country. A country that reflects our values, that protects our language and our culture, that respects our identity. My friends, I want to build a country, too — a country worthy of my dreams. Of your dreams. But for me that country reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Great Lakes to the Grand Nord.”

“Our identity” from coast to coast. In short, Canada should be a giant Quebec. Duh. But don’t tell the Anglos. Regrettably eight months earlier he’d blathered, in French, that “I always say that if, sometime, I believed that Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper, and if it was going against abortion and it was going against same-sex marriage, and that it was moving backward in 10,000 different ways, maybe I would think about making Quebec a country.” When the host did a double-take at a separatist Trudeau, he added: “But I believe profoundly in Canada and I know that Quebec within Canada can restore all this.”

Later, attempting damage control in English, he tweeted: “Canada needs (Quebec) to balance out Harper’s vision that I (and many) don’t support.” Which wasn’t surprising from a man who said in 2010, again in French, that as a Liberal of course he thought Canada was better off with Quebecers in power than Albertans.

The notion of an inherently superior Quebec culture, more collective, compassionate and sophisticated, isn’t inherently about language. But because Quebec was and is majority francophone it makes everyone prickly about language, including spurring over a dozen complaints to the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages about Trudeau recently answering English questions in French in Quebec and a French one in English in Peterborough.

Running in tears to the government over it seems petty and querulous, especially in a supposedly bilingual country. But Trudeau’s condescending assumption of one conversation among Anglo rubes and another among Quebec sophisticates was offensive in any language, particularly for being instinctive rather than thought through. Surely grown-ups can do better.