National Post (National Edition)
Francophone service cuts, post-mortem
It has been three weeks since the Ontario government decided to subsume the French Language Services Commissioner into the Ombudsman’s office and cancel plans to open a francophone university in downtown Toronto. Objections have been stated firmly. The francophone press burned bright and long with indignation. Thousands of Franco-ontarians took to the streets of Ottawa this past weekend to demand better.
At this point, in the spirit of mutual understanding, I think it’s useful to exhale and take stock of a few things.
Item: Some francophone Quebec commentators feel this was emphatically not a deliberate ploy by Premier Doug Ford to rile up his base of francophone-hating Orangemen. His government has been scrambling to control the damage, creating a francophone-specific post under the Ombudsman and naming Caroline Mulroney Minister Responsible for of Francophone Affairs. Ford has even promised to learn French. This is not how you pander to francophobic yobs. This was a cost-cutting accident born of benign ignorance.
Item: We have heard a lot about “how anglophones would like it” if the Quebec government shut down Bishop’s University or axed plans for an anglophone secretariat. The answer is that the vast majority of Ontario anglophones wouldn’t care. This isn’t some kind of interprovincial competition. No one here is keeping score.
Item: La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé accused the anglo-ontarian media of a double standard. He pointed to Pastagate, the 2013 tragicomedy that saw the Office Québécois de la Langue Française crack down on an Italian restaurant for using words like “pizze” and “pasta” instead of “pizzas” and “pâtes.” Ontario columnists and editorialists were up in arms defending minority language rights, Lagacé argued, yet we had absolutely nothing to say about the cuts to francophone services.
“They don’t give a shit,” Lagacé sniffed.
Firstly, Pastagate is an odd comparison. Quebec’s language laws enjoy widespread support across the linguistic spectrum nowadays, but they nevertheless constitute a genuine abridgement of human rights. Closing a university that doesn’t exist and ending the standalone operations of a 10-year-old office that fields fewer than one inquiry a day … doesn’t.
Secondly, in the days and weeks since, Ontario’s opinion pages have featured all manner of voices deploring the government’s actions. We weren’t guilted into it. It simply reflected a prioritization of the many things that Ford’s government announced at the same time.
I, for example, chose to write about the hugely perplexing decision to wind down the Child Advocate’s office, again subsuming its responsibilities — even more inappropriately — into the Ombudsman’s. It is reasonable to hope no one will die as a result of Francoontarians losing an official advocate and a non-existent university. We know that children die in state care at alarming rates as it stands. That matters more. Sorry. It just does.
Item: I understand why people are sensitive about the French language’s survival in Canada, especially outside of Quebec. But facts still trump feelings. To consume Quebec media in recent weeks, you would think French was on its last legs: “almost disappeared,” “declining for decades,” “has only regressed and lost ground.”
It’s rubbish. In 1961, 12.2 per cent of Canadians claimed knowledge of both English and French. It has risen steadily ever since, to 17.8 per cent as of the 2016 census. Over that period the bilingualism rate in Ontario grew from 7.9 per cent to 11.2 per cent and in Manitoba from 7.4 per cent to 8.7 per cent. Those gains have slowed or slightly reversed in Manitoba and Ontario, but hardly to crisis levels. Some traditionally francophone areas of northern and eastern Ontario have seen a noticeable decline in the number of people who speak French most often at home. But provincewide, the 2016 census found 22,000 more such people than the 2001 census; as a percentage, French-speakers at home fell only slightly over that time from 2.9 per cent to 2.6.
There are other definitions of bilingualism out there, of course, but they get dodgy pretty quickly. Concerns about “mother tongue,” in particular, bespeak concern about the circumstances of someone’s birth rather than their linguistic proficiencies. But in any event, the 2016 census found 45,000 more mothertongue francophones in Ontario than the 1996 edition; the percentage fell only slightly from 4.9 to 4.3. There is no crisis here. Item: Returning briefly to Pastagate, if you asked me which minorities in Quebec I’m worried about at the moment, I certainly wouldn’t point to Italian restaurateurs.
This is a province whose Liberal government passed a law prohibiting niqabwearing women from asking about a library book or taking a university class. This is a province whose CAQ government is planning to ban teachers and police officers and Crown attorneys from wearing hijabs or turbans or kippas in the name of state religious neutrality, while leaving crucifixes hanging in courtrooms and in the National Assembly itself.
Again, like I say: It’s not a competition. I seek understanding, not conflict. But I hope you’ll forgive an anglo-ontarian pundit’s bemusement at being lectured on tolerance and minority rights from across the eastern border.