LANGUAGE LESSONS

Tories must listen to francophones

There’s every reason to think Doug Ford now realizes the mistake he made in deciding to reduce some key Ontario language services. Just days after announcing that the French-language services commissioner would be downgraded, and that there would be no new French-language university, the premier retracted parts of the plan.

But the damage is done, the half-retreat unsatisfying. Many Ontario francophones and their supporters are upset, and Progressive Conservative MPP Amanda Simard, representing Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, voted against her own party on its measures. The result: the Tory caucus has los t a francophone voice, its strategy is in disarray, and no one is happy. Simard is sitting as an independent.

The issue isn’t that the 600,000-plus Franco-Ontarian community should be immune to the necessary spending cuts other Ontarians will face if we are to tame the provincial deficit. It’s that there was no sign the premier’s initial plans recognized the essential place French occupies, either culturally or politically. Canada became a nation primarily because of an alliance of two men: Sir John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier. Francophones have a founding history that differentiates them from other minority communities in both Ontario and Canada.

So when the institutions of Ontario’s French-speaking citizens are threatened, it’s natural that community leaders react fiercely. If you’ve lived in Ottawa for more than two decades, you remember well the turmoil sparked by an earlier provincial attempt to close Ottawa’s Montfort Hospital. The province lost.

And if you live on the border with Quebec, you’re also aware of both the struggles and the triumphs of Quebec’s minority anglophone population for services in English. Ontario has lessons to learn from its neighbour’s experiences.

It’s true that our understanding of history is deepening and that the narrative of two founding groups is evolving — into a story of three broad groups: English, French and Indigenous Peoples. But this widening doesn’t diminish the respect owed to the role of French speakers in Canada’s and Ontario’s development.

Ford may well harbour genuine concerns about the costs of expanding Ontario’s university system, or about how effective the French language commissioner’s office is in its current form. He may even have some sound reason for cancelling grants such as the $2.9 million promised by the former Liberal government to Ottawa’s La Nouvelle Scène. But he has presented little evidence to suggest his government reflected on the social costs of these moves. In the meantime, people were slighted, and the government lost an articulate francophone caucus voice.

Safeguarding the French language and culture in Ontario should never be at question. The French version of this editorial appears at right.