O'toole won't protect Quebec's minorities

“A victory for Quebec!” François Legault crowed on Twitter this week. A victory against whom? Against minorities, apparently. And not only those in the premier's province.

Legault was referring to comments by the new federal Conservative leader, Erin O'toole, after a meeting between the two.

Pandering for nationalist votes, O'toole said a Conservative government would respect provincial jurisdiction, including what he said is Quebec's right to adopt Bill 21.

That's the Legault government's law forbidding some newly hired government employees, mostly female Muslim women who wear the hijab, from displaying religious symbols while on duty.

In effect, O'toole promised that a Conservative government would not intervene, even in support of a court challenge by an individual, to defend the constitutional rights and freedoms of Canadians against any provincial government, not only Quebec's.

And he accepted the Legault government's proposal that Quebec's Charter of the French Language, Bill 101, be applied to federally regulated private businesses in the province. This, supposedly, is so that francophone employees in such fields as banking, telecommunications and transport in Quebec can work in their language.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waffled this week when asked whether he, too, is in favour of “federal 101,” apparently hoping to duck the question until after the next federal election. But where he stands — if, indeed, he stands anywhere — may no longer matter.

The Bloc Québécois and New Democrats were already in favour of the proposal. Now that the leader of the official Opposition has accepted it, it has the support of a majority in the House of Commons.

This is significant, because the proposal would require amending the federal Official Languages Act. Even if the minority Liberal government resisted, it could not stop the three leading opposition parties from having Parliament amend the law in a private member's bill. The Bloc has said it will present such a bill in the new session of Parliament beginning Wednesday.

This is even though the proposal would do “absolutely nothing” to achieve the Legault government's stated objective of reinforcing French, as André Pratte argued recently in La Presse.

Pratte, a former senator as well as La Presse's former chief editorialist, cited a 2013 federal report showing that only 4.4 per cent of all workers in Quebec were employed by federally regulated private businesses.

And a majority of them already had their right to work in French protected, either by the federal Official Languages Act (21 per cent), or because their employers were voluntarily complying with Bill 101 (37 per cent).

That, Pratte concluded, left only 1.8 per cent of all Quebec workers without protection of their right to work in French. And, he might have added, not all of those are francophones.

So, “federal 101” would do little for the French language in Quebec. It might, however, politically weaken francophones in English Canada, as well as anglophones in this province.

It would require amending the Official Languages Act to introduce “asymmetrical” or twotiered language rights in federal jurisdiction, a higher level for the French-speaking majority in Quebec, and a lower one for every Canadian official-language minority.

Thus, Parliament would abandon the defence of the equality of English and French, the principle on which the Act is based. This might threaten hard-won public acceptance of Canada's official English-french duality, on which minority-language public services depend.

Canada's language-rights watchdog has yet to take a public stand on “federal 101.” In a statement sent to me by his office this week, the federal commissioner of official languages, Raymond Théberge, said it is “premature” for him to comment, since the Quebec government has yet to make a specific proposal.

He did confirm, however, that “I am following this issue closely, particularly with respect to the potential impact of this plan on the English-speaking minority community of Québec.”

Not to mention the French-speaking minority communities in the other provinces.