THE BILINGUAL BETRAYAL
UNFORTUNATELY, (QUEBEC’S BILL 96) COULD DO GREAT DAMAGE. — BLACK
QUEBEC (IS) UNWILLING TO TAKE DOWN THE BARRIERS, BUT UNABLE TO TRY TO SECEDE.
Quebec’s Bill 96, which was featured in this column last week, like its predecessors, Bill 22 (1974, Bourassa) and Bill 101 (1977, Lévesque), is opening up questions of the nature of Canadian Confederation. To civil libertarians, it is profoundly offensive to have a government regulating the size of different languages displayed on outdoor advertising and in-store products, and restricting access to schools on the basis of language. The whole idea of segregating linguistic groups in an officially bilingual country, and particularly of restricting the access of French-speaking secondary school and university students to English-language institutions, is deeply offensive. It is a cynical attempt to deny French speakers full access to the social and career opportunities available to North Americans by barricading Quebec youth into a unilingual French corner of this continent and restricting them from the opportunities available to the overwhelming majority of people living north of the Rio Grande.
It is doubly annoying because this effort has been justified under the guise of protecting French Quebecers from acculturation. It is a brazen and thoroughly discreditable exploitation of minority cultural paranoia. English-speaking Quebecers can, as hundreds of thousands have over the last 50 years, easily move to jurisdictions where their complete liberty of self-expression is not questioned. French Quebecers, however, when barred from learning English, are shackled and immobilized for life. The rationale given for these measures is nonsense, as French Quebec is in absolutely no danger of losing its mother tongue and suddenly becoming anglophone.
The entire motivation for the new law is political: to exterminate the original separatist party and position the governing Coalition Avenir Québec as the party of choice for the French-speaking majority in Quebec. There is nothing wrong with rough and devious political tactics, as long as they do not damage the welfare of any section of the public. Unfortunately, this bill could do great damage.
This is the real kernel of the controversy. Because the British North America Act conferred authority over property and civil rights to the provinces and they insisted on retaining authority over those rights during the constitutional renovation and amendments of 1981, there is no dispute about the ability of Quebec to legislate on language, though there are supposedly protections for fundamental rights and Bill 96 could be claimed to be in violation of those rights. On its face, Bill 96 appears to contravene the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and even the Atlantic Charter composed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill when they met in Newfoundland in 1941 to define the war aims of the democracies (before the United States was at war).
In practice, both the anglophone and francophone populations of Quebec will do what’s necessary to familiarize themselves with the English language as well as they wish, and Quebec is certainly not so oppressive that it would intervene in private or night schools. The cultural and material attractions of being conversant in the English language are well beyond the abilities of the national assembly of Quebec to challenge effectively.
What is seriously galling about all of these language laws in Quebec is not so much their oppressive nature, nor the complete fiction of the potential cultural assimilation of the French that is invoked in support of them; rather, it is the betrayal by Quebec’s cultural and political elite of those who believed their fervent collective support for bilingualism was a reciprocal and general objective, rather than a sideshow for the Rest of Canada to fixate on while the more ambitious French-canadians learned English for their own material benefit, whilst working to further restrict its use within the province. Even the most nationalist French-canadians — the senior figures of Le Devoir and Radio Canada and the leaders of the nationalist political parties, including Daniel Johnson and René Lévesque — claimed to support the promotion of bilingualism among English-canadians. One of the leading Quebec nationalists of the 1930s, Philippe Hamel, said, “Conquer us with goodwill, my English-speaking compatriots, you will be amazed at the easy victory that awaits you.”
I was one of those who went from Ontario to get a graduate degree at a French Quebec university and remained for some years in that province, having responded to that spirit, and I am glad that I did. But the elites in question who beckoned to us in English Canada to learn their language began almost uniformly to revile bilingualism, as it was seen as an attempt to assimilate them, an objective I have not heard anyone seriously propose for 60 years.
French is a magnificent language and culture and all of us who worked hard to become at least moderately proficient in it are the beneficiaries for having done so. But that does not excuse the elites of Quebec for betraying us. Whether we supported Pierre Trudeau or not, those of us who believed in a bicultural Canada and took the trouble to achieve that status personally do not regret it, but nor do we forgive the premeditated dishonesty of Quebec’s cultural leadership. They demanded reciprocal bilingualism because they didn’t think there was any chance that it could happen, and were dedicated to showing that Trudeau’s promise of “Masters in our own house, but our house is Canada” had no chance of success. Their position was that biculturalism has always been a one-way street and when that began to change, they became advocates of a cultural Iron Curtain of unilingualism, which only they could cross, and their motives were exposed as self-serving hypocrisy and bigotry: keep the anglais out and don’t let the habitants learn English.
None of this ghastly, stupid posturing about the size of the letters of different languages on signs or labels, or the imbecilities of the socalled language police really seriously bother people; the more pompously these measures are announced, the more immediately absurd they are revealed to be. The continuing problem of this country is that the majority of the French Quebec leadership — despite the efforts of Wilfrid Laurier, Louis St. Laurent, Pierre Trudeau and many others — is afraid of the prospect of bilingualism and made the grievous moral error of inducing us all to believe that it was in fact what they sought. That has left Canada an incomplete project, with Quebec officially in constitutional dissent, unwilling to take down the barriers, but unable to try to secede.
All that is lacking is leadership; 130 years ago, Canada’s federal party leaders were John A. Macdonald and Wilfrid Laurier, the most distinguished prime ministers we have had. Our population is more than six times as large now and our political leaders are comparative pygmies inciting COVID and climate hysteria and prostrating us before Indigenous victimhood leaders and gender activists and Quebec nationalists, instead of building a constructive nationalism. Canada will outgrow these problems and be free to assume its position, rightfully aspired to and now almost within reach, of becoming a great and distinct nation, when it ceases to be, in novelist Hugh Maclennan’s expression, “Two Solitudes,” and becomes one coherent, formidable and proud nationality. Without putting on the airs of the combat-fatigued veteran, I believe that time will come, but although I am hopeful about my own longevity, I have my doubts that I will see it.