CAQ English services plan raises historic questions
For the record, your scribe qualifies as a “historic anglophone” under Quebec law and also as a matter of history.
Family genealogists have established an ancestor born to a British soldier garrisoned at Quebec City; another ancestor, born and raised in Huntington, pulled off some kind of Laura Secordstyle warning about a Fenian raid and got a commendation for bravery.
It’s likely many folks in the province are reflecting on their English-speaking ancestry as the Coalition Avenir Québec launches yet another initiative intended to shape Quebec in its image.
As far as we can determine from what Premier Francois Legault has said, the government plans to restrict access to English language services to only those who can claim “historic” Quebec anglophone status as defined under Law 101, the charter of the French language.
“If your parents went to English school, you have rights in Quebec, and we will respect those rights,” Legault told reporters last week. “If you're a new immigrant, we have to talk with them in
French. That's the difference.”
It might be worth noting that under the original version of Law 101 only the children of citizens who had attended English school in Quebec were eligible to attend English public schools in the province.
A 1984 Supreme Court of Canada challenge by the Quebec Protestant School Boards Association expanded the “right” to those who had attended English school elsewhere in Canada - the socalled Canada Clause kids.
Legault has entrusted this plan to Simon Jolin-barrette, the minister responsible for immigration, francization, integration, the French language, laicity and parliamentary reform. He’s also the CAQ House leader. (Do you think, Mr. Premier, this minister, as young and vital as he is - and maybe one day your successor - might have a few too many hot potatoes on his plate?)
Jolin-barrette says the government would draw up a list of those who would be eligible to receive services in English.
As was the case with Law 21, there is the question of what Quebec gains from creating yet another division in the population. Forcing a handful of Muslim women to take off their headscarf to get a teaching job seems a rather petty goal given the hefty price in terms of negative optics.
While at least Law 21 proponents could justify its measures on the presumably noble and popular grounds of separating church and state, whatever legislation the CAQ government intends to use to deprive some anglo Quebecers of services in English seems to be lacking an underlying principle other than cracking down on confused government language practices.
A study done by the Conseil Supérieur de la langue française “provides a summary of the Liberal years which is totally unacceptable to the new government.” Legault had ordered the study after a report in the Journal de Montréal revealed some 400,000 Hydro Quebec customers request and receive their bills in English.
How many of those 400,000 are historic anglos? Who knows, and more importantly, what would it take government bureaucrats to find out?
Based on various census figures, about 14 percent, or 83,000 of Quebec’s 600,000 English speakers were not born in Canada. These would be mostly our friends from the U.K. and the U.S.A. where the native tongue is indeed la langue de Shakespeare (or Washington Irving, if you prefer).
Of those 83,000, nearly half have been in Quebec for 30 years or more, meaning they came here knowing their new home province was French-speaking and their children would have to go to French school. But at least they would be able to get some services in English.
While immigrants to Quebec from other lands may be out of luck claiming “historic anglo” status, it’s a different story for immigrants who fetch up in another province. Theoretically, someone from Swaziland or Switzerland could fast-track their citizenship over the minimum four years while their children attend English school.
Should that family then decide to move to Quebec, their children would be eligible to attend English school and, as “historic anglos,” be eligible for English services under the CAQ proposal.
The government plans to present measures for cracking down on English language services in the coming weeks. In the meantime, folks might want to dig out their papers to prove they are historic anglos.