“Many people from the English-speaking community will recognize themselves in this platform,” said Dominique Anglade to an English-speaking journalist who reminded him of the feeling of betrayal that several members of his community feel against the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ).
It is true that the Liberal leader spared no effort to be forgiven for her failed attempt at flirting with the French-speaking majority. It is that there is serious danger in the house. According to the projections of the Québec site125, many ridings in the southwest of Montreal, where the English-speaking vote constituted a back-up guaranteeing the election of the Liberal candidate, whether Marguerite-Bourgeoys, Marquette, Verdun or even Saint-Henri–Sainte- Anne, are threatened by the Coalition avenir Québec.
The PLQ presents itself as “a party with a clear preponderance of Francophones”, but the chapter of its new platform devoted to the French language could well have been entitled Please come back!. Most of the already insufficient measures introduced by Bill 96 to curb the decline of French would disappear under a Liberal government.
Over the past year, much of the debate has centered on whether to extend Bill 101 to the college level. The Legault government was content to impose a cap on enrollment in English CEGEPs, but the PLQ would return to free choice, which has had the effect that nearly 60% of those who attend it are either Francophones or allophones.
The Liberal platform also provides that all infrastructure projects in the education network be carried out according to need rather than language. In other words, we will make things easier for non-English speaking students who wish to pursue their college studies in English by ensuring that there is room for everyone. Of course, a Liberal government would green the Dawson College expansion project.
It has been a long time since the PLQ gave up asking for a reopening of the Constitution. He promises to defend “with force and vigor” the areas of jurisdiction of Quebec, but the solution he advocates is skeptical to say the least.
Like Mme Anglade had demanded it during the last federal campaign, he proposes that the House of Commons legislate to regulate the “spending power” that Ottawa uses abundantly to encroach on the jurisdictions of the provinces.
The federal government should therefore voluntarily renounce the surest means at its disposal to ensure the homogeneity of the services offered to Canadians from coast to coast by imposing “national standards” and thus pursue the enterprise of nation-building ongoing for decades. Who can believe in such a chimera?
The PLQ also undertakes to “ensure the maintenance of the demographic weight of Quebec within the federation” and, consequently, in the House of Commons. Barring a new “revenge of the cradles”, totally unthinkable, this would require following Justin Trudeau in his desire to massively raise the immigration thresholds.
Not only would a Liberal government renounce including the derogation provision in what would remain of Bill 96, such as in Bill 21 on secularism, but the PLQ also undertakes not to use it preventively in any law whatsoever.
He thus shares the wish of the federal Minister of Justice, David Lametti, and of the defenders of the precedence of the Charter of Rights and of the power of judges over that of elected officials. In the absence of being able to abolish recourse to the “notwithstanding clause”, the goal is obviously to make its use so odious that we would end up giving it up.
It is pathetic to see a party that claims that “Robert Bourassa’s legacy remains etched in its DNA” want to deprive Quebec of the last means it has left to escape the diktats of a charter that was forcibly imposed precisely in order to diminish his powers.
The Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, now wants to hold a “collective conversation” on the charters, Canadian and Quebec, and on the use of what he calls “parliamentary sovereignty provisions”. A conversation that risks alienating the PLQ a little more from the French-speaking majority.
Will all this be enough to save the furniture by bringing the English-speaking community back to the fold? For two years, the positions of the PLQ and its leader have seemed to fluctuate much more according to their electoral interests than these “values” they claim to defend. No matter what language they speak, no one trusts weather vanes.