You have to distinguish things clearly. First there is ignorance in its primary state. It is enough to not know something to demonstrate it. It doesn’t matter: the condition finds its immediate remedy in the acquisition of knowledge. A side effect of the phenomenon is learning enough to realize the extent of what we don’t know. Then there is the incompetence. The thing applies to those whose job it is to know, but who, through intellectual laziness or an inability to correctly process the information at their disposal, say stupid things on subjects that they should master. A little further, to paraphrase the late Jean-Pierre, we find crass ignorance. It is, especially in politics, the most serious condition. This is a person who could know, who should know, who has all the tools at their disposal to know, but who makes the decision not to know.
You will have understood that I am going to talk to you about the case of Franco-Ontarian MP Francis Drouin. Yes, but not only that. Let’s start with him. This is a person whose function, within the Standing Committee on Official Languages of the House of Commons, is to know more than the average voter and the average MP about the situation of languages in Canada, because its committee must enlighten the government on the actions to take to ensure the sustainability of these languages.
When his committee receives guests, like last Monday, it has advance access to the content of their presentation to be able to read it, perhaps test the hypotheses with its political attaché or its colleagues in order to better question it later. guests, and confront them if necessary. Obviously, on Monday, the MP had not deserved his generous salary, since he did not have the beginning of the beginning of a counter-argument to present to researcher Frédéric Lacroix and Professor Nicolas Bourdon, who themselves were based on data from Statistics Canada and the Office québécois de la langue française.
The researchers dared to state what should be obvious: the more time we spend in English-speaking CEGEPs and universities, the more inclined we are to work in English and then use English as a public language. The evidence is confirmed by the latest census. A French-speaking Quebecer who does his post-secondary studies in English is six times more likely to work predominantly in English than if he had studied in French. For an allophone, it is seven times more.
If he were not subject to crass ignorance, MP Drouin could have retorted that this is perhaps normal, since Anglo universities lead more to employment sectors where English dominates. It would therefore not be anglicization, but simply an unfortunate situation where pure French speakers, therefore not anglicized, work in English against their will.
This is not impossible, Lacroix and Bourdon could have replied. But people informed about these issues have had an even more conclusive indicator for more than a year, because it examines the willingness of these people to use French or English. The OQLF surveyed 6,000 young Quebecers in 2021 and asked them if they preferred to do business in English or French. Only 1% of Francophones who studied in French prefer to do business in English. But 10% of those who studied in English prefer to order their pizzas in the language of Taylor Swift. Among allophones, this preference for English increases from 5% if they study in French to 28% if they study in English (and their choice to only speak French in businesses goes from 82% to 48%). .
This data should put a stake in the argument that the only useful measure of the vitality of the language in Quebec is knowledge of French. All these people know him, but choose to abandon him. This is called anglicization. The word “assimilation”, which is the outcome, must be used to describe the transformation of 4.5% of young French-speaking Montrealers into young English-speaking people between the last two censuses. For the jovialists, since they still speak French, everything is fine. Even if they declare having abandoned it to now live mainly in English, their adopted language, in the heart of the French-speaking metropolis of the Americas.
Speaking about his MP, Justin Trudeau said he apologized for using, he said, “the Cambronne word.” We did not know until this moment that Cambronne had a Quebec accent. What is inexcusable, however, is the crass ignorance of an MP who responds to science with sophistry. Anglicization, he argued, “is not [à cause de] McGill then Dawson, the fault of the big bad English-speaking Montrealers, let it happen.” By Jove ! could he have added: Jacques Parizeau attended the London School of Economics and he still spoke French when he returned!
The Minister of Official Languages, Randy Boissonnault, took the sophism from the other end: “I don’t think so, because when we have Francophones studying in Alberta, like me […] it did not Frenchify the province of Alberta. » The energetic François-Philippe Champagne outbid: it can be a good thing to learn English at an Anglo university.
None of them seemed to have read the numbers. Which prompts us to ask this question: is this contempt for scientific tools and this overvaluation of personal anecdotes at work in the determination of other public policies? It’s true that there are floods here and there, but I have seen a lot of places that are not flooded. Forest fires? There haven’t been any near me, so why worry? Fund cancer research? I knew someone who was completely cured supposedly thanks to a diet high in beets.
Crass linguistic ignorance also made its appearance in Quebec on Thursday, when the Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, proposed a motion repeating the scientifically supported fact that post-secondary studies in English for non-Anglophones was a factor of anglicization. The Liberal MPs didn’t want to know anything. Because they know people, you see, for whom this hasn’t been a problem.
They also know many people who are convinced that the decline of French in Quebec is a dismal hoax, hatched expressly to annoy them: their English-speaking voters. They read it every day in The Gazette and hear it on their TV and radio channels. Quebec Liberals are therefore the voice of their masters. The crass linguistic ignorance, here, responds to a higher imperative: electoral survival.
The case of the caquistes is different. They have in fact capped the percentage of Quebec students who can enroll in English-speaking CEGEPs at 17%, while forcing the latter to give priority to Anglo-Quebecers. Little by little, as the Anglo population grows, fewer and fewer French-speaking candidates will have access to these CEGEPs. But since the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) finally recognizes the anglicizing nature of higher education in English, since the decline is underway, why wait? Why not urgently extend Law 101 to CEGEPs?
The CAQ cannot plead ignorance, neither clean nor filth.