“Human stupidity is the only thing that gives a good idea of the infinite,” wrote Ernest Renan. Sometimes it’s so huge that you wonder whether to laugh or cry about it.
In 2019, Sonia LeBel, then minister responsible for Canadian Relations and the Canadian Francophonie, made an embarrassing blunder by declaring that “Quebec is the only bilingual province in Canada”. We charitably agreed to believe it was a slip of the tongue.
However, there was no ambiguity in the remarks that the federal Liberal MP for Alfred-Pellan, Angelo Iacono, made last Thursday in Ottawa, during a meeting of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. “I believe that Quebec, and I believe that Canada, should be a bilingual country, to be stronger and not just be a unilingual French-speaking province, because there, you will exclude others who want to learn French,” said he declared.
It’s not often you find so much nonsense in the same sentence.
Go for Canada, but how would Quebec be stronger by diluting its specificity in the Anglo-Canadian whole and how is the fact that French is its only official language likely to exclude those who wish to do so? learn ?
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Mr. Iacono was one of the Liberal MPs who “packed” the committee to avoid the exclusion of their colleague from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, Francis Drouin, who had described two Quebec researchers who came to testify there as “full of crap”.
Moreover, some could see in his remarks a confirmation of the conclusions of these researchers, Frédéric Lacroix and Nicolas Bourdon, according to which attendance at English-speaking post-secondary educational establishments in Quebec contributes to its anglicization.
We can think that his advocacy in favor of bilingualism seems more inspired by his years spent at McGill and the University of Ottawa than by his time at UQAM. It is true that Mr. Iacono is not a “child of law 101”. He entered school at a time when free choice of language of instruction was the rule and the Italian community took advantage of this to systematically send its children to English school.
Unless I digress completely, an MP representing a constituency located in Laval cannot, however, be so ignorant of the linguistic dynamics in Quebec and the difficulty of integrating new arrivals, which has further increased with the influx of temporary immigrants. .
Many argue that the important thing is not the proportion of those whose mother tongue is French, but rather those who use it in public spaces. Being able to use a language and defending it, however, are two different things. Mr. Iacono says he himself is well integrated into the French-speaking majority, but he clearly does not care about its future.
Returning to the situation prior to 1974, when Bill 22 made French the only official language of Quebec, would suddenly ruin 50 years of efforts. Recognizing bilingualism, which would amount to canceling Bill 101, would simply be suicidal.
If English also had the status of an official language, there could be no restrictions on its use. This would mean the massive enrollment of immigrant children and a large number of French speakers in English schools, as well as the accelerated anglicization of workplaces and the face of Montreal.
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This is neither the first nor the last time that a free electron says something stupid. Again on Monday, Pierre Poilievre had to rebuff one of his Alberta MPs who had questioned the right to abortion, reiterating for the umpteenth time that a Conservative government would not reopen the issue.
On the other hand, Mr. Iacono’s comments did not seem to cause more emotion in the liberal ranks than those of Mr. Drouin. The parliamentary leader of the Trudeau government, Steven MacKinnon, simply said that the Liberal Party of Canada had a “dedication” to “our two official languages in the country”. Mr. Trudeau’s Quebec lieutenant, Pablo Rodriguez, did not disavow his colleague from Alfred-Pellan either.
According to the Bloc MP for Manicouagan, Marilène Gill, the multiplication of linguistic missteps reveals a cultural problem in the Liberal Party of Canada. Before those of MM. Drouin and Iacono, it was the member for Saint-Laurent, Emmanuella Lambropoulos. She had to resign from the same Standing Committee on Official Languages for having denied the decline of French in Quebec.
It must be said that Mr. Trudeau himself did not set an example of great consideration for French by appointing a governor general incapable of speaking it — and a unilingual English-speaking lieutenant governor in New Brunswick, the only province officially bilingual in Canada.
The worst part is that he doesn’t even seem to realize it. Or that he doesn’t care at all.