The division’s candidate, Balarama Holness, continued his work to undermine Montreal’s linguistic status. After letting the vagueness of his intentions hang over the merger of his party with that of Marc-Antoine Desjardins, he returned to the charge last week.
Mr. Holness has announced his intention to recognize Montreal as a bilingual city. He proposed a two-step process to hold hearings for one year under the auspices of the Office de consultation publique de Montréal, followed by a referendum on the linguistic status of the metropolis.
When his party (Mouvement Montreal) merged with that of Mr. Desjardins, the latter nevertheless asserted that article 1 of the Charter of the City of Montreal, stipulating that “Montreal is a French-speaking city”, would remain intact. . Either he was lying or he got rolled in flour by his new boss.
The new allies propose to each carry out their respective campaigns for and against bilingualism within the same formation. This is breathtaking, but we can at least draw some conclusions about the improvised merger of Mouvement Montréal and Ralliement pour Montréal. It is a monumental farce as only municipal politics have the secret to producing.
Marc-Antoine Desjardins has lost all credibility as a defender of the French fact in Montreal by coming to terms so naively with a politician who actively campaigns for his retreat. Candidates who had agreed to campaign under the banner of Mr. Desjardins suspected that the cement would not set between two projects as opposed as that of Balarama Holness and Marc-Antoine Desjardins. They were right.
This is how the mirage of a “third way” in the campaign for mayor of Montreal ends. This does not mean that the vote for Balarama Holness is going to crash. The reform he is proposing would have the effect of preventing the application of Bill 96, which would make Montreal a city-state detached from the rest of Quebec on the linguistic issue. There is enough to make salivate those who think that Quebec does not form a nation and that French is not the official language of the territory. According to a survey carried out by the Angus Reid House (the rebellious employer of Shachi Kurl), 82% of Anglo-Montrealers, 53% of allophones and 19% of Francophones adhere to this current of thought.
In Montreal, we are at a critical stage in the fight for French, when bilingual citizens, children of Bill 101 like Balarama Holness, unite without any ulterior motive to Canadian multiculturalism. They imagine that the transformation of the French-speaking majority into a folklore group among others will be a guarantee of success for the sustainability of French. This reasoning is based on false premises according to which the rights of the English-speaking minority and the attractiveness of Montreal to foreign investors and students would be threatened by Bill 96.
There is no doubt that Balarama Holness is a proud Montrealer, attached to both French and English roots which are his. He will not be the first nor the last Montrealer to claim a mixed and uninhibited identity. It will even find support among Francophones for whom the linguistic struggle is a thing of the past, and among business circles who fear the constraints of Bill 96 on the fluidity of activities already taking place in the light of bilingualism in the big enterprises. They all miss the fundamental question. By opening the door to bilingualism in Montreal, they are sending the message that it is normal and acceptable for newcomers to lose interest in the language and institutions of the linguistic majority. This in itself is a shortcut for the anglicization of newcomers.
Fortunately, neither Valérie Plante nor Denis Coderre fell into the trap. They do not intend to add fuel to the language debate in Montreal, but that is not enough. In our pages, the former deputy and defeated candidate for mayor of Montreal Louise Harel and the doctoral student in political science from the University of Ottawa David Carpentier suggest that they put pressure on the government of Quebec so that it formalizes the Quebec interculturalism policy. They are driven by the search for a balance between the aspirations of the Francophone majority and the enhancement of ethnocultural diversity. It is an approach that has the merit of bringing people together, while respecting diversity, instead of dividing.
A final word on Balarama Holness. He is considering filing a complaint with the police for hate speech. His positions have earned him a shower of shocking racial abuse. This crass racism has no place in Quebec. The ideas defended by Mr. Holness have nothing to do with the color of his skin. It is his conception of language policies that must be criticized, while respecting his dignity.