Trying to spare the goat and the cabbage invariably results in dissatisfying everyone. The Liberal Party of Quebec’s (PLQ) attempt to flirt with the French-speaking majority did not convince her, and the English-speaking people felt they had been betrayed.
In 1977, the position of the Liberals in the debate on Bill 101 had at least the merit of being based on clear principles, even if they were questionable. From beginning to end, they saw it as a violation of individual rights, which they deemed unacceptable.
In the case of Bill 96, they instead gave the pitiful spectacle of a party whose position, fluctuating and awkward, was based essentially on electoral calculations. The political price to pay is likely to be very heavy on October 3 and over the next few years.
Prime Minister Legault must have been delighted to see Dominique Anglade and a group of Liberal MPs participate in the demonstration against Bill 96 last weekend.
Initially, the CAQ’s strategists were devastated by the positive reception it had given it, which gave the unfortunate impression that this “new Law 101” was much too soft.
The government can once again present its bill as a fair balance between the “extremism” of the Parti Québécois (PQ) and the usual flat-ventrism of the “parti des Anglais”, whose return to power would be dramatic for French.
A Liberal government would no doubt not have legislated on language, but do we now have to understand that it would go backwards by abolishing the cap that Bill 96 will impose on registrations in English CEGEPs, in the same way that it allow teachers to wear religious symbols again?
In the end, the ineptitude of the QLP will have succeeded in giving credibility to a bill which is in reality a sort of bric-a-brac of half-measures and pointlessly vexatious provisions, which will not be enough to ensure the protection of French, while making the social climate more difficult. A beautiful mess.
It is written in the sky that the obligation to take three courses in or in French at the English CEGEP will cause serious problems and will ultimately have to be reviewed. It would have been so much simpler and more effective to extend the provisions of Bill 101 to the college level.
It is true that the law must not only be strengthened, but that it must also be applied more rigorously. Should the Office québécois de la langue française be granted search powers? There is already enough suspicion within the Anglophone community without needing to be fueled unnecessarily.
That said, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. Ensuring that French occupies more space in Quebec necessarily implies that English occupies less of it. We can understand that this displeases the English-speaking community, but making French the common language comes at a price.
If the rise of the independence movement had convinced many that accepting the precedence of French was a condition sine qua non preservation of Canadian unity, it was foreseeable that its retreat would have the opposite effect.
Staying within Canada, whose dynamics are unfavorable to French, nevertheless requires being more vigilant than would be necessary in an independent Quebec. Far from easing, tensions are therefore likely to increase.
While many Anglophones believe that the Francophones do not appreciate their efforts, the latter have on the contrary the impression that they are indifferent to their fate.
We could see an illustration of the cooling of relations between the “two solitudes” that coexist in Quebec in the cancellation of the televised debate in English during the next election campaign. In fact, the televised debate in the language of Shakespeare which took place in 2018 was a first, while the legendary face-to-face in French between Jean Lesage and Daniel Johnson senior dates back 60 years.
Either, the CAQ does not count on the vote of the English speakers, but the Prime Minister Legault would have liked to make them enrage that he could not have found better than the insulting excuse given by his office. This requires too long a preparation, it was explained. In other words, he has no time to waste with them.
Even Anglophones would no doubt have preferred him to invoke the same argument as the leader of the PQ, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, namely that French is the common language of Quebec.