Marc Garneau aptly summed up the position that the Liberal Party of Canada (PLC) has maintained for more than fifty years: Ottawa must not let Quebec do whatever it deems necessary to ensure the survival of French.
In the eyes of the MP for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount, Bill 96, which many already consider very insufficient to halt the decline of French, is “discriminatory against the English-speaking minority”. If that is the opinion of a francophone, one can easily imagine what his anglophone colleagues think.
It is true that Mr. Garneau’s voters are predominantly English-speaking and that they are truly convinced that they are victims of discrimination. His colleague from Mount Royal, Anthony Housefather, who has never been nuanced on this issue, even speaks of “despair”.
One can understand that a politician concerned about his re-election is attentive to the grievances of his constituents, even when they are unfounded, but the worst is that Mr. Garneau doubtless sincerely thinks that they are right.
Since Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the conviction that the federal government has a duty to prevent Quebec from giving free rein to its natural penchant for intolerance and the violation of individual rights has become unshakeable at the PLC.
It was in reaction to the passage of Bill 101 that Mr. Trudeau decided to enshrine the Charter of Rights in the Constitution in 1982. It would be a real sacrilege to suggest that such an edifying document, which is perceived in English Canada as a real act of rebuilding the country, could have been developed for the wrong reasons.
Through a tortuous dialectic, the very existence of the Charter has come to constitute proof that Quebec, which constantly seeks to circumvent its provisions by means of the notwithstanding clause, should and must always be restrained.
This paranoid vision of a Quebec that persecutes the English-speaking community must be part of the LPC’s DNA for Mr. Garneau to feel the need to appear before a parliamentary committee of which he is not even a member to put his colleagues warns against the temptation to modify Bill C-13 on official languages in order to respond to the demands of the Legault government.
It only asks Canadian elected officials to ensure that federal law, if not helping, does not hinder its francization efforts. The idea of including in Bill C-13 the principle of respecting Quebec’s choices in its linguistic planning, as proposed by the Conservative Party, was quite simply intolerable to the Liberal members.
Faced with the decline of French as a working language, the National Assembly nevertheless unanimously demands that businesses under federal jurisdiction be subject to the provisions of Bill 101 and cannot choose between the two laws. This is also the first subject that Mr. Legault intends to address during his meeting with Justin Trudeau on Friday.
“It seems they don’t understand that English is not an endangered species in Quebec,” lamented the Premier. Indeed, the principle of symmetry between the situation of the Anglo-Quebec community and that of French-speaking communities outside Quebec is the very foundation of the Official Languages Act, while Statistics Canada data clearly indicate which species is the most more threatened.
Mr. Trudeau’s statement that “Quebec currently has the full capacity to welcome 112,000 immigrants” and could thus maintain its demographic weight within Canada is no longer a matter of incomprehension, or even insensitivity, but rather stupidity or bad faith.
Even with a threshold of 50,000 per year, aiming for 100% Francophone or even simply Francotropic immigration represents a formidable challenge. Reaching the figure of 112,000 would be an impossible mission, not to mention the lack of reception facilities.
For 20 years, the Canadian government’s objective has been for Francophone immigration outside Quebec to represent 4.4% of all newcomers to the country. For the months of July and August, we reached 4.8%, which was enough for Mr. Trudeau to claim victory. However, we are talking about very modest figures.
The Manitoba government has just abandoned the target of 7% Francophone immigrants, which had been set in 2003. Instead, it intends “to allow Francophone stakeholders in the province to select the immigrants they need to grow community and maintain its vitality. In short, they just have to fend for themselves. Ah, if only they could count on an MP like Marc Garneau!