It took barely 48 hours for the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) to illustrate the true nature of “inclusive nationalism” proposed by the recovery committee whose report was published last Thursday.
The announcement of the doubling of tuition fees imposed on Canadian students outside Quebec and foreign students who will enroll in an English-speaking Quebec university caused fury at the party’s general council this weekend in Drummondville. Far from seeing it as a way to slow the decline of French in Montreal and to increase funding for the French-speaking university network, as the Legault government claims, the interim leader, Marc Tanguay, saw it as a “frontal attack” against the community. English-speaking, which Antoine Dionne Charest, member of the recovery committee, invited to “go on the offensive”.
She will clearly be able to count on strong allies among the Liberals. Former D’Arcy-McGee MP David Birnbaum invited the parliamentary wing of the PLQ to lead the charge in the National Assembly starting Tuesday.
Mr. Legault will be happy to point out that the PLQ remains “the party of the English” and that English-speaking universities — and especially McGill — have financial resources out of all proportion to the proportion of English speakers who live in Quebec.
Despite the positive reception that the delegates to the general council reserved for the report of the recovery committee, the nationalist turn it proposes is not unanimous, including among French-speakers. “I don’t want to be identified as a nationalist, that goes against being liberal,” said one of them. “There are some who will wonder if this means we want to separate,” worried another.
If the co-chair of the committee, former senator André Pratte, never saw it as an insoluble contradiction, some obviously have difficulty understanding how it is possible to be both nationalist and federalist.
There has been talk of a return to basics, but the time of Jean Lesage’s “Maîtres chez nous” is a long way away. After the schism of 1967, liberal activists transformed themselves into fighters for Canadian unity — and the word “nationalist” became synonymous with the enemy. Decades of fierce struggle have inevitably left their mark. What’s more, the Parti Québécois, which we thought was definitively defeated, is raising its head, so that it may be necessary to take up arms again.
Despite the urgency of rapprochement with the French-speaking electorate, not everyone has the dialectical flexibility that allows principles to be adapted to political necessity. At times, one could have the impression of hearing a cousin of Elvis Gratton, who would have defined himself as a liberal Quebec federalist nationalist of Canada.
Even if the idea of a Quebec constitution has been mentioned periodically for several decades, whether by federalists or by sovereignists, a certain confusion persists. “Can we have a Quebec constitution if we have not signed the 1982 Constitution? » asked a delegate.
We imagine the drafting of a constitution as a non-partisan exercise, ideally entrusted to a constituent assembly, but that is not what the PLQ has in mind. It would rather be a “liberal constitution”, as opposed to a “PQ-Caquist constitution”, explained Marc Tanguay. All that would be missing is for Prime Minister Legault to give the green light to Simon Jolin-Barrette and present his own draft constitution.
It will be up to the new leader to decide whether he wants to engage in an exercise that could be perilous. An English-speaking delegate declared that she would not be satisfied with a Quebec Constitution that would simply protect the “existing rights” of the English-speaking community, to the extent that there had already been erosion, notably with the adoption of Bill 96 .
What other corrections would need to be made so that the “existing rights” are deemed satisfactory by the English-speaking community? Should we return to free choice of language of instruction? Full bilingualism in the language of commercial displays? Should the use of the notwithstanding provision be prohibited?
Former Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Benoît Pelletier has always been a supporter of the drafting of a Quebec constitution, but he did not dare to make the formal recommendation in his 2001 report, which served as constitutional policy for the PLQ for 20 years. Obviously, he had noticed that the fruit was not ripe. And everyone knows that in this matter, things evolve very slowly in this country.
Until then, we can only wish good luck to the PLQ, which will not have a real leader before spring 2025. This postponement of the race displeased many, but the coronation of MP Frédéric Beauchemin was the last thing what the party needed. Spending another year and a half under the direction of Marc Tanguay, who is already struggling to ensure a minimum of cohesion, will nevertheless seem very long.