The MP who last spring called witnesses campaigning for the protection of French “full of shit”, Franco-Ontarian Francis Drouin, no longer sits on the official languages committee as a permanent member of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Justin Trudeau’s troops decided to replace him with Joël Lightbound, the MP for Louis-Hébert, in the Quebec region. The Liberals are thus adding a first French-speaking MP from a Quebec riding located outside the island of Montreal.
The Liberals’ decision should put an end to the sequence of eight public meetings dominated by parliamentary obstruction manoeuvres where they multiplied tactics aimed at delaying a vote on a motion that called for their colleague to be expelled from the committee and to resign from his position as president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Francophonie, a function he has not held since July. The opposition refused to soften this motion, which had also been deemed inadmissible by the chair.
In the process, while giving a long speech to fill meeting time, Laval Liberal MP Angelo Iacono declared that Quebec would benefit from becoming an officially bilingual province rather than having only French as an official language.
Upon his arrival in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Marc Serré, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Official Languages, said it is “normal” for the composition of committees to change in the fall. He also noted that the Conservatives have also made a change in their alignment.
Mr. Serré said the opposition parties have made it clear that they will not give up their fight if Mr. Drouin remains on the committee.
“It was really a smoke show from the opposition,” he added. “So I think it was wise for Mr. Drouin to leave, but it’s valuable because (he was) a huge asset to the official languages committee: his experience and his dedication.”
Met at the exit of another committee, the Conservative spokesperson for Official Languages, Joël Godin, was pleased that the government had finally “listened to reason”, which will make it possible to avoid the resumption of the endless debates.
He confirmed that the opposition parties had made their “representations”, without revealing their content.
A conservative source to whom The Canadian Press granted anonymity, however, indicated that the party planned to resume its obstruction in the fall if Mr. Drouin was kept in line with the Liberals.
MP Francis Drouin found himself in hot water in early May following the heated exchange for which he waited several days before apologizing.
The MP, who represents the riding of Glengarry–Prescott–Russell, near Ottawa, was initially stung when two witnesses explained that when a francophone or allophone attends an anglophone university or CEGEP, it significantly increases the likelihood that he or she will live his or her life in English. The MP then asked them if they sincerely believed that McGill University and Dawson College were the main problem with the anglicization of Quebec.
Caught up in the turmoil, Ontario’s Francophonie gave him its support by calling him an “ally.” The Legault government, for its part, had judged that Justin Trudeau’s troops had “some soul-searching” to do after refusing to “condemn” these “absolutely unworthy” remarks.
At the end of July, Mr. Drouin announced that he would not run again in the next general election, but that he would finish his term. The MP, who was first elected in 2015 and re-elected in 2019 and 2021, had explained that he wanted to devote himself to his family.