Last Tuesday, the National Assembly adopted (another) unanimous resolution addressed to the federal government. She calls for a formal consultation mechanism to be added to the Broadcasting Act to oblige the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to consult Quebec when it adopts a regulation dealing with any question relating to Quebec’s cultural specificity.
It is therefore a justified and fairly minimal request: to be consulted. Incidentally, the law requires the CRTC to consult official language minority communities… but not us.
In a context where Quebec is the main center of French in North America, a positive response to this request should go without saying.
In a context where CRTC decisions concern two distinct linguistic markets, consultation with the government that knows the Francophone market best should also have gone without saying.
In a country that would have the future of French language and culture at heart, the request should not even have been necessary: the federal government, responsible for telecommunications, should have proposed it from the outset. But no. We have to fight again.
During the same week, we learned that the big bosses of Air Canada, CN and other organizations subject to the Official Languages Act would not have the obligation to speak French, as claimed by the government of Quebec. Just last year, CN didn’t even have a francophone on its board of directors and the CEO of Air Canada was delighted to be able to live well in Montreal without speaking French. These scandals were quickly forgotten.
In the same week, the federal Liberal Party was torn apart over another Quebec demand: respect for the Charter of the French language in the Official Languages Act. This request shocks the Liberal MPs more than a damning report from Statistics Canada which says that French is on the decline across Canada.1
Apart from language issues, the demands of the National Assembly that have remained unanswered are also piling up: new immigration powers, single tax declaration, health financing, actions on Roxham Road, citizenship for Raïf Badawi, appointment of ‘Amira Elghawaby, etc. Quebec is dissatisfied? Nevermind.
Quebec and its aspirations do not seem to interest the federal government. These numerous refusals reflect, yes, divergent opinions, but also a certain indifference. Even on the language issue, the parameters of which should have been integrated for a long time, we must constantly remember that we are a minority in Canada, a minority in North America, that Quebec culture is part of this diversity that enriches the world, that it is threatened, like other cultures, by the American cultural giant and that, for us, a language is not only a means of communication, but the vehicle of a unique culture in the world.
When the Quebec Minister of Culture asks that Quebec be consulted by the CRTC on issues that affect Quebec culture, it is the Quebec nation that is asking for minimal means to flourish in a world that is becoming more and more more. At one time, we even asked, quite rightly, that telecommunications be a shared power.
Cultures can disappear. Nations can wither away. When one of them asks for basic tools to ensure its future, responding positively should go without saying, even for Canada.
Simone de Beauvoir said that “the most scandalous thing about scandal is that you get used to it”. We are used to seeing our opinion ignored by the federal government, but it is still shameful.
I grew up politically in a Quebec where federalists sought to define a special place for Quebec in Canada, a place that would allow it to flourish in its own way: asymmetrical federalism, founding peoples, cultural sovereignty, equality or independence, separate society, etc. Over time, something broke and they came to the absolute insignificance of Philippe Couillard’s “Being Quebecois is our way of being Canadians”. Ontarians could have said the same thing. We are now paying the price for this insignificance, because Canada seems to have bought it in.
The parties in the National Assembly who believe that Quebec can flourish within Canada must define what, in their view, are the conditions for this flourishing. What ideal goals they pursue and what minimum goals they require. Moreover, what means will they take to convince Canada to adapt to the Quebec reality? And if the federal government continues to ignore them, what do they propose to Quebec to do, even while remaining within the Canadian framework?
This reflection is necessary to restore strength to Quebec, because its absence suggests that the only option is erasure.