“ Norms are norms are norms said Liberal MP for D’Arcy-McGee, David Birnbaum, on Thursday following the cancellation of the Dawson College expansion project, which sparked outrage in the English-speaking community.
It was, of course, echoing the famous cry from the heart “ Rights are rights are rights “, pushed in 1988 by former minister Clifford Lincoln when Robert Bourassa had decided to use the derogation provision to maintain the rule of French unilingualism in commercial signage, against a judgment of the Court supreme.
Shortly before the 1985 elections, the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Reed Scowen, had the delegates to the general council of the PLQ adopt a resolution that committed a future Liberal government to restore the right to bilingual signage, that Law 101 had banned eight years earlier.
Except that in 1988, the climate had changed considerably. Since the Liberals returned to power, Francophones have been worried about seeing English regain ground. Law 101 seemed to be less respected, the population again feared being overwhelmed by immigration which had little appetite for French.
Even if the PLQ was largely leading in the polls, the arrival of Jacques Parizeau had revitalized the PQ, so that Mr. Bourassa had deemed it imprudent to keep the 1985 commitment. The resignation of his three English-speaking ministers seemed to him the lesser evil .
What happened next proved him right. In the elections of September 25, 1989, the anger of Anglophones earned four deputies for the short-lived Equality Party, but the PLQ had 92 elected, and the PQ, 29.
After the CAQ victory of 2018, the Legault government took over the Dawson College expansion project, which had already been approved by that of Philippe Couillard, in full compliance with the standards of the Ministry of Education.
He then included it in the list of priority infrastructure projects appended to Bill 61 presented in June 2020, then in its new version presented in September of the same year.
In February 2021, the government also opposed a motion presented by the PQ which called for the cancellation of the project and the redistribution of the amounts provided for the French-speaking colleges. We can understand English speakers crying treason.
Yet the arguments that Mr. Legault makes today to justify the cancellation were just as valid three years ago. Anglophone colleges, particularly Dawson, were already welcoming a mostly non-Anglophone clientele, and Francophone colleges already had urgent needs. So how can this new volte-face be explained?
Clearly, the government realized that Language Bill 96, which it billed as “new Bill 101” and was counting on to present itself as the champion of the protection of French, convinced no one. Rather, it was seen as a half-measure that will not be enough to curb the accelerated anglicization of the Montreal region.
Canceling a decision that should never have been made in the first place is undoubtedly a good thing, but this is simply an attempt to compensate for the refusal to extend the provisions of Law 101 to the college level. A consolation prize that does not solve the problem.
Nor is it by depreciating the Quebec city of the Liberals, as he did in a childish way in the National Assembly, that Mr. Legault will demonstrate that he himself is doing what must be done. As Jean Chrétien would say, the question is not to know who is the “most worst”.
This week, the Minister responsible for the French Language, Simon Jolin-Barrette, who is also Minister of Justice, was brutally reminded of the limits that membership in the Canadian federation imposes on him, when the Superior Court indicated that he could not object to the bilingualism requirement for the position of judge at the Court of Quebec.
Judge Christian Immer clearly told him to mind his own business: “Once he asked the secretary to open the competition, he had no say in including the needs expressed by the judge. in chief in the notice or on the identity of the persons he must appoint. »
For reasons he may explain one day, Mr. Legault now believes that the advantages of being part of Canada outweigh the disadvantages, for example that a judge must speak English to sit on the Court of Quebec.
However, the Constitution would not prevent him from imposing Bill 101 on the CEGEP. Federalism is sometimes unbearable, but we still can’t blame everything on it.