Things are getting louder in the English-speaking community of Quebec these days. To make a long story short, let’s say that the community has the impression of not being considered by the Coalition Avenir Québec government and that its relations with it are worse than with previous governments in Quebec, including those of the Parti Québécois.
They are us (“They are part of us”), Jacques Parizeau even said.
It is true that the PQ had taken great care not to offend the English-speaking community when it came to its historical institutions or its constitutional rights. Despite pressures within the PQ, René Lévesque or Jacques Parizeau would never have touched English-speaking universities, which they considered to be institutions built and supported by the community.
Obviously, the PQ governments had passed laws, Bill 101 immediately comes to mind, with which the English-speaking community strongly disagreed. But at least everything was clear: there were laws and there were rights. The government respected the rights of Anglophones and expected them to respect the laws, including those they did not like.
With the CAQ, everything is at the discretion of the government and it does not hesitate to change what suits it according to the political situation of the moment.
In fact, as columnist Tom Mulcair pointed out last week in the Montreal Gazetteit seems that every time Prime Minister Legault feels that he risks losing part of his nationalist electorate – as has been the case since his defeat in Jean-Talon – he acts as if the defense of French consisted of attack the English-speaking community.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESS
A last-minute amendment to Bill 15 tabled by the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, would give the board of directors of Santé Québec the right to withdraw services in English from certain health establishments.
It manifests itself in all sorts of ways. The latest controversy came from a last-minute amendment to Bill 15 which will create the Santé Québec agency. It gave the board of directors of Santé Québec the right to withdraw services in English from certain establishments, if the number no longer justified it.
This could target institutions built by the English-speaking community which now serve patients in the language of their choice, but which today find themselves at the heart of French-speaking communities. All by simple administrative decision.
The venerable Brome-Mississquoi-Perkins hospital in Cowansville, founded in 1910, is a good example of the many health establishments built by the English-speaking community which today offer services in both languages, but which could lose the right to do so. do in English. Which, by the way, would not advance French in any way.
However, when the government adopted Bill 96, which reformed previous linguistic legislation, including Bill 101, Prime Minister François Legault himself had clearly specified that the government would continue to have the obligation to provide language services. health in English.
The pressure group most representative of the English-speaking community, the Quebec Community Groups Network, immediately sniffed out the political maneuver: “From school boards to university tuition fees and now health care, it is clear that This government has decided to target the English-speaking community to counter the rise of the Parti Québécois in the polls,” said its press release published last week.
The Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, had to admit in a parliamentary committee that he did not really know where this amendment came from and he ended up saying, the next day, that it would be withdrawn since the aim of his law was not It’s not about changing the status quo when it comes to access to health care. He also praised the work of the opposition who warned him of the problem.
So it was a false alarm, but the damage is done. For the English-speaking community, it confirms that their institutions are not safe from a threat that could come from who knows where, for example by means of a simple article buried in a mammoth bill whose the minister himself does not know of its existence.
Whether inadvertent or not, the CAQ government once again gives the impression that it does not care much about the English-speaking community, except when it allows it to score political points.
There is, officially, a minister responsible for relations with the English-speaking community. But let’s say that the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, has a lot of other fish to fry these days, between the fall economic update, the spring budget, without forgetting the file of the subsidized visit of the Kings in Quebec !
It is easy to understand that the English-speaking community feels, these days, like a simple political accessory for the Prime Minister and his government. However, stigmatizing a part of the population to make partisan gains is always a bad idea. Especially since it never gives the expected results.