There are two important things when a prime minister decides to go into battle: choosing the subject well and choosing the moment well. But this week, between the CAQ convention and the National Assembly debates, it was something else entirely.
Posted June 5
We have heard the Prime Minister speak of “danger for the future of the nation” and even of “Louisianization”, in short, of a Quebec that is on the verge of losing its French character.
Funny time to talk about it. After all, if the linguistic situation deteriorated so dramatically during his mandate, that is certainly not a good point in his government’s record.
In fact, if the French character of Quebec is so threatened, it would be the Prime Minister’s responsibility to make it his top priority. And since this threat could not have materialized in a few days, one wonders why he waited at 44e months of a mandate that lasts 48 to legislate on the language issue.
That’s it for now. As for the fight he chose to fight, it’s even more confusing.
Mr. Legault goes to war because the federal government wants to retain authority over immigration for the purposes of family reunification.
These immigrants are chosen by the federal government and half of them, says Mr. Legault, do not speak French. Except that when we dissect the figures, we arrive at a situation that can hardly be considered as leading to a Louisianization of Quebec.
First, out of 14,000 immigrants in this category, half already speak French. Of the 7,000 who remain, a proportion are children who will attend French school, as provided for in Law 101. And there are a number of grandparents – although it is increasingly difficult to sponsor them – who, due to their age, will not enter the labor force. Mr. Legault admitted that in these two cases, judgment must be exercised.
There remain the spouses, who do not always have the capacity to learn French in their country of origin, but who should be able to do so in Quebec. It is hard to believe that this group – we are talking about a few thousand people at most – has suddenly become responsible for major threats to the future of the nation.
Finally, even if the choice is made by Ottawa, Quebec already has a share of the responsibility in accepting applicants for family reunification. They must submit a request to the Government of Quebec, which will ensure that they will be sponsored by a relative who will have to provide for their basic needs. It’s not the biggest handle, but it does exist.
But, above all, we have to ask ourselves what Quebec would do that would be very different from the federal government if it obtained authority over family reunification, since this is a question that essentially comes down to considerations humanitarians.
Family reunification is one of the essential aims of any immigration policy. It is not for nothing that it is mentioned in the first article of the Quebec Immigration Act1.
In practice, will Quebec tell a man or woman in Guatemala or Ukraine that he or she cannot join his or her spouse until he or she has learned French? To ask the question, is to answer it.
The important thing is not to obtain powers, it is what we are going to do with them. So why wage a battle over family reunification if, in the end, Quebec will do practically the same thing as Ottawa?
If Mr. Legault wants to find a promising subject in the field of immigration, it would be much more useful for him to talk about the 70,000 permits for temporary workers, very often English-speaking, granted annually by Ottawa and which have contributed to changing the portrait language of the central neighborhoods of Montreal. What he doesn’t do.
But the goal was neither to obtain new powers nor to advance French. It was simply to give tone to the nationalist argument of the CAQ a few months before the elections.
Even if, in the end, the whole thing gave rise to an unexpected debate on the true intentions of Mr. Legault. After all, some still believe he is a hidden sovereigntist in the guise of leader of a “nationalist within Canada” party.
But we’re not in a Cold War-era spy novel, with a mole suddenly revealing its true colors after years of infiltrating the other side.
The Prime Minister’s motivations are simpler: he wants a resounding victory and there remains a fairly good pool of nationalist voters to go to the PQ and even a few to the PLQ, two parties in great difficulty.
Hey, we could call that “the Bernard Drainville electorate”!