I have often been, in our pages, the defender of Valérie Plante.
· Read also: Protection of French: Legault and Plante cross swords
My defense is essentially this: Montreal is taking a sensible direction for the future, despite the difficulties we can experience there and the bad caricature that some people make of it.
The Plante administration has made courageous decisions since 2017, such as the Express Bike Network, the pedestrianization of certain streets, the return of an urbanity less centered on the car, the creation of parks in the West and East of the city, homelessness management…
Basically, a city is being built there primarily designed for the people who live there. It’s far from perfect, but the city has become more civic-minded since Valérie Plante has been mayor.
An attack on Montreal?
Each time, many readers let me know their disagreements. Quite directly.
And each time, I see to what extent the Montreal-region divide is of formidable political effectiveness.
This is a process that the Legault government has used many times, notably on the third link and the Horne Foundry. Easy, we fall into perceptions without arguing on the merits.
However, this week, the roles were reversed.
Valérie Plante severely blamed the government for its reform of McGill and Concordia tuition fees for students outside Quebec and foreigners.
This “directly attacks” Montreal, she proclaimed.
An attack on Montreal. Literally.
By repeating the rhetoric of the Anglo-Quebec lobby, Valérie Plante disappoints. Yes, exactly, disappointment.
By conviction or by electoralism? What do I know, but in both cases, there is something disappointing in the way the mayor approaches the situation of French in Montreal.
She is failing in her symbolic and necessary duty as mayor.
McGill and Concordia
The Legault government is not asking for the moon, either.
It simply requires an increase in tuition fees for foreign undergraduate students and their Frenchization.
It is a logical public policy if we want to tackle anglicization in Montreal.
McGill University is built on an edifice of privilege – linguistic, historical, institutional and financial privilege.
A specific example that summarizes these privileges: to compensate for the increase in tuition fees, McGill will finance, from its own pockets, the tuition fees of each student from other provinces with the help of a $3,000 scholarship.
We wonder which French-speaking university could do the same.
Answer: none.
McGill and Concordia are seeing their number of registrations decrease due to this policy, they say, despite this compensatory scholarship. So, the problem is not the fees, but the francization policy in place.
I would never dare say that this is perhaps a “direct attack” against French-speaking Montreal.
Politicians play politics
Don’t be naive, Minister Roberge and PM Legault were jubilant in attacking Mayor Plante on French.
A good enemy for a “chicken-no-head” government.
This allows them to call themselves the defenders of French, against the PQ. And to respond to the mayor’s criticism of public transportation, housing and the strikes of public sector employees.
But ultimately, we don’t care about all these political considerations.
Because indeed Valérie Plante should be a better ally to protect French in Montreal.