Watch out, Dominique Anglade! | Press

The big boss of Air Canada, Michael Rousseau, declared in front of the cameras that he had been able to live in English in Montreal for 14 years. Which, according to the smug boss, is a good thing for the metropolis. As if this statement wasn’t insulting enough, he added that learning the French language was not really his priority. A statement that caused a lot of ink to flow and sparked an outcry in political circles. Francophones are furious with Michael. Yet when you think about it a bit more, Michael was just expressing what everyone knew, but didn’t really want to hear.

Everyone who knows or lives in Greater Montreal knows that the erosion of French is accelerating there at great speed and that the demographic weight of Francophones has decreased enormously. We all know that in a few years, to be elected in Montreal, we will have to swear loyalty to Canadian multiculturalism and praise the bilingual, even postnational, character of the metropolis. This is the cold reality we face, and one which will be impossible to contain, as no political party has the ability or the courage to reverse the trend. In short, Michael Rousseau has unfortunately only expressed what many English speakers think and even now publicly defend. The proof, the municipal electoral campaign of Montreal was enriched by a third player, Balarama Holness, who proposes to regulate what he considers as an oppression of non-Francophones by “separating” the metropolis from the rest of Quebec. A position which finds a lot of followers and may even muddy the waters of this electoral meeting.

If yesterday the language of the Sun King set only west of Montreal, today, it can doze in the four corners of the metropolis. This is what Michael Rousseau told us, who has lived in Saint-Lambert for so long without being able to offer simple greetings in French.

Now, why mention Dominique Anglade in my title? I arrive there. Do you remember this period of wandering the Parti Québécois (PQ) which led him to the edge of the precipice where he is? I am talking about this recent past where the sovereignist option was on the verge of being radioactive. We avoided talking about it in the hope of seducing a wider audience and hoping to regain power, which had almost become the private property of the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ). Thus, at the start of her electoral campaign against Philippe Couillard, Pauline Marois stifled the word “referendum” so strongly that she could no longer be heard breathing in her troops. At least until Pierre Karl Péladeau, whom we did not see coming, shows off his powerful fist who wanted a country. We will remember how his muscular statement was going to derail the PQ campaign. Since then, convinced that it had lost this election in large part because of the taboo word, the PQ, which sought to cast a wider net, chose to move away even further from the uninhibited referendum discourse. This was, it seems, the best thing to do to bring back into their fold the hesitant separatists and other nationalists who prefer to defend the Quebec exception within Canada. Stopping or silencing the referendum option of priorities became the only way to hope to regain power.

It should be remembered that, in those not so distant days, with its unwavering electoral base of nearly 30%, the Liberal Party had only to shake up the referendum scare to win the day and keep power. While Couillard was celebrating, the Parti Québécois sank into this wandering of identity and the Coalition Avenir Québec exhibited a proposal which at least had the merit of clearly announcing that the independence of Quebec was not part of its program. We know the rest.

Why this long introduction to arrive at Dominique Anglade? As bizarre as it may seem, this tribulation that has contributed to the erosion of the Parti Québécois seems to be playing out in the Liberal Party. In question, eager to cast a wider net than the anglophone and allophone vote of the great metropolis which is overwhelmingly acquired by his party, Dominique is looking more confidently at the so-called native francophones. Which is a noble enterprise. At least, on condition that you do not solicit too ostentatiously, because the history of Quebec has a certain reality that cannot be ignored in the matter. It is very difficult these days to please both nationalist votes and thinkers like Michael Rousseau and Balarama Holness.

In other words, to attract the favor of a certain French-speaking vote, we have to commit ourselves to issues that will disturb the homeostasis of a large part of English-speaking and all-speaking people.

However, since his election as head of the PLQ, this desire to reconnect with Francophones has prompted Anglade to adopt positions that certainly make people cringe in the West Island. I am thinking here of his petition launched in October 2020 “to put an end to the drift into political correctness” in the wake of the Verushka Lieutenant-Duval affair; his recent remonstrances to Liberal MP Gregory Kelley over the debate around systemic racism; its propensity to speak of interculturality and to plead for a more robust defense of the French language. All these positions, no matter how noble, can seriously irritate a good part of this electorate traditionally favorable to the Liberal Party.

With the great popularity of Legault, in order to hope to convince a significant number of French speakers, Dominique Anglade would have to settle down to the uncomfortable position that had precisely pushed her to move away from the Caquistes and to join the ranks of the PLQ. Dominique is a brilliant girl and you can’t doubt her love for Quebec, but is the game politically worth the candle?

The bet seems very risky to me for another reason. Imagine if a large part of Anglophones and Allophones who no longer felt represented in Quebec decided to found a political party. With the arrival of an equivalent of Balarama Holness in Quebec national politics, the sky would darken seriously for the PLQ. Just as the Parti Québécois is inseparable from its sovereignist option, today’s Liberal Party is “attached” to a multiculturalist option that it cannot hide under the rug or silence it without paying the price. Only an unwavering adherence to the Canadian multiculturalist ideology will allow Dominique to keep his electoral base in the metropolis. Between preserving this electorate and seriously defending the Quebec exception, it seems to me that we will have to choose. In this loss of enthusiasm that led the PLQ to 20% of the voting intentions, there is certainly the anger of many people who think like the Michael Rousseau and Balarama Holness of this world.

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