Hands Off My French

Quebec MP Maxime Bernier has suggested scrapping Quebec's language charter. Mon dieu!

Both the National Post’s Graeme Hamilton and the Montreal Gazette editorial board are disappointed by the backlash Conservative MP Maxime Bernier provoked in Quebec last week by suggesting the province’s law restricting the use of English isn’t necessary to preserving the French language. Bernier overstepped himself by suggesting Bill 101 could be done away with completely, says the Gazette, but “even delicately nuanced critiques of Bill 101 and eminently reasonable suggestions for easing its strictures … are typically seized upon by the language hawks as deadly threats to the province's French fact … it's [not] possible as yet to have an adult discussion on language in Quebec.”

Hamilton believes Bill 101 has had a positive impact on preserving French, but suggesting it be scrapped isn’t blasphemy and “surely [Bernier] should be able to raise the subject without being dismissed as a heretic.” We in the Newsroom can see where Hamilton is coming from, but it’s contradictory to invoke free speech to defend Bernier’s right to condemn the law while also decrying critics for speaking out against him. If Bernier can pillory the law, then surely Quebeckers have the right to pillory Bernier.

Bill 101 is “a regressive, repressive piece of legislation that has no place in a democracy,” declares the Calgary Herald’s Naomi Lakritz. “I was living in Montreal in 1977 when Bill 101 came in. I watched the exodus of people and money and businesses west to Toronto. I watched as Italians and other immigrants set up clandestine English schools for their children in people's basements.” That the bill sent Anglophones streaming from Quebec is a matter of historical record, but Lakritz even questions whether the law helps preserve the French language, something even its critics mostly agree it succeeds in doing.

In the National Post, Tasha Kheiriddin makes the argument that the law inadvertently helped ensure Quebec will never separate from Canada because it requires a massive bureaucracy to enforce, and that massive state structure requires transfer payments from the rest of Canada to maintain. Very cute! But grossly oversimplified.