Save Our Anglos!

On Quebec's newest endangered species.

Lost in the ongoing coverage of several terrible events happening around the world last week was the release of a Senate language committee report that found Quebec’s English-speaking citizens are being marginalized. The Montreal Gazette editors hail the report as “a noble and welcome effort in aid of a community that is more typically either disdained or taken for granted.” In the past, a call to do more to protect the rights of Quebec’s anglophones would have been absurd, but the Gazette says those days are long over. “English Quebecers are a relatively fortunate lot, perhaps even the best treated minority in the world … But the community's stark reality, as opposed to the persistent myth of a privileged elite, is that Quebec anglophones now lag behind francophones in median income” and a slew of other social indicators.

The National Post editors go even further and say that oft-repeated claims that Quebec French needs protection from the encroachment of English “have ranged from absurd to xenophobic.” It’s true that charges that the Montreal Canadiens have been deliberately cleansed of French-speaking players are vraiment très folle, but surely the Post and the rest of us anglos have to acknowledge that French wouldn’t stand much of a chance in North America without official protection. Perhaps the distinction that needs to be impressed on Quebeckers is that if there is a threat to the language it’s coming from the wider North American culture, not from the small portion of English-speakers in the province who, as the Post says, “should receive the same attention and respect as those of francophones outside Quebec.”

In other Quebec news, the Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert weighs in on how the next election could affect the Bloc Quebecois. Their solid position in the polls suggests that they have nothing to lose, but things could all go sideways if the Conservatives manage a majority. An empowered Stephen Harper would almost certainly eliminate the party subsidy system that has become the BQ’s main source of funding, potentially crippling a party that’s facing the imminent departure of its consistently popular leader Gilles Duceppe.