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I often hear elite-level American intellectuals — experts, academics, futurists, and so on — expressing great optimism about Canada’s potential. The country is shaped as a glimmer of hope in a dark world, dynamic, modern, urban, democratic, multicultural, unbiased success, free from toxic nationalism and populist authoritarianism, driving the rest of the planet into a ditch.
The big blind spot to such an optimistic analysis has always been Quebec, a province of 8.7 million of Canada’s 38.7 million citizens and a place occupied by policies that run counter to any flattering Canadian stereotype. In almost every measure, one can correlate with a promising, modern society – a hospitable business climate, a modern education system, open and attractive communities, stable protection of individual freedoms, a moderate and rational political class – Canada’s second-largest province marches without apology. direction.
This week, the Quebec parliament passed Bill 96, the Law on Respect for the French Language, the Official and Common Language of Quebec. It is an ambitious piece of legislation that gives the state broad powers to ensure that speaking French – the supposed cultural cornerstone of Quebec’s “distinctive identity” – is mandatory in almost every sphere of life. The project to turn Quebec into a homogeneous French-speaking nation is now the goal to which everything else is officially subordinated.
Private companies in Quebec with more than 50 employees have long been obliged to use French as their main language of internal communication. Bill 96 halves the number of staff needed to meet the threshold and gives the so-called language police new powers to carry out raids on businesses without orders to ensure compliance, search documents, computers and even telephones to make sure that … I don’t know that the employees are not secretly planning the company’s softball tournament in English (or, in this sense, in Korean, Arabic or Greek). Violators could see that their business licenses had been revoked.
The notion of English education is also tightening – English language colleges in Quebec must now require students to take a number of French courses, and students must prove that they speak French in order to graduate. The government must also ensure that these dangerous schools never account for more than 17.5 percent of the province’s student body.
Immigrants, long considered one of Quebec’s most formidable challenges, given how little of the world speaks French today, will cut off their ability to communicate with the province in English in six months. There is no access to English schools for them, of course.
Meanwhile, Quebec residents who speak English as their first language will see their “official minority” status defined and monitored more closely than ever to ensure that the only Quebec residents who have access to English-language services they have some valid, “historical” reason for this – so that normal French Quebeckers are unlikely to get any ideas. It is estimated that about half a million English-speaking Quebec residents may lose access to services due to a bureaucratic redefinition of their community.
The list goes on. Physicians will have to speak to patients in French, the appointment of bilingual judges will be discouraged, and packaging, signs and advertisements will have to contain French even more noticeably than now.
The dream embodied in Bill 96 – among other Quebec Prime Minister Francois Lego’s nationalist initiatives, including immigration cuts and a ban on government officials from wearing religious clothing – is one of “pure” Quebec, magnificently untouched by other cultures. It is reminiscent of the Sakoku years. of Japan, where a protected political elite, convinced of the inherent inferiority of the outside world, has been isolated for two centuries, severely limiting even studying the for other people’s things.
Apologists on the Lego agenda, even if they do not necessarily agree with every bill and decree, tend to demonstrate the idea that Quebec’s French culture is so valuable and delicate that virtually any effort to preserve it is forgivable. A recent article in the National Post by Liz Ravari struck a standard note of sympathy for the “400-year-old dream of a French-speaking corner of North America.” This included a mandatory mention of Louisiana, one of the continent’s richest culturally and distinctive places, but often portrayed as something of hell in Quebec circles because the state no longer speaks French widely.
Leaving Louisiana aside, there are an endless array of places where Quebec could choose to be positive inspired by – prosperous and dynamic European nations such as Sweden or the Netherlands, where strong pride in traditional language and customs coexist with incredibly high levels of English proficiency and deep cultural integration with the wider West. In fact, Quebec does not even need to look beyond its own borders: the city of Montreal has long captivated the world with its confident multilingualism and multiculturalism, yet generations of Quebec nationalist leaders have viewed the vital cosmopolitanism of their largest city as a shameful problem. must be resolved.
Canada may still be a country worth betting on, but in the world after Bill 96, it is clear that all compliments to Canadian progressivity must be accompanied by a big star in the shape of Quebec.
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