Tom Mulcair: Legault focuses on the wrong language statistics

Oops, he did it again.

Following a campaign filled with hurtful remarks about immigrants, it was fair to to hope that Premier François Legault would become more careful in addressing sensitive issues involving language and identity.

Turns out Boulet wasn’t really that disqualified, because Legault kept him in cabinet.

At the same time, recent statements by Legault have suggested his own rehabilitation was only temporary. As much as he now makes a point of saying that “new Quebecers are an asset to Quebec,” he’s a repeat offender when it comes to playing the divisive identity games we saw during the campaign.

Legault reiterates, ad nauseam, what he suggests is a key statistic that “proves” that French is in perilous decline: about half of the people in Montreal speak another language at home. That, according to Legault, indicates an “existential threat” to French.

What Legault doesn’t look at, presumably because it runs counter to his narrative, is that in the metropolitan Montreal census area, 90 per cent of people can hold a conversation in French. That percentage has never been higher, and it’s obvious why: newcomers have been compelled to send their children to French school since the enactment of Bill 101, in 1977. That law also made French the normal language of business and commerce and indeed, daily life. French is now clearly Quebec’s lingua franca, exactly as the authors of Bill 101 had hoped. But apparently that’s just not enough.

Where the thoughtful and insightful Camille Laurin diagnosed language insecurity and prescribed a solution that actually helped heal wounds of the past, Legault is simply pointing a finger. He demonstrates no solid analysis, only predetermined beliefs.

His tendency to stir the language pot isn’t new. Distinguished journalist and former official languages commissioner Graham Fraser quotes Legault as having told a full room of Parti Québécois activists in 1998 that he “hates the English as much as you do.” It’s the type of unfortunate, divisive approach we’re seeing again from Legault that recalls the closed ethnic nationalism of the past.

The first Bill 101 “kids” are now becoming grandparents. Imagine a Chilean family that fled the horrors of the Pinochet regime and made their way here. The kids went to French school. They learned the language and speak it at work and in their dealings with others. They and their family have fully integrated.

Imagine how they feel. They’ve worked hard, played by the rules, adapted and integrated but, yes, in the privacy of their own home, they may primarily speak Spanish. In that, they are no different from hundreds of thousands of others from around the world who have come here hoping for a peaceful and fruitful life. That peace includes first and foremost the peace to make your own choices in the privacy of your own home.

The discussion in the public sphere since Legault’s over-the-top rhetoric has been as heated as any I’ve witnessed. Comments have been saying things like: it’s not enough to speak French, you have to watch French TV at home, otherwise, you’re part of the problem.

It should go without saying that in a free and democratic society, no one, absolutely no one, has the right to tell anyone else what language they can speak in their own home, much less the language of their cultural choices.

After Bills 21 and 96, Legault should be pushed back hard for this most recent display of official intolerance. Immigrants and their descendants, like all Quebecers, have the right to be respected, not singled out as problems.

Tom Mulcair, a former leader of the federal NDP, served as minister of the environment in the Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest. 

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