Martin Lemay, the Parti Québécois MNA for Ste. Marie-St.Jacques, made a pathetic attempt on May 2 to rebut my column published in the Ottawa Citizen and online at The Gazette under the title, “Quebec’s original paranoia.” Those interested can read his screed by clicking on montrealgazette.com/opinion.
He betrays staggering ignorance. Consider these two sentences, part of his long list of grievances and claims of victimization:
“French-language Catholic schools were forbidden in Canada outside Quebec, even though Confederation officially guaranteed equal status for the English and French languages. Louis Riel, who fought for the rights of French speakers and natives, was hanged in 1885.”
If Lemay attended high school, he should know that Confederation “guaranteed equal status for the English and French languages” by the British North America Act, but only in “the Debates of the Houses of the Parliament of Canada and of the Houses of the Legislature of Quebec; and both those languages shall be used in the respective records and journals of those Houses; and either of those languages may be used by any person or in any pleading or process in or issuing from any court of Canada established under this act, and in or from all or any of the courts of Quebec.”
Confederation guaranteed equality of the two languages only in the federal and Quebec legislatures and courts. Nowhere else. That is the mistake that Pierre Trudeau tried to correct by the Official Languages Act and by amending the Constitution to make both languages official in all provinces. But Robert Bourassa vetoed that at Victoria in 1971 and the PQ voted against the Canada Act 1982. Lemay should go back to school and learn some realities about his country.
Moreover, the PQ tried to abolish the equal status of English in Quebec’s legislature and courts by the 1977 Charter of the French Language. That was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada. Still, despite the fact that every law ever legally adopted in Quebec was or is adopted in English as well as French, the PQ and the Liberal Party of Quebec pretend that French is the only official language of Quebec. What hypocrisy.
As for the hanging of Riel, which I consider unfortunate, it was not for “fighting for the rights of French speakers and natives” but for leading an armed insurrection in which many lives were lost. Lemay should ask a lawyer specialized in constitutional law to explain to him the difference between a struggle for rights under the rule of law and armed insurrection. He might be in for a surprise, he whose party assumes that it can overthrow the Constitution if it gets a 50 per cent plus one Yes votes on a trick question, as was proposed in the 1995 referendum.
Nous vaincrons!
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William Johnson is a Quebec journalist and former president of Alliance Quebec.