We don’t yet know who will govern this beautiful, maddening province for the next four years, or whether this person will lead a majority government. But if there has been one enduring if largely unspoken narrative through the last five weeks, it is this: the English language, and anglophones, have already won.
Before you throw down this newspaper (or your phone) either out of incredulity or disgust, hear me out — or at least travel back with me to 2014, the last time democracy summoned us to the provincial ballot boxes. The Parti Québécois, in power for all of 18 months, was seeking another mandate. Its platform was replete with sabre-rattling nativist jargon about the so-called “Quebec values charter” and its inherent targeting of religious minorities, not to mention the ever-present Sword of Damocles: a promise to hold a referendum on Quebec sovereignty “once Quebecers are consulted and give their approval.”
Faced with this decades-old threat, anglophones were once again forced into an arranged marriage with the Quebec Liberal Party, which apart from having taken English-speaking voters for granted throughout much of its recent history, had been complacent and demonstrably corrupt during the previous decade.
We couldn’t vote for the Coalition Avenir Québec, if only because Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard had convinced us that its leader, François Legault, was a crypto-sovereignist equally bent on removing Quebec from Canada. And the idea of a televised debate in English was about as laughable as the Canadiens’ chances of winning the Stanley Cup.
Something happened in the intervening four years. Perhaps it was the weight of demographics and the resulting diminishing political returns of either scapegoating English or taking anglophones wholly for granted. Maybe it was a boiling over of the collective frustration with the two-party status quo. Regardless, though the parties angling for our votes haven’t changed since 2014, the context is completely different — and far more anglo-friendly as a result.
First, as a matter of political expediency, the Parti Québécois is out of the referendum business for now, having said there would be no such vote until a second mandate, beginning in 2022. Should the PQ lose the election next Monday (spoiler alert: it will), the prospect of a referendum gets pushed back farther.
The province is also decidedly more comfortable with the English language. The CAQ, the odds-on favourite to take power next week, has no punitive anti-English measures in its platform. Rather, Legault’s party will advance the cause of French by promoting its virtues, not scapegoating its putative rival. Again, this is born of political reality. By and large, most CAQ voters seem to understand, rightly, that English doesn’t exist at the expense of French. This particular zero-sum game, long peddled by the PQ, no longer exists.
In 2014, both precedent and PQ leader Pauline Marois’s indifference toward the language ensured there would no English debate. By contrast, her successor Jean-François Lisée readily agreed to partake in the English experiment in 2018, even though he had next to nothing to gain. Even Québec solidaire co-spokesperson Manon Massé, whose English is certainly better than my Swahili, gamely accepted the challenge, and endeared herself as a result. Notably, Couillard attacked Legault on the latter’s merits (or lack thereof), and not for being a Trojan Horse for the sovereignty movement. And aside from the dark mutterings of a few eternally blinkered Journal de Montréal columnists and the usual French-language hawks, no one complained about the resulting English exercise.
Finally, there is this: Quebec’s anglophone community is no longer wedded to the Quebec Liberal Party. Yes, it is likely to vote en masse for Philippe Couillard, helping the party retain its Montreal stronghold as a result. But this is the result of reflex and inertia, nothing more — easily undone as time progresses. The fact is, in Quebec’s first non-sovereignty election in nearly 50 years, “anglais” is no longer a dirty word.
