MONTREAL In an election in which she seems to have a fairly good chance of winning power, Parti Québécois Leader Pauline Marois should be taking care to reassure Quebecers that under a PQ government all citizens would be welcomed as valuable members of the Quebec family with their rights respected, no matter who they are or where they’re from.
Instead, with less than two weeks to go before the Sept. 4 vote, Marois is fanning the flames of intolerance with all the energy she can muster.
This week she promised to bar non-francophones from running for public office, no matter how remote or restricted in scope that office might be, unless they can prove an “appropriate” level of competence in French. So an Inuit in Nunavik might not be able to run for municipal office without passing a French test of an as-yet-to-be determined level of difficulty.
The idea of the state taking on the task of determining who is suitable to seek public office — beyond the usual rules of citizenship and age — is shameful. Voters decide who is suitable. It’s their job to pass judgment on the men and women who run for public office. If a candidate can’t communicate with them, it’s unlikely they’ll vote for that person. That’s democracy.
But democracy is apparently not the point for Marois. Instead, the objective is the political mileage she hopes to get out of continuing to play the identity/language card in the critical days before the election.
Last week she said a PQ government would bar members of religious and cultural minorities working in Quebec’s civil service from wearing religious symbols such as kippahs or head scarves. The Christian crucifix, however, would be permitted. Since less than five per cent of the province’s civil service is made up of minorities, this is more propaganda ploy than anything else. But the message is unmistakable: Members of minorities who look the part are not welcome.
Marois has also promised to introduce a new, tougher language law within 100 days of taking power. Companies with between 11 and 50 employees would come under the revised French-language charter and would be strictly supervised to make sure they speak French to their clients. At a time when the province’s health-care system is desperate for more money, a “few million dollars” would be spent on language police.
The PQ would also restrict the right of Quebecers to attend English-language CEGEPs. Again, this is the state interfering with Quebecers’ freedom to choose, this time whether they want to learn a second language at a point in their studies when they should be fluent in French and when they have generally reached the age of majority. They’re adults, not children to be pushed around by an all-powerful state. It’s up to them to decide what skills they need as they chart out their lives and careers.
Marois knows full well that her proposals will be challenged. Civil-rights lawyer Julius Grey this week denounced the French-fluency test for those seeking office as “manifestly unconstitutional,” adding that “people like myself … will be in court the next day after it’s passed.”
But Marois is undeterred. This is the scenario she seems intent on setting up: Her government will enact unconstitutional laws; the laws will be challenged; they will be overruled by the Supreme Court of Canada; and the PQ will use that rejection to bolster its case that Quebec and Canada have nothing in common and Quebec must go its own way. Such turmoil is not what Quebec needs or, in the case of the vast majority of Quebecers, wants.
If Marois wants to present the PQ as a credible, serious party that can govern — with herself as a credible, serious premier — she should concentrate on the issues that Quebecers say matter most to them: health care, education, the economy. We’ve been down the road of linguistic and constitutional confrontation and it led to a costly impasse. Quebec cannot afford to go down that path again.