Pauline Marois’s politics of fear

Élection Québec 2012 - récit canadian




L. Ian MacDonald MONTREAL - It’s morbidly fascinating that Pauline Marois has chosen to take a hard line on language, making it the centrepiece of the Parti Québécois campaign, at a time when hardly anyone is talking about it.
It’s not as if students and the unions have been rioting about the language issue; they’ve been rioting about tuition fees. It’s not as if language rates anywhere near the top of voters’ concerns in any of the polls. Health care, the economy, the environment, entitlements, corruption and change are all more important.
But Marois says that if she forms a government, a new Bill 101 will be the signature legislation of her first 100 days in office. Apparently she sees herself as Franklin D. Roosevelt — only instead of proposing “nothing to fear but fear itself,” she has nothing to sell but fear itself.
Under her proposal, the restrictions on francophones and allophones attending English-language high schools would be extended to non-anglophone college students, preventing them from attending CEGEP at English-language colleges.
And Bill 101 regulations on French as the language of business in Quebec, which now begin with companies of 50 employees or more, would begin applying to firms with more than 10 employees.
In their second year of CEGEP, students are old enough to vote and old enough to pay taxes on their summer jobs. But according to Marois, they are not old enough to decide the language of study in their college education.
“Currently half the enrolments in English-language colleges are students whose mother tongue is other than English,” Marois said at the rollout of her language policy on Sunday. “Of all the students whose mother tongue is neither French nor English, half chose English-language colleges. This situation must be remedied.”
Aha, those allophones again! The enrolment level of francophones in English-language CEGEPs is only about five per cent. Maybe some of them chose Dawson College for its strong fine-arts program, which leads to the world-renowned Fine Arts faculty at Concordia University. Maybe Concordia and McGill are next on Marois’s hit list. To pursue the absurd logic of her argument, they would be.
Maybe these kids, children of the internet, don’t want to live in a linguistic ghetto but want to go out into a bigger world beyond the parochial one of Quebec. That should be a choice for them, and their families, to make. If she sat down with her star recruit, Leo Bureau-Blouin, he would tell her this policy didn’t fly when he was president of the CEGEP student federation.
As for small businesses, both established and startups, they are the motor of economic growth. And in the global economy, English is the common language of international trade and commerce. At a time when Quebec desperately needs new jobs, Marois would drive new investment and jobs out by increasing the number of doors knocked on by the language police.
“The message has to be clear,” she said. “In Quebec, we live in French, we work in French, we communicate in French.”
Would someone please tell this woman about Twitter, so she can look at #qc2012, where Quebecers are communicating with each other in both languages? Why not censor the internet, as they do in China? Let’s shut down Facebook, and tell kids they can only post YouTube videos in French. After the language police, the thought police.
The question is why Marois would propose these ideas, which would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous to the social peace and economic prospects of Quebec.
And the answer is pretty obvious. The PQ, in a competitive election, is trying to consolidate its base. Its old base. It is calling home the hardline separatist and leftist voters who have left it for Québec solidaire. If the PQ could reduce the QS vote from eight per cent in recent polls to four per cent on election day, that might make all the difference.
Similarly, Marois is talking out of both sides of her mouth on sovereignty and a referendum. On Radio-Canada’s flagship Coulisses du Pouvoir show on Sunday, she was asked about the prospect of a referendum in a first mandate.
Her reply: “I want one, as quickly as possible, but I won’t announce when there will be a referendum.” She added she wouldn’t call one until the PQ had a chance of winning. Ah, winning conditions again, a page from the Lucien Bouchard playbook.
The language issue and a referendum might mobilize the old PQ base, but what she is proposing is socially reckless and economically irresponsible. It’s not only intellectually dishonest, it’s morally reprehensible.
She sounds like someone from the 1970s. In fact, that’s exactly where she’s from.
lianmacdonald@gmail.com


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