The first political imperative, for any Quebec government, is to be tough, and to be seen to be tough, unflinchingly, incessantly, unthinkingly tough, about language.
The Liberal Party of Quebec learned that lesson way back in Robert Bourassa's day; his boast about suspending fundamental rights to protect French still resonates.
Yesterday, when the government introduced an onerous new limit on English-school access, the Parti Québécois was, predictably, deeply, deeply offended that the measure is not tough enough. But in truth, it's plenty tough.
By historical standards, it's true, Bill 103 is only a mid-sized example of the Liberals snubbing the firmest part of their base. But this new language law stings, like salt in a wound, because it comes at a time when many anglophones were hoping that Jean Charest's government might show just a hint of empathy for the language angst of the minority, rather than merely pandering to the majority.
(Or is it a majority? The Parti Québécois and assorted hard-line groups ring the alarm bell every 20 minutes about French being "endangered," but one recent poll found a clear majority of francophones supporting full language choice in education. Sometimes "consensus" is merely a stridently proclaimed minority view.)
Bill 103 is the government's response to a Supreme Court ruling last October striking down Bill 104 - the numbering is coincidental - which was intended to toughen up Bill 101 by further limiting access to English schools. From now on, Bill 103 says, parents may not get around the access limit by sending one child to a costly, fully private English school for just one year. The new standard, to be promulgated we understand by regulation under this law, will, in effect, require three years in such a school, half of grade school.
And in addition, bureaucrats will now poke around in the life of each such family, ensuring that there's some legitimacy to the demand. (Of course the United Nations thinks parental choice should be legitimacy enough, but who cares? We're being tough here.) By moving the process from law to regulation, the government makes sure that any transparency that might have illuminated these decisions vanishes into the maw of the bureaucracy.
The three-year rule is, we suppose, a compromise. Earlier this year ministers were talking about how awful it was that rich people could buy their way into English education. Under the new law it will still be possible for a very rich person to do that, but mere middle-income strivers will find themselves shut out.
Additional clauses of Bill 103 crack the whip over universities and CÉGEPs and municipal governments, requiring them all to develop and publish plans for advancing the use of French. And fines for no French on product packaging, including for software, will be increased dramatically.
The worst part of all this, as we noted above, is that many anglophones have been imploring the Liberals to allow our schools a little whiff of "oxygen" by relaxing access to English schools, if not for "loophole" kids then perhaps for immigrants from, say, the United States and Britain.
This little push was greatly weakened, however, by the mute passivity of the few remaining anglophone Liberal MNAs, and the francophone ones with safe seats. They too can be tough in defence of French - and their jobs.