The language issue suddenly resurfaced yesterday, presenting political problems for Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois as well as Premier Jean Charest.
First, pro-French language hawks, with a new ally in former PQ premier Bernard Landry, launched a campaign to overcome Marois's resistance to extending to the CEGEPs Bill 101's restrictions on admission to English-language schools.
Then the Supreme Court of Canada announced that on Thursday it will hand down a judgment that could allow Charest's sovereignist adversaries to claim that the Canadian constitution does not allow Quebec to protect the French language.
The ruling could weaken the existing restrictions on admission to English-language elementary and high schools, considered one of the pillars of Bill 101.
The court has been asked to rule on the constitutionality of Bill 104, a 2002 Quebec law that closed a loophole in the restrictions.
The loophole made a pupil, as well as his or her brothers and sisters, eligible to attend a publicly funded English-language school after the first student spent as little as a year in an unsubsidized one.
The court has been asked whether Bill 104 violates the section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantees minority-language educational rights.
If the court rules against it, the Charest government would appear to have no choice but to comply.
It could not invoke the "notwithstanding" clause in the Charter, as Robert Bourassa's Liberal government did in 1988 to appease French-language opinion and maintain a ban on languages other than French on commercial signs. The government did that after the Supreme Court ruled the ban violated the Charter's guarantee of freedom of expression.
But the "notwithstanding" clause cannot be invoked for legislation violating the Charter's section on minority-language educational rights.
Marois's own problem with Bill 101 won't come to a head until next month, when the PQ national council is to discuss the language issue.
But it arose yesterday when Marc Laviolette, president of a left-wing "political club" within the PQ called SPQ Libre, announced that the council will be asked to adopt as party policy a restriction on admission to English-language CEGEPs.
In addition, the PQ's youth wing said it is proposing that English-language CEGEPs continue to receive public funding "only when they receive members of the English-speaking community."
The proposal to extend Bill 101's restrictions to the CEGEPs has been repeatedly rejected by the PQ at the urging of its leaders, including Landry and Marois.
But it received a boost last month when Landry reversed himself, arguing, among other things, that learning history in French-language CEGEPs would make immigrants more susceptible to supporting sovereignty.
The former premier attended a news conference yesterday with Laviolette and other supporters of the CEGEP proposal as well as another to reduce public funding for English-language universities. And Landry was to address a rally held in support of both proposals last evening.
The PQ leadership, however, still appears to be resisting the CEGEPs proposal.
Three weeks ago, the party's critic for language, Pierre Curzi, published an opinion article in French-language newspapers arguing that the "most important" factor in an apparent decline of French in Montreal is the exodus of francophones to the suburbs.
But Laviolette argued yesterday that French-speaking Quebecers would "recognize themselves" in a PQ that took up the defence of their identity. And it might not hurt his case that next month's meeting on language will be held in Montreal, where delegates might be influenced by contact with people who don't speak their language.