Resolutely loyal to their party rather than their constituents, two Liberal MNAs from western Montreal Island insist they're comfortable with Bill 103, the Quebec government's newest measure restricting access to English schools.
"Comfortable" is surely the mot juste for the numerous Liberal MNAs whose Montreal ridings have many anglophone and allophone voters, most of them reflexively Liberal at election time. Geoff Kelley, whose Jacques-Cartier riding includes Pointe Claire, Beaconsfield, Baie d'Urfé, Sainte Anne de Bellevue, and part of Kirkland, won more than 80 per cent of the votes there in the 2008 election. Lawrence Bergman, meanwhile, won just under 89 per cent of the vote in D'Arcy McGee, which includes Côte Saint Luc, Hampstead, and parts of Montreal. "Comfortable" hardly begins to describe those vote margins.
The two other anglophone MNAs, Yolande James and Kathleen Weil, are cabinet ministers. All four voted for Bill 103 last week. (Four anglo MNAs out of 125 is rather a sad total in a province still almost 10 per cent anglophone.)
We haven't seen any poll results from those ridings, but we do know that last month 66 per cent of all Quebecers - including 87 per cent of anglophones - told a pollster that they support free choice in official language in education. Kelley, Bergman, James, and Weil obviously do not.
Kelley told a Gazette reporter last week that Bill 103 "is designed to respect the Supreme Court judgment" last October which struck down Bill 104, a previous Quebec law slamming the door on access to English schooling through a one-year sojourn in an expensive fully-private school. Perhaps Kelley hadn't read what Education Minister Michelle Courchesne told our columnist Don Macpherson last week: "I won't deny that the objective (of Bill 103) is to have as few as possible (approved)." So much for respecting the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling on Bill 104.
Kelley and Bergman do seem to be aware of the plight of English schooling. (Kelley's wife Judith Kelley, a Lester B. Pearson School Board commissioner, in a letter to the editor on this page today, notes that English school boards have expressed disappointment with the bill.) Both MNAs said in general terms that they understand that the anglophone community is concerned about schools, and that the issue should be discussed. We await with interest their proposals on the subject.
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