Tasha Kheiriddin - Tuesday morning the Quebec government of Premier Jean Charest invoked closure to force Bill 115 through the province’s National Assembly. The legislation is a response to the Supreme Court’s striking down of a previous law, Bill 104, which would have curbed access to English education in the province.
In Quebec, the only children who can legally attend English primary and secondary school are those who have at least one parent who was educated in English in Canada, or who have attended Canadian English school themselves. Children of other parents – mostly immigrants or migrants from other parts of Canada who were educated outside of the country – are out of luck, unless their parents can afford to enrol them in so-called “écoles passerelles” (“gateway schools”). These are private English institutions which receive no subsidies from the provincial government (unlike the rest of Canada, most Quebec private schools receive state funding), and lie outside the ambit of the province’s Charter of the French Language.
By attending such a school for one year, children can become eligible to continue their education in the province’s regular English school system. Bill 115 would change that, by establishing a “points system” whereby provincial officials would evaluate each child’s “scholastic history” to determine in which language that child should pursue his or her education – thereby potentially closing the English option to thousands of kids.
Predictably, the law drew ire from both sides of the language debate. Former provincial Liberal cabinet minister Thomas Mulcair, now a federal NDP MP, claims Bill 115 would “threaten linguistic peace” by “putting the future of French in question”. Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois promises to repeal the law if elected. Meanwhile, Anglophone activists vow to fight the legislation in court, fearing that provincial bureaucrats will use it to deny children access to English education.
On this one, the Anglos have it. While the law would keep open the private school “loophole”, it would discourage parents from using it, by increasing its complexity. For many students, it would be shut tight. The law would also add another layer of taxpayer-funded bureaucracy to the already bloated provincial government, and send yet another message to newcomers that unless you are French, you really aren’t welcome in Quebec.
Sadly, this is nothing new. For decades now, Quebec has had a love-hate relationship with immigrants. It desperately needs them, to boost its population. Last year, Quebec births numbered 88,400; deaths numbered 57,600. Internal migration to and from other Canadian provinces resulted in a net loss of 3252 people. Meanwhile, international immigration netted 57,130 permanent and temporary residents.
But these newcomers don’t all speak the language of Moliere. The challenge for Quebec is to attract people who do, or are willing to learn. Fair enough: to work and advance, immigrants require a solid grasp of their new country’s main language. Otherwise they risk becoming a burden to the state.
But when children are in the picture, things change. Parents want to equip their kids to take on the world, not just the province. If their children have already been educated elsewhere in English, putting them in French school could affect not only language skills, but their grades in all subjects. Knowing how most immigrants prize education, this is a risk many do not wish to take. And for immigrants coming to Quebec from other parts of Canada, it is downright discriminatory that they cannot move within their new country and school their children in the language of their choice.
Meanwhile, at the same time that politicians spar over Bill 115, they ignore the real challenges that should command their attention. Road infrastructure in Quebec’s major city, Montreal, is literally falling apart: crumbling concrete overpasses lie patched and repatched like crazy quilts, while the main downtown tunnel is marred by huge swaths of broken tiles. In the province’s hospitals, emergency room waits stretch up to 48 hours. In its high schools, thirty-nine percent of Quebec boys drop out in their teens.
Quebecers are free to make a tradeoff between economic prosperity and language purity. But they should understand that it is exactly that: a tradeoff. You cannot devote resources to language bureaucracies without taking them from elsewhere – or without increasing the tax load on your population. You cannot impose francization costs on businesses and expect them to be as profitable as those who bear no such costs. You cannot repudiate the globe’s main commercial language and expect immigrants to beat down your door.
Furthermore, Quebec shouldn’t make that tradeoff on the Rest Of Canada’s money. Without $8.4 billion in equalization payments in 2009, Quebec could not offer its parents $7 a day daycare, free in vitro fertilization, and subsidized private schools. Yet some of those same Albertans, British Columbians, and, until recently, Ontarians, who have been paying for Quebecers to enjoy these things, should they move to Quebec, are told they can’t send their children to English school.
For the Quebec government, it is a question of economic priorities, of respect for freedoms, and of openness to the world. Instead of spending more money on language police for children, it should prioritize ending Quebec’s have-not status. Laws such as Bill 115 do nothing to advance that, and everything to hold the province back.
National Post