This week, a Parti Québécois member of the National Assembly complained of being misquoted.
"I never spoke of 'true' or 'false' Québécois," Bernard Drainville said.
(What he had actually said, before the May 2 federal election, is that voters who were "Québécois first" had to vote for the Bloc Québécois.)
"My position is clear and has often been repeated, including during the campaign: 'A Québécois is someone who lives in Quebec.' In other words, in Quebec, there are only real Québécois. This rule suffers no exception."
Apparently, however, the mere presence in Quebec of some "real Québécois" is a threat to others.
Four weeks ago, at its policy convention, the party of which Drainville is a member adopted a series of anti-English resolutions for its new policy program.
The most publicized would restrict admission to English CEGEPs.
Others threatened the right to a trial in English and the use of English by municipalities and hospitals.
Another would do away with the protection of English-language rights in Quebec in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the federal Official Languages Act.
And the new program would require the courts to take into account the "predominance" of the French language in interpreting the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
These measures were inspired in part by a PQ "study" saying there are too many people in Montreal speaking languages other than French at home - and having languages other than French as their mother tongues.
Since the latter characteristic cannot be changed, either voluntarily or by coercion, this is similar to saying there are too many people in Montreal who are , or of Jewish ethnicity, or Arab, or gay.
The question of who or what is a "real Québécois" was also raised this week with the announcement of the lineup for the main concert of this year's June 24 Fête nationale holiday celebrations.
The performers include Rufus and Martha Wainwright, brother-and-sister singer-songwriters who were raised and educated in English in Montreal.
But the Wainwrights are not to perform any of their own songs in English. Rather, as a tribute to their late mother, singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle, they were invited to perform two Frenchlanguage songs by Kate and her sister Anna.
This is in compliance with the French-only policy of the anti-English Société Saint Jean Baptiste de Montréal, which since 1984 has received funding from successive PQ and Liberal governments to stage the concert.
When it is not organizing the Fête nationale celebrations in Montreal, the Société, an ally of the PQ, wages a continuous campaign to restrict English-language rights and access to education, health and other public services in English.
It's not the first time that, in a show of "inclusiveness," the Société has invited English-speaking singers to perform in the concert, but on condition that they not perorm in their own language.
This infringes on their artistic freedom, as if an artist were told to make a painting horizontal and blue, to go over the living room couch.
And it is not truly inclusive. Rather, it excludes the artists' identity and culture and those of the community they supposedly represent.
Requiring English-speaking artists to sing in French treats them as trophies of a victory in the language war, symbolizing one group's domination of another.
And while nationalists pay lip service to the right of the English-speaking community to exist, requiring anglophones to perform in French says that they, too, must assimilate in order to become "real Québécois."
Instead of this false inclusiveness, it would be less demeaning not to invite English-speaking singers at all.
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dmacpherson vdo montrealgazette.com
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