Graeme Hamilton - A law passed yesterday by the Liberal majority in Quebec's National Assembly is being described as an assault on the French language and a betrayal of the people. A crowd estimated at more than 1,000 protested against the legislation outside Jean Charest's Montreal office on Monday night, warning they would make the Premier pay.
It sounds like pretty serious stuff, but in fact Bill 115 poses little threat to Quebec's French character. If anyone is entitled to be angry, it is those in the province's English-speaking community who won a Supreme Court of Canada decision upholding their rights, only to have the Charest government reply, "Not so fast."
To picture the threat that has so disturbed people such as PQ leader Pauline Marois, imagine a school-age girl whose parents did not receive English schooling in Canada.
Under Bill 101, the language law introduced in 1977, that girl must attend French school in Quebec, unless her parents are wealthy enough to afford an unsubsidized private English school.
The new law requires the girl to spend at least three years in one of those schools, where annual tuition and supplementary fees can cost $15,000 and up, before becoming eligible to transfer to the public English system. First, however, government bureaucrats must assess whether her "education pathway" is authentic, applying a complicated point system. For example, a student could spend enough years in English private school to qualify but be denied if she has siblings attending French school. Points can also be added or subtracted based on "contextual elements that may shed light on the authenticity of the commitment," the regulations say.
"They've given discretionary power to bureaucrats," Jonathan Goldbloom, spokesman for the Quebec Association of Independent Schools, said yesterday. "Anyone who has lived through the language wars of Quebec knows that giving discretionary powers to bureaucrats in the past has not led to a generosity of spirit toward the English-speaking community."
Debbie Horrocks, president of the Quebec English School Boards Association, representing nine public boards, predicted no parents will go through such expense and trouble on the off chance of securing a spot in English public school.
"In the long run, we don't believe that we're going to get a single student," she said.
"All along we've been saying that we just want some oxygen in our system, a few kids who are going to help our schools survive. We believe that our schools are part of Quebec's future and we hoped that our government would see them as such.... It's extremely frustrating that our government seems to have ignored the message."
Last year's Supreme Court ruling struck down a 2002 law introduced by the PQ government to close a perceived loophole in Bill 101.A small number of children--about 500 a year, according to English school boards -- had been gaining eligibility for publicly funded English-language schooling by first attending private schools for as little as a year. The PQ law specified that time spent in unsubsidized private schools would be "disregarded" when it came to assessing English schooling. The Supreme Court called that "overly drastic" and said it breached the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It gave the Quebec government one year to introduce new legislation, a deadline that was to expire Friday.
The new law affects a tiny fraction of the province's students-- and many of them are francophones whose parents are prepared to pay dearly to ensure their children become fluently bilingual. But the PQ recognizes that any legislation touching on language is red meat to its supporters, so the party has cranked up the rhetoric. Ms. Marois said the law would "anglicize" Quebec. Her language critic, Pierre Curzi, last heard from theorizing that federalists have taken over the Montreal Canadiens, called the bill's passage "a day of mourning." PQ MNA Bertrand St-Arnaud, noting that some members of English private schools' boards of directors donated to the Liberal party, accused the government of selling out to the English private-school lobby. The PQ has promised to scrap Bill 115 if it comes to power, but by then Quebecers will likely have realized the bill was no threat at all.
"Politicians have tried to make it divisive, but I think the reality on the ground is that Quebec has changed significantly," Mr. Goldbloom said. "English parents all want their kids to be able to function in both English and French, and it is the same on French side. Yes, we all believe that French is the primary language of Quebec, but on an individual basis, the divide isn't as great as it once was."
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