There was a time when federal party leaders took unequivocal stands against the more regressive aspects of Quebec’s fight to protect the French language and culture.
In 2013, for instance, Justin Trudeau, then just four months into the leadership of the Liberal Party, didn’t pull his punches when he criticized the proposed Quebec Charter of Values, an odious bill tabled by the minority Parti Québécois government of Pauline Marois.
The bill would have banned the wearing of religious headwear, such as hijabs and turbans, as well as Christian crosses, by police officers, teachers, university professors, doctors, nurses and public daycare staff.
Mr. Trudeau called it “divisive identity politics” motivated by “fear of the other.“ He vowed to fight it.
Other federal leaders were as blunt. Thomas Mulcair of the NDP, which was the Official Opposition in Ottawa at the time, called the charter “state-mandated discrimination.” The Conservative Harper government said it would defend religious minorities whose rights were violated by the law.
It was a nice moment. It didn’t last.
Ms. Marois was defeated in a provincial election in 2014, and the charter was never passed. But then, in 2019, the ban on religious headwear came back in a new form – Bill 21 – and was enacted into law by Premier François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec government. State-mandated discrimination that forces people to choose between their beliefs and their employment is now a fact of life for some religious minorities in Quebec.
And yet federal leaders are rather more muted this time.
Mr. Trudeau disagrees with Bill 21, but he won’t do anything to fight it. Conservative Opposition Leader Erin O’Toole says he supports the province’s right to pass whatever laws it pleases. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called Bill 21 “wrong” after it was passed, but has since been tepid in his criticism and won’t commit to fighting it in court.
Their unwillingness to defy Quebec doesn’t just stop with Bill 21. They’ve since offered nothing but support for Bill 96, Legault government legislation that will once again resort to the notwithstanding clause, this time to further restrict the use of English in government, schools and businesses.
The bill also proposes adding two clauses to the Constitution stating that Quebeckers form a nation whose official language is French. Last week, MPs from all parties voted massively in favour of a blancmange motion to “acknowledge the will of Quebec” to unilaterally add the clauses.
All the parties also support the Trudeau government’s recently tabled reforms to the Official Languages Act, which would recognize that Quebec’s Charter of the French Language, a.k.a. Bill 101, “provides that French is the official language of Quebec.” It would also require federally chartered businesses in Quebec to either submit to Bill 101 rules on the use of French in workplaces, or to equivalent rules added to the Official Languages Act.
This is a real shift. Quebec’s divisive language and identity battles were once a minefield best avoided by federal parties not called the Bloc Québécois, lest it not play well in other provinces. Now, with separatism at a low ebb and COVID-19 dominating the agenda, the parties seem comfortable allying themselves with Quebec City’s nationalistic ambitions, and are actively supporting its vision of the French language in the province as permanently under threat, and in need of constant protection against immigrants and anglophones.
Blame it on electoral politics. Quebec is a fickle swing province. It helped give the Progressive Conservatives majority governments in 1984 and 1988, but has barely voted Conservative since. The NDP got hit by the same political lightning in 2011, when Quebec elected 59 NDP candidates and vaulted the party into Official Opposition status. Eight years later, they were reduced to a single seat.
Since 2000, however, most of the province’s seats have been shared by the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois. Quebec voters helped give Mr. Trudeau a majority in 2015, but the resurgence of the BQ in ridings outside Montreal, where voters are overwhelmingly francophone and supportive of tough language laws and of Bill 21, is one reason the Liberals were reduced to a minority in 2019.
It’s also one reason Mr. Trudeau no longer talks of “divisive identity politics” motivated by “fear of the other.” Not in Quebec, anyway.
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