André Pratte
National Post, May 21, 2022
“… there are good reasons to challenge the need for Bill 96’s bureaucratic assault on the speaking of English in Québec. One of those reasons is that this attack is based on a false premise.”
Combined with several provisions of Bill 96, recent events raise a legitimate concern that English-speaking Quebecers may be on the verge of becoming second-class citizens. Indeed, in the view of a majority of French-speaking Québécois, or at least of the politicians and commentators who shape the majority view, the “Anglos” do not have rights anymore, but only “privileges,” as asserted by Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet.
On May 14, a few thousand Québec anglophones held a demonstration in Montreal to protest measures contained in Bill 96, measures that will radically diminish the public services available in their language and curtail the development of English colleges. Nationalist politicians and commentators blasted the demonstrators, as if as a spoiled minority, they should just shut up and let the provincial government do whatever it wants, protected by an unprecedented use of the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause. After all, asserted columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté, Anglos “represent the North-American empire in Québec.” Former Parti Québécois leader Jean-François Lisée added that the province’s English-speaking minority is “the most pampered on the continent” and its institutions are “over-sized.”
André Pratte is Principal at Navigator and Senior Fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
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