As a former scholar and policy analyst, and as an anglophone who has lived in Montreal for more than 50 years, I have been struck by the resurgent themes on the Opinion page of The Gazette when it comes to Bill 14 and the language issue. Thoughts of Bill 22, St-Léonard in the 1970s, Bill 101, Alliance Quebec, the Equality Party, Howard Galganov and the partition movement have all flashed through my head.
“Here we go again,” I thought at first.
But then I realized that’s not really true, that Quebec is a much different place than it used to be.
The forces that have always driven the Quebec sovereignist movement — the desire for cultural preservation and the need for a nation-state — have been transformed dramatically by globalization. Increasingly, English has become a tool for global commerce and communication. Most forward-looking Quebecers realize this, and are telling their children that English is a necessary tool of advancement in the global economy.
The best way to live and prosper in French, then, is to nurture a healthy economy that is fully capable of dealing in English, but not threatened or overwhelmed by it.
Who knows, someday, having an English-speaking minority might even be perceived as an asset.
With increases in immigration and global communication, nationalisms rooted in language and ethnicity seem increasingly out of step with reality. Hence, the traditional Parti Québécois support base is in peril. The party knows it and is behaving accordingly by trying to provoke new discord. I say anglophones should ignore this PQ stick-poking that can be found in Bill 14. It is all that the PQ has left.
In the past, many of the anglophones and anglophone groups that have typically responded to PQ stick-poking have rarely been representative of Quebec’s anglophone community.
I was never a member of Alliance Quebec and have never felt comfortable having my community represented by lobby groups created, and in the end, controlled by governments. The current anglo leadership is even less legitimate, given how the most prominent organization claiming to speak on behalf of Quebec anglophones — the Quebec Community Groups Network — is actually a federal funding agency, designed to parcel out money to various anglophone community organizations. The QCGN is hardly a grassroots form of political expression.
In my opinion, the PQ is as unrepresentative of francophone Quebec as are many of the groups now claiming to speak for an anglophone clientele, including some of these small new small groups that have emerged in recent months.
To quote Warren Magnusson, one of Canada’s greatest living philosophers, the most positive changes in contemporary society have occurred in spite of the nation state and institutionalized politics — and not because of them.
Times have changed, and most Quebecers, of all mother tongues, realize this.
How we speak to each other here in Quebec really matters.
So have faith in your neighbours.
Speak positively, and optimistically, about the prospects of contemporary Quebec.
And anglophones, don’t let the stick-pokers get you down. Don’t leave Quebec!
It is what the stick-pokers want, and what they have always wanted.
Tim Thomas is an antiques dealer in Pointe Claire. He has worked as a Quebec policy analyst in the federal Privy Council office, and is the author of the 1997 book A City with a Difference: The Rise and Fall of the Montreal Citizens Movement.
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Photo : Tim Thomas is an antiques dealer in Pointe Claire. He has worked as a Quebec policy analyst in the federal Privy Council office, and is the author of the 1997 book A City with a Difference: The Rise and Fall of the Montreal Citizens Movement.