"It is not acceptable to send this message, that it is possible to have free choice."
- Pauline Marois, June 7, 2010.
The Parti QuÈbÈcois leader sent her own message Monday, revealing perhaps more than she intended about the way she and other language zealots think.
She was talking, we hardly need to explain, about language. A good case could be made that this implacable do-what-you're-told mentality on all issues, pervades the big-government left, which in Quebec includes almost everyone in politics. But that's a point for another day.
Today we restrict ourselves to language. Marois was speaking about free choice in language of education at a news conference where the usual "friends of sovereignty" were announcing a "new coalition" - remarkably like all their other coalitions - this one against the Liberal government's Bill 103.
This dubious bill, which restricts access to English schools, has become a cause of concern to many anglophones and allophones, not only in its own terms but as a signal of governmental complacency about the problems of English education.
But for Marois and her allies, Bill 103 fails because it does not snuff out every last vestige of choice. Let no one think of free choice! Let no one mention it!
After the limpid totalitarianism of that sentence quoted above, Marois added this: "It's not true. We made our decision 30 years ago" (when Bill 101, the Charter of the French Language. was passed) "and we think it was the right decision, and it is still the right decision."
So fact, like free choice, is subordinated to this dreary effort to fan the language flames: Actually, the original Bill 101 allowed the exemption that Bill 104 later closed. Despite the flourishing of French in Quebec since Bill 101, Marois wants to make the rules on access to English schools tighter than RenÈ LÈvesque made them.
In a sense, however, we are delighted to hear Marois rant against free choice, because this might awaken more francophones to what is being denied to them. Some of lawyer Brent Tyler's clients in the case that got Bill 104 over-ruled in the Supreme Court were francophones. Many francophones resent the fact that "status" anglophones - those whose children are eligible for English school - have more choice than francophones do.
Francophones are naturally proud and protective of their language. But they're proud and protective of their children, too, and having people like Pauline Marois dictate to them might have less appeal than Marois expects.