On his blog yesterday, Parti Quebecois strategist Jean-Francois Lisee hailed the party's proposed new language policy as "the biggest language offensive ever imagined by the PQ since Camille Laurin's Bill 101."
It's not the only "offensive" in the first draft of a new program for the Nous-versus-Them PQ that Pauline Marois announced last November.
The chapter on "our identity" is entitled "a Quebec that stands up" -apparently against its own minorities, religious as well as linguistic. To keep the English-speaking, hijab-wearing hordes at bay, there would be a proposed Quebec constitution, amendments to the existing Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, and another, new Charter, this one on secularism.
(On that subject, the draft program does not say whether the National Assembly would continue to display the crucifix.)
And, of course, there would be the "new Charter of the French Language" that the PQ leadership has imagined, to use Lisee's mot juste.
"Imagined" is indeed the right word, since the language policy proposes imaginary solutions to what for the most part are imaginary problems.
A featured solution, long favoured by pro-French language hawks, is to extend to the CEGEPs the existing Bill 101 restrictions on admission to English elementary and secondary schools.
Marois told reporters on the weekend that she had finally come around to accept the proposal, after hesitating for several months, because of a "study" published in April by her language critic, Pierre Curzi.
Essentially, Curzi expressed alarm that on Montreal Island, non-francophones now are in the majority -by which he means people with mother tongues other than French, regardless of whether they also speak French. For Curzi, the issue is not what people do, it's who they are.
Even so, his own report shows that mother-tongue francophones still make up nearly two-thirds of the metropolitan region's population. And Longueuil is closer to downtown Montreal in commuting time than the West Island is.
And in terms of the language used most often at home, francophones remain in the majority even on the island.
Anyway, how would sending immigrants to French-language CEGEPs for two years change their mother tongues?
Lisee showed even more imagination on his blog yesterday, proposing a Frenchonly CEGEP system, with an optional six months of English immersion ( snipurl.com/xmfb2).
And while the PQ is at it, why not also restrict access to health services on the basis of language?
Curzi, in his report, says it is "urgent" to take "new steps" in areas including "the language of health" ( snipurl.com/xmd0i,page 54).
When Curzi published his report in April, I asked him what he meant by that. He answered evasively, though he assured me the PQ would "never" restrict access to health services in English.
But recently, I came across an account in the left-wing sovereignist periodical l'Aut'journal of an interview with Curzi last fall on the language situation.
In it, Curzi described as "delicate" the situation of health care in the future McGill and Universite de Montreal teaching hospitals ( snipurl.com/xme8p).
So the language of health services has been on Curzi's mind for some time.
On that subject, former PQ premier Lucien Bouchard assured an English-speaking audience in 1996 that "when you go to the hospital and you're in pain, you may need a blood test, but you certainly don't need a language test."
Under its present leader, however, the PQ is showing more imagination.
dmacpherson@thegazette.canwest.com