Ti-démagogue, va! "Encourager l'intégration individuelle" ou "décourager le bilinguisme institutionnel", comment faut-il comprendre la chose? Question de bonne foi, considérant la situation linguistique précaire du Québec français dans un continent anglophone. Les "devoirs individuels" ne sont pas faits pour les vaches... Au Québec, la loi protège la langue; Kay ne comprend pas, il feint d'ignorer que cette chose se pratique dans un grand nombre de pays avancés... Toujours la même stratégie de looser! - Vigile
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At Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum on Wednesday night, scholars Antonia Maioni and David Bercuson debated the proposition that “Canada is not bilingual, binational, or bicultural.” Their arguments were published in Thursday’s National Post, with Maioni standing up for Canada’s dualistic character, and Bercuson dismissing it as a myth.
Based on the latest news out of Quebec (outlined in the paragraphs below), I am awarding game, set and match to Bercuson, who noted that bilingualism is strictly a one-way street. Or, in his words: “It’s … more than a little ironic that English-speaking Canada has been expected to embrace bilingualism when the very cause of so much bilingualism — to show francophone Quebecers that they are equal partners in Canada — has been scorned by Quebec itself, which postures as a unilingual French province.”
Now here’s that promised news item, courtesy of Montreal’s Gazette:

The city of Huntingdon [Quebec] is vowing to keep serving its citizens in the ‘two official languages’ after the Office québécois de la langue française [OQLF] asked it to transmit its communications to residents in French only. In an email to the municipality in January, the OQLF noted it had received a complaint against the city of Huntingdon.
It was a written, bilingual communication from the city that sparked the complaint, although Huntingdon Mayor Stéphane Gendron said that’s all they know. The city’s communication with citizens is always bilingual, Gendron said. By transmitting bilingual communications to its residents, the city of Huntingdon gives the impression of being a bilingual city and, as a result, ‘doesn’t fully play the exemplary role expected of a public administration body’ in terms of the French-language Charter, the OQLF’S email said.

The first thing that must be said is: Huzzah for mayor/media-pundit Stéphane Gendron. It pains me to say that, given his status as one of the most poisonously anti-Israel hotheads in the country. (In the past, he’s used his V-network TV platform to accuse Israel of conducting a “genocide,” and being “les Nazis des temps modernes.”) But sometimes devils dance on the side of angels (or vice versa — take your pick which costume fits the “real” Gendrom), and this is plainly one of those instances. Gendron runs a town that is at least 40% Anglophone. And he’s doing the right thing by standing up for his constituents.
If more local politicians had Gendron’s moxie, Quebec’s government might eventually be embarrassed into relaxing its Kafkaesque language policies. Outside of the Kurdish regions of Turkey and the Russian areas of eastern Europe, Quebec’s government is the only one in the developed world that has a policy of actively discouraging local officials from dealing with constituents in a language they understand.
It is hard for anyone who is not from Quebec (I lived there until I was 26) to understand how bizarre is the mindset of the province’s language police and its associated bureaucracy. To give but one example: Some years ago, a friend of mine, “Miranda,” worked as a clerical worker at a (largely English) clothing manufacturer in the northern part of Montreal. One day, her facility received a visit from the OQLF. The visiting Franco-gendarme roamed around the premises, taking photos with a film camera. But my friend and her colleagues weren’t overly worried: They had scrupulously followed rules governing French-language interoffice communications, postering and the like.
Then, the next day, Miranda got a call from a friend of hers who worked at a local 1-hour film-developing studio (remember those?). “You wouldn’t believe this,” she said. “But I’m looking at pictures of your office. Someone from the government just dropped off the rolls.”
“The photos don’t show any English, I hope,” said Miranda.
“Oh, but they do,” said her friend.
It turns out that someone in the office had put a piece of cake in the communal fridge, and stuck a post-it note on it that said (in English!) “Bill’s banana bread.” Why Bill felt the need to identify the food, or that it was his, no one knows. But the OQLF worker — whose mandate apparently included the inside of kitchen appliances — was quite fascinated by the note, and took several pictures of it.
To my knowledge, Bill, his pain de banane, and his illegal post-it note never became the subject of an official complaint. Maybe Bill got off with a warning. Or perhaps he became an informant. If this happened today, the OQLF presumably would just install an in-fridge web-cam to keep track of the situation.
In many ways, Quebec is a very different place from what it was when I moved away in 1994. Its population is richer and more diverse. Montreal, in particular, has become a leader in high-tech fields such as biotech and computer animation. And yet, in its sour, small-minded, defensive and utterly parochial attitude toward language, the province’s bureaucracy and language puritans are still locked in the age of René Lévesque.
Meanwhile, well-meaning Anglo Quebec liberals such as the aforementioned Prof. Maioni lavish earnest praise on “the Quebec nation as a rampart for French language and culture,” and assure us that our “multicultural experience” is “rooted in the prior existence of two distinct cultural and linguistic settings, even as it contributes to shape these two settings.” In cheering on Canada’s “bilingual, binational and bicultural” character, the McGill professor also urges us to “recognize, and even celebrate, that multiculturalism is rooted in two distinct cultural worlds.”
Actually, Prof. Maioni, it’s a little difficult for any of us to “celebrate” all of these bi wonders when a provincial government — your provincial government, in fact — has adopted a systematic policy of denigrating the English language as a second-class tongue, and even soliciting complaints from creepy French whisteblowers who out local governments for the crime of serving citizens in a Canadian official language they actually understand. The accusation that the town of Huntingdon “doesn’t fully play the exemplary role expected of a public administration body’ in terms of the French-language Charter,” in particular, is one of the creepiest, Soviet-smacking sentences I have seen printed in any government document in this country.
David Bercuson is right: The idea of Canada being a “bilingual” country in any sort of requited sense is a scam. Bilingual, bicultural, binational (and whatever other “bi” you want to throw in) pieties comprise a sort of lie that Anglo elites tell themselves as part of the perceived price of keeping Quebec in the country. The job of actual truth-telling, meanwhile, is left to hotheads such as Mr. Gendron.
Long may he dance with the angels.
National Post
_ jkay@nationalpost.com