Tom Mulcair: Too bad no one in Ottawa will lift their little finger to reel in the Legault government

Attacking minorities is a favourite pastime of weak politicians.

In choosing to target Quebec’s English-language universities with massive tuition increases for out-of-province students, Quebec Premier Francois Legault is once again proving that axiom.

Legault and his Minister of Higher Education Pascale Déry have just rolled out proposals that will reduce enrolment in institutions such as McGill University.

In Legault’s telling, it’ll help do two things: reduce the amount of English spoken in Montreal, which he says endangers French, and swing more money over to the French universities. Déry candidly admitted that reducing the size of the English-language institutions was indeed intended. 

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The first goal is as offensive as it is fictitious. There is absolutely no credible study showing that English universities endanger French. Closer analysis has also shown that there won’t be any increase in sums available to French universities.

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante has courageously stood up against Legault’s discriminatory scheme, saying it’ll hurt Montreal’s economy and reputation. With Boston, Montreal is considered the largest university city in North America. In very short order, it will lose that status. 

During last year's election campaign, Legault’s former immigration minister Jean Boulet made racist statements regarding … immigrants! He stated that most of them don’t work and don’t learn French. Entirely untrue, it caused such an uproar that it fairly swamped Legault’s own comparison to a purported linguistic imbalance in the province as being suicidal.

This is, of course, on top of Legault’s serial assaults on religious minorities, with his infamous Bill 21 and…just for good measure, his attacks on the rights and institutions of the English-speaking community. 

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Quebec has a serious shortage of qualified teachers but Muslim women, qualified teachers recruited by Quebec in French-speaking North African countries, have been told they’ll have to remove their headscarves if they want to work (or move to another province).

To say that Legault is unsophisticated when it comes to sensitive issues of minority rights is an understatement. He’s a bumpkin.

In one memorable meeting with California Gov. (and potential presidential candidate) Gavin Newsom, Legault outright embarrassed himself. He tried to chat up his host with this ice-breaker: “You’re Catholic, aren’t you…? All French-Canadians are Catholic.”

A mystified Newsom, clearly briefed in advance, politely but definitively shut the door as Legault warmed to the subject and began to boast about his discriminatory law. It was cringeworthy. 

Legault’s most direct strike against English-language institutions was Bill 40, which took aim at the constitutionally protected school boards of the province’s English-language minority. 

TRUDEAU'S LAW COULD 'MAKE THINGS WORSE'

So far the courts have blocked him but it’s no thanks to our federal government, whose role is supposed to include upholding the constitution. That work has been mostly done by the school boards themselves.

In fact, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s own language law, Bill C-13 adopted last spring, could actually make things worse. Trudeau inexplicably did away with the symmetry of protections for the French minorities outside Quebec and Anglos in Quebec. That could hurt the case as it wends its way to the Supreme Court. 

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Anyone who thought that Trudeau’s decision to drop David Lametti as justice minister would change things, has been quickly disabused of the notion. Trudeau is calling the shots and despite talking a good game about defending Charter rights, he’s still sitting on his hands.

In Bill 96, Legault claims to have unilaterally amended the 1867 constitution, the B.N.A. Act to make French the only official language of Quebec and declare itself a nation. Trudeau has not even asked the Supreme Court for an opinion on the matter. 
Those of us who were hoping that early statements from new Justice Minister Arif Virani signalled a more courageous approach, are still waiting. 

All any Quebec politician or pundit ever has to do, whenever the English-speaking community points out clear cases of discrimination, is affirm that Anglos are “the best-treated minority in the world.” But that’s now starting to wear thin. 

In a totally illegal move, the Quebec government has just reversed a decades-old policy enshrined in Bill 101, the French-language charter. Under those rules, Anglo kids who were in fact eligible for English schooling but whose parents sent them to French school, so they would be fluently bilingual, were deemed to have attended English school for the purposes of future eligibility to study in the English sector.  

Last year, Legault brought in new rules throttling access for francophones to the province’s English junior colleges, known as CEGEPS. If you’re eligible to attend English school, however, you’re not stopped by these new restrictions.

Lo! And behold, Legault is again stacking the deck and in an unprecedented act of utmost bad faith, is now refusing to issue the required certificates of eligibility to those students. Legault is now removing rights, retroactively, with no legal foundation.

At some point, Trudeau is going to have to figure out that bluffing about adherence to the principles of the Canadian constitution has its limits. All Canadians deserve to have their rights respected. When the government of a province says that the quantity of one of our two official languages spoken in its streets must be reduced, it cries out for decisive, principled action. Too bad no one in Ottawa will lift their little finger to reel in the Legault government and its intolerant, discriminatory and, yes, even racist, comportment.