Tom Mulcair: Why should we care about the Quebec election?

Since September 1, it’s become illegal in Quebec for two consenting Anglo adults to have…contractual relations!

No joke. If you decide to sell your house to your friend Bob, the contract has to be drawn up in French even if you’re both English. Since Bill 101 was adopted in 1977, French was often required unless you expressly opted out. Now you can’t opt out. Costs of translation and revision could add thousands to your purchase price.

When this new rule came into effect last week, I was reminded of a conversation I’d had with a radio colleague in Toronto a couple of days earlier. He’d let fly with a simple: “tell me why I should care about the Quebec election.”

His question’s tone did catch me a bit off guard. It was more along the lines of “who gives a …. what happens there?”

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I gamely explained that I’d followed the Ontario election in great detail because I consider what happens in our sister province to be incredibly important to mine. That, taken together, Quebec and Ontario represent over 60 per cent of Canada’s population and economy…

Of course that wasn’t really the question he’d been asking so that answer didn’t get us much further ahead.

“Who cares about Quebec?…you drive us nuts!” was at the root of his question/statement. Anyone who’s been in public life from La Belle Province and travelled a bit is familiar with it.

I understand the sentiment: issues of Quebec politics have so dominated the national discourse over the past 50 years - from the October crisis, to the election of the separatist Parti Québécois, through two referendums…that a certain fatigue has set in and “take a hike” (and earthier equivalents) are a not uncommon reaction.

A REVEALING INTERVIEW

Despite that, it is really important for those who do care about the future of this incredible country of ours to pay some attention to Francois Legault as he romps to a second consecutive majority. He has a sympathetic mien and an Everyman way of talking that is transparent, yet calculating all at once.

Prior to the last campaign, he gave a revealing interview to l’Actualité news magazine. In it he simply acknowledged the obvious: separation in one fell swoop had been tried twice and failed. He’d be taking a new approach: more powers in matters of language, culture and immigration. This was what he called "getting there" step by step. "There" being a sort of de facto separation.

Legault has been running circles around Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his hapless Attorney General David Lametti. A couple of weeks ago, Lametti and some of his colleagues met with respected senior representatives of the English-speaking community of Quebec. They were very concerned about the catatonic reaction in Ottawa to the egregiously illegal Bill 96. That was the move by Legault to reduce the equality of English and French in Québec’s judicial system and under the constitution.

Trudeau’s proposed amendments to the Official Languages Act (Bill C-13) could actually make things worse, they feared.

Legault had already taken aim at the constitutionally protected school boards of the English-speaking community. Ottawa could be sounding their death knell and there was real concern.

Back in 1979, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in simultaneous decisions that English and French were equal in the courts and legislatures of Manitoba and Québec. All steps in the enactment process of legislation had to be bilingual and all proceedings and court documents could be drafted in either language. Later, post-Charter Supreme Court decisions guaranteed control and management of school boards to minority linguistic communities.

Legault claims to have unilaterally amended the 1867 BNA Act, the founding constitutional document of our nation. He purports to have removed the equality of English and French before the courts. Trudeau’s reaction? Crickets! He’s terrified of Legault and won’t do the obvious: challenge Québec’s law.

LIKE CHILDREN BLOCKING THEIR EARS

The Charter clearly stipulates that both Houses of Parliament would have to pass resolutions for Legault’s changes to language rights to take effect. Trudeau and Lametti are like children blocking their ears when this is explained to them. They don’t want to hear it, even if it’s there in black and white in the 1982 constitution.

Imagine that a similarly minded government of Manitoba were to attempt to roll back the constitutional guarantees of the francophone minority there. It wouldn’t have taken a nanosecond for Trudeau and Lametti to intervene. With good reason.

Now ask yourself why the English-speaking minority of Quebec (whose population, depending on definition, is close to that of all of Manitoba) are being told “sorry, folks, there’s nothing we can do for you, we’re too afraid of Legault!”.

It’s the same thing that happened when Legault brought in Bill 21, that openly discriminates against religious minorities in general and Muslim women in particular. He’s never said why it’s offensive for a teacher to wear a headscarf, a police officer a turban or a Crown attorney a kippah. He did say, in a Facebook post he put out when the law was enacted, that this is the way we are in Quebec. Meaning real Quebecers are not like you, so remove those religious symbols or whole categories of jobs aren’t open to you. He’s preemptively invoked the notwithstanding clause and even if the lower Courts have declared the law discriminatory, they say so far that they can’t intervene.

There’s only one person in Canada who can do something and his name is Justin Trudeau. He has the power to refer Bill 21 directly to the Supreme Court but, again, he is too afraid of Legault. All of his emoting on the importance of human rights for all Canadians is just more posturing because when push comes to shove with Legault, Trudeau falls on his keister.

Do you still have a country at all, when citizens’ fundamental rights are different depending on where they live?

Does beefing up the protections for the hard-pressed francophone majorities outside of Quebec necessarily have to entail throwing Quebec’s anglophone community under the bus?

When you have a clear-eyed view of the nation, its history and its future, the answer to both of those questions has to be “no.”

THE NEXT BIG BATTLE WILL BE IMMIGRATION

It’s coming at us like a freight train and once again the denizens of Sleepy Hollow (aka Ottawa) have no clue how to deal with it.

Every employers’ group, Chamber of Commerce and Board of Trade in Quebec is complaining bitterly that Legault’s anti-immigrant policies have created a labour shortage that is hurting productivity and business across the province.

Legault’s answer is pure identity politics. Sounding the alarm about the “extreme” levels of immigration Trudeau has supposedly been imposing, Legault says Quebec should remain a small….country!

“Quebec is a nation” Legault insisted over the weekend. “They used to call us a distinct society. We are one of the two founding peoples. I believe we should be allowed to maintain a certain ratio of strength within the House of Commons.”

Legault has two fights planned if and when he’s re-elected: a battle royale over immigration (he wants control of the family reunification category to reduce non French-speakers) and a fight to maintain the same proportion of seats in the House of Commons even if Québec’s percentage of Canada’s population drops.

It’s not as if we didn’t know this was coming. Legault’s game plan could see Canada break apart with a whimper, not a bang. The tragedy is that we have a government in Ottawa that simply doesn’t have the wherewithal to deal with it.

Tom Mulcair was the leader of the federal New Democratic Party of Canada between 2012 and 2017