Canada

ccording to a new
report, commission-
ed by the Quebec
government to allay
U.S. investors’ fears,
the English-speaking
minority in the pro-
vince “‘have the best
services and are the
best treated minority in the world.”

They provide the facts to back up the
claim. Constituting 8.9 per cent of the
Quebec’s 6.5 million population (17 per cent
in the Montreal region), English-speaking
Quebeckers have three universities which
take in 28 per cent of all the province’s
students, including many French-speaking
students. Out of 2,356 elementary schools,
306 are English and another 66 bilingual.
And of Quebec’s 47 community colleges,
seven conduct courses in English and
another two are bilingual.

Kerry
McCuaig

NEWS
ANALYSIS

In addition to a full educational system in
their own language, English Quebeckers
have wide access to media and cultural facil-
ities including: 30 television stations and
three pay TV channels; three daily news-
papers, 18 weeklies and 17 radio stations
with a listening audience of 36 per
cent — far beyond the English-speaking
population.

Anglophone Quebeckers also have polit-
ical representation beyond their numbers,
with 20 per cent of the members of the
National Assembly and Montreal city
council.

Federal assistance is generous, more gen-
erous than that provided by Ottawa for
Francophones living outside the province.
Federal per capita assistance to Quebec
Anglophone education is $10,379, com-
pared to $8,115 paid for Francophones liv-
ing in English Canada.

The facts would belie claims by some
sections in English-speaking Quebec, busi-
ness and Canada’s nine other premiers that
Quebec is riding roughshod over minority
rights.

It’s a claim.that has surfaced repeatedly
since the then newly-elected Parti Quebe-
cois enacted Bill 101 — making French the
official language in Quebec — in August,
1977. Reviled in English-Canada, Bill 101
was immensely popular among Franco-
phone Quebeckers who saw it as a major
initiative addressing decades of discrimina-
tion.

For the first time Francophones were
give equal access in hiring and promotion. It
gave them the right to be addressed in their
own language by employers. Collective
agreements were now printed in French.
And it made it illegal to fire or transfer
workers because they were unilingually
Francophone.

It also gave consumers the right to be
informed and served in French.

“The fact that such a law was needed
shows the discrimination which existed
before,” notes Marianne Roy, an executive
member of the Communist Party of Quebec
(PCQ).

“The indignities suffered by Franco-
phone Quebeckers were very real, particu-
larly when you consider most foremen were
Anglophone and would refuse to speak to
workers in French,” she adds.

The PCQ endorsed this section of Bill 101
but pushed to have it strengthened. Penal-
ties for employers who flouted the law were
mild. There were insufficient inspectors to
enforce it and it excluded businesses under
federal jurisdiction, leaving tens of thou-
sands of workers outside its protection.

There were other aspects of Bill 101

mes

Bourassa policies
fuelling renewed
national tensions

Hudson

ROBERT BOURASSA...policy resolves
nothing.

which were more controversial. Its educa-
tion component required children of par-
ents who received their education outside
the province to be educated in French.

But many parents refused, and for several
years English schools were accepting “‘ille-
gal” students. Only recently was an amnesty
declared. ~ :

It was this section which caused the pro-
gressive community most difficulty. There
were the strong emotions surrounding par-
ental rights to decide their children’s educa-
tion. On the other hand, there was the real
issue of the continued viability of the
French Canadian nation. New immigrants
were integrating into the Anglophone
community — a trend that, if continued,
could threaten French Canada’s existence.

Although time has largely solved the
problem, and children are attending French
schools, still, two out of three non-French
speaking immigrants are integrating into
the culture of the minority.

Roy recalls that the PCQ opposed res-
tricting the language of instruction. It is now
re-examining this position. ““We may have
underestimated the necessity of promoting
French language and culture,” she says.

This involves more than legislative dic-

St. Lawrence

MAGDALEN
&

ROYAL ORR...president of Alliance
Quebec.

tates, Roy adds. “French culture must be
made attractive to immigrants so they will
want to become part of it, including
improved language training for adults.
The development of the young should
involve quality instruction in a second lan-
guage. In English institutions, learning
French should be an obligation, and profi-
ciency in French a necessity for gradua-
tion,” she says.

The third and best-known section of Bill
101 outside Quebec concerned commercial
signs. Basically it required all commercial
advertising to be in French. There were
exceptions: specialty shops and businesses
with less than five workers. Ethnic festivals
were also permitted to use bilingual signs.

Bill 101 did not have an easy ride. There
were several court challenges, three result-
ing in Supreme Court rulings. A 1979 deci-
sion required Quebec to adopt legislation in
both English and French. In 1984 the court
used the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms to rule that English schools
would be open to all children whose parents
attended English schools anywhere in Can-
ada.

The continued legal battles and the sharp
rhetoric coming from both sides of the issue,

heightened by Anglo-chauvinistic interfer-
ence from outside Quebec, served to keep
national tensions simmering.

The labour movement continued its sup-
port for the legislation. In fact, the largest
demonstrations ever held in the province
were in support of Bill 101.

The most recent whack at the bill came in
two separate challenges from businessmen,
supported by ‘he business community and
Alliance Quebec, an English-minority
rights group.

These challenges resulted in the Dec. 15
Supreme Court unanimous decision which,
while it recognized Quebec’s right to pro-
mote French language and culture, ruled
that the section of Bill 101 dealing with signs
violated “freedom of commercial expres-
sion.”

It was a precedent-setting ruling. Pre-
viously the courts had turned down the
argument of collective rights in a legislative
blow to the trade union movement around
the Lavigne case. This time it accepted pro-
tection of the rights of a certain sector — the
commercial sector — a decision with rami-
fications that go well beyond Quebec’s
borders.

The long-awaited ruling caused a mass
uproar among Francophone Quebeckers
who saw it as another major attack on their
rights. Premier Robert Bourassa was forced
to respond. But contrary to reports in Eng-
lish Canada that Bourassa came to power
promising “not to touch 101,” in fact bilin-
gual signs was part of his, and the Liberal
Party’s, election platform, and used to
garner support from English Quebeckers
for his election.

His replacement legislation, Bill 178 or
the “‘inside-outside law,” allows bilingual
signs inside stores, but maintains French
only signs outside. It carries the same
exemptions that existed in the struck down
section of Bill 101.

In order to get around the Supreme
Court ruling, Bourassa invoked the not-
withstanding clause of the constitution.

The PCQ objected to the law. first
because of its principled opposition to the
notwithstanding clause — a clause which
has traditionally been used when legislating
striking workers back to work. But it also
objected because, in addition to being
unworkable, the bill satisfies no one.

Quebec labour sees it as a particular
danger, since inside bilingual signs could be
a wedge in attacking the right to work in
French.

Once again, Quebec legislation has been
used to whip up Anglo-chauvinist sentiment
in English-speaking Canada against the
national aspirations of French Canadians.

In a most hypocritical fashion, premiers
who have trampled on the rights of the
French-speaking minority in their own pro-
vinces have rallied to the cause of English-
speaking Quebeckers, who hardly had their
rights threatened by viewing French com-
mercial signs.

Tories such as Manitoba Premier Gary
Filmon are taunting their Tory cousins in
Ottawa to get tough with Quebec, or lose
support for their coveted Meech Lake
Accord.

It’s a dangerous situation which has seen
a resurgence of Anglo-chauvinist hysteria.
Ironically, the Meech Lake Accord may be
defeated, not because it fails to rec-
ognize the national aspirations of Quebec,
not because it threatens social programs or
the of rights of women, Native peoples and
immigrant communities — the issues on
which the flawed accord should be
scrapped — but because of that hysteria.

In a time when the unity of pro-Canada
forces is needed to take on the neo-
conservative agenda, a renewed round of
national tensions is very inopportune.

Progressive Canadians, and in the first
place the labour movement in English Can-
ada, have a definite stake in confronting the
situation, by championing the national
rights of French Canada in an appeal for
unity to take on the Tory-corporate attack
we all face.

Pacific Tribune, February 6, 1989 « 7