The -Phone Wars

Language as a cultural and political battering ram

This weekend, Montreal anglophones held a protest against Bill 96, which strengthens Québec’s French language laws in a way many fear could endanger health, education, and the economy.

To understand what’s going on, first you must meet the players:

In Québec you have francophones (those who speak French as a first language), anglophones (those who speak English as their first language), and allophones (people whose first language was something other than English or French).

Francophones are the vast majority in the province, though only a small percentage of the ROC, or Rest of Canada. Québec’s anglophones are found mostly in Montréal and comprise less than 10% of the population.

Though a minority population in QC, because of the long history of anglophones in the province, many Québécois are bilingual and speak excellent English as well as French. For years the standard greeting in shops and other public-facing entities was ”bonjour-hi!”, which embraced the city’s bilingual heritage and signaled linguistic equality and amicability between English and French speakers.

This was true until 2017, when the Quebec government tried to stamp out “bonjour-hi”, asserting that the greeting was corrupting French culture by diluting the language.

Soon thereafter, the government also forbade equal usage of English on retail signs. You could have English on a sign, but it had to be significantly less prominent than the French. The QC government’s language ministry fined those who didn’t comply.

The history of antagonism between the French and English in Québec is long and fraught, and much has been written about it by those far more familiar and qualified with that struggle than I. However, in très short: the French had a strong and long-established society in Québec, but then the English colonized it after the Seven Years War. The English governors were very corrupt, abusive, and dismissive of the habitants, the French who had tamed Québec’s wilderness and made it their home.

The exploitation, class divisions, and repression that occurred during the period of English control created a deep rift between anglophones and francophones that informs Québec’s culture and laws (and its separatist movement) to this very day.

The current premier of Quebec, François Legault, is a conservative who has taken advantage of francophone feelings to push laws like Bill 96. This bill expands on Bill 101 (aka the Charter of the French Language) and reinforces French as the primary and exclusive language of government, education, and business.

Bill 96 also expands the enforcement power of Quebec’s language ministry, granting warrantless powers of inspection, search, and seizure.

Bill 96 has a lot of anglophones, health care providers, and businesses upset. Anglophone schools are already being defunded and may lose enrollment, making their long-term survival unlikely; doctors are worried that if they cannot ensure that ensure at least some staff members will be bilingual (Bill 96 would prohibit bilingualism as a job requirement), they may not be able to communicate clearly with anglophone and allophone patients, possibly causing them profound harm or even death.

Businesses—particularly multinational companies—are concerned they won’t be able to hire anglophone workers, risking a fine if they communicate with them in English instead of French. Since all contracts must now be primarily rendered and legally adjudicated in French—before judges who will no longer be required to be bilingual—this can get dicey for places with anglophones in their workforce.

Small businesses used to be exempt from the strictest provisions of the Charter of the French Language, but Bill 96 will effectively take away those exemptions.

Indigenous communities also oppose the bill, saying it’s one more way Québec is culturally colonizing their communities. Though the Charter of the French Language excepts speakers of indigenous languages, Bill 96 would effectively remove their right to communicate in their language whenever they are off-reserve, reducing access to education, health care, and job opportunities.

As an anglophone, of course I’d prefer to be able to communicate in English without constraints or hostility, and to have access to healthcare and government materials in my first language. But this isn’t my country, and I don’t really have any say about the matter in either English or French. I can only watch it play out around me.

To my eye, the franco vs anglo angst in Québec mirrors other controversies in the modern world about cultural and religious autonomy, dominant culture, and assimilation.

But because Québec is essentially a foreign country within a foreign country, the argument about who is actually being oppressed here gets complicated.

The political debate is equally complex when the discussion turns to La Laïcité, or Quebec’s secularism laws (which I’ll discuss in another post). Bill 21 prohibits government employees (including teachers and healthcare workers) from wearing any visible religious symbols. This attempt to regulate religious expression is particularly interesting in light of the religious extremist and white-supremacist upwelling in the U.S., both topics of debate around Bill 21. Is the bill a true separation of church and state, or is it targeted discrimination against religious minorities in Québec (particularly Muslims)?

Personally, I believe everyone has a fundamental right to the individual freedoms of “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” we cherish in the U.S. However, in a diverse nation, there must also be a collaborative, cooperative public space where all can interact with safety, tolerance, and peace in order to preserve life and happiness.

This is the rub. Who defines the parameters of the public square, especially when there is friction between individual rights and those of the public at large? Are all ideas and practices equal, or should some be forbidden or marginalized? Should extremist tropes, whether religious or secular, be allowed to proliferate as part of honoring free speech, or should they be condemned or punished to reduce the dangers they pose to a free society? When does the right to protest become a threat of violence? What restrictions can or should be implemented? What checks on bias are in place?

The U.S. has failed to take these issues in hand, even as violent extremism came out of the shadows and proudly preened and boasted about its embrace of hatred, misogyny, and murder. The entire world is now suffering for it. The Big Tent has burned down and psychotic circus clowns are running rampant all over the globe.

Moderates claim that democracy isn’t fragile and will withstand the current assaults. It’s true that extremist movements have challenged American democracy before, but they did not have a free, worldwide communication and amplification platform, nor hundreds of thousands of military-style weapons at their disposal. The fact is, things are different now, and it may be too late to save American democracy as we know it. You can’t put a genie back in the bottle when the genie has broken the bottle before going rogue on your ass. Something else has to happen to restore peace, but no one seems to know what.

Here in Canada, many feel Legault’s French-only policies will create more division than unity, and destabilize the economic progress Québec has made in attracting business to the province. Quebec is one of Canada’s poorest provinces when it comes to GDP per capita and, like the rest of Canada, has a high illiteracy rate. Is Legault cutting off Québec’s economic nose to spite its French-only face? It remains to be seen.

Bill 96 is certain to pass, and there will certainly be legal challenges. The anglophone vs. francophone battle for Quebec will continue nothwithstanding the damage that may be caused, though this time the war will be fought in court (one hopes).