(Copyright The Gazette)
MARIO LEMOINE. The Gazette. Montreal, Que.: Nov 23, 1996. pg. B.5
Mario Lemoine is a Montreal freelance writer.
Once again the war of words that brings anglophones and francophones to Quebec’s language front is under way. Bill 86 governing commercial signs is at the heart of the dispute. Howard Galganov and his group of touchy anglophones implore us in unison: « do away with all language laws. » Their counterparts, les habitants de la planete Quebec – some of whom are at this weekend’s Parti Quebecois convention – demand the abolition of Bill 86 and the streng-thening of the French Language Charter.
The debate is bogged down. We are deadlocked.
That’s bad enough, but there’s worse. This cockfight succeeds in obscuring what is really at stake with the question of language: we French-speaking Quebecers find ourselves at a crossroads concerning our future. We can choose to behave like an endangered species and agree to live in an overprotective environment. This way, our end will be smoother, but no less inevitable.
Or we can face the music and risk being integrated into the English-speaking mass of North America – but not for want of trying to recreate ourselves. Turning inward, palliative care; or the beau risque of living bravely, with its dangers, but also with the invigorating possibility of entering fully into modernity. These are the alternatives we face.
The language laws have the effect of perpetuating the myth that Quebec citizens will be able to participate fully in the economic, social and cultural life of our age with a knowledge of French only. In fact, from an economic and cultural point of view, ignorance of the English and Spanish languages condemns us to remain forever as citizens of a second zone, chained by ignorance, carriers of water, hewers of wood, renters and unemployed in our own country.
The growth over several decades of large enterprises founded and run by French-speaking Quebecers creates an illusion. Here, in these corporations, one speaks French, in effect, right up to the highest echelons of management. Board meetings here are conducted in the language of Vigneault.
However, to ensure their development beyond the borders of Quebec, organizations such as Quebecor, Cascades, Jean Coutu and SNC-Lavalin have no choice but to recruit employees who possess, among other skills, a solid knowledge of the English language and, most likely, other languages.
Don’t be mistaken, it’s not the members of the English-speaking minority who are most hurt by the language laws. The principal victims of Quebec’s language laws are francophone Quebecers and immigrants, because the laws confine them to a ghetto from which few manage to escape.
Of course, in theory, whoever wishes to learn languages can do it. Recently, Culture Minister Louise Beaudoin, who is responsible for Bill 101, said, in essence, that she was personally very much in favor of learning languages, which she considered an excellent way to open the mind to the wider realities.
This is fine, Madame Minister, but in order to achieve such an objective it is also necessary to have the financial means; everybody knows only a small proportion of the population has access to immersion, during trips abroad or in special-educational programs and so on. The rest, those people who have no option but to learn English on the job or after hours, will never go far in life.
The job market is now transforming itself. Traditional jobs associated with manufacturing and natural-resource extraction are disappearing, because of accelerated mechanization and computerization, and the irresistible attraction of industries to foreign lands rich in laborers, who can be paid in pesos for making products that will be resold for U.S. dollars.
The only growing sector of the economy – knowledge and computers – hires only highly qualified workers. According to Beaudoin’s logic, that’s tough for the children of Bill 101 – all they had to do was to be born to rich, educated parents.
Not long ago, a few decades at most, we paid a high price for obeying elites who had us believe that we were not made for the world of commerce or finance, that we were best to content ourselves with the cultivation of the land, the cult of our ancestors and family life, among ourselves: fellow French-speakers, Catholics.
The clear result was that we moved off the land and into factories, but – with few exceptions – via the laborers’ entrance. We thus came under the thumb of bosses who communicated among themselves and with us in a language that we didn’t understand well, only enough to earn our living with difficulty, by the sweat of our brows, as was normal for a conquered people. At least that’s what our French-Canadian elites wanted us to believe.
The new priesthood cannot rely on religion to keep us on a leash. Of their predecessors’ preaching, they have only kept the elements associated with language. They whisper to us as if the world around didn’t exist, as if we live in a closed vase.
If by chance, in learning skills or arts, we absolutely must refer to works written in English, they ask us to wait, so that these will be translated into French in good time by their good offices, and to their great profit. They don’t translate everything, of course, only that which will sow confusion in our frail minds, exactly like their predecessors who controlled access to those texts that « good people » would not have tried to read, for fear of losing their souls. And capping it all, our new priests proclaim themselves the guides, the intermediaries between us, poor idiots, and the real world.
The language laws of Quebec – what a fine tool for the perpetuation of the class system!