Parti Qu脙漏b脙漏cois leader Pauline Marois is promising she'll tighten up Quebec's language laws (translation: crush English some more) within 100 days if she becomes premier in the province's September election.
Unfortunately, Marois herself is the best reason in the world why the language laws shouldn't be strengthened. In fact, she's why anything that perpetuates the linguistic animosity that makes Quebec such an unpleasant place should be scrapped altogether.
Why is Marois the poster girl for a new approach to the age-old struggle between French and English? Because her English, by her own admission, isn't even good enough to allow her to participate in a political debate. That is pathetic.
Here is a woman who aspires to be the premier of a province in Canada, and she can't properly speak the other official language of the rest of the country. Nor can she communicate properly with the anglophone population of her province, a population whose numbers are in the six figures.
The exact number varies depending on whether it's calculated by counting those whose mother tongue is English, those who use it at home or those who consider it their first official language learned, according to the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages.
Regardless, her unimaginative vision for the future is to strengthen language laws and to crack down on English even more - the same old dreary prescription for Quebec's future that gets refilled every time there's an election.
And what does this crackdown do? It further prevents francophones in that province from bringing their English skills up to par with their French ones, thus limiting their employability and possibilities for career advancement. Then, they end up in the embarrassing situation Marois finds herself in - they cannot participate in English because they don't speak it well enough.
Official languages commissioner Graham Fraser writes on his website: "Stephen Harper has won a majority government without strong representation in Quebec. But this has not stopped him from beginning every news conference in French, and speaking French at G-8 meetings in Washington and Beijing. This is partly his understanding of Canada's identity, at home and abroad.
"But he also knows that, while 98 per cent of 91原创s speak English or French, there are four million Frenchspeaking 91原创s who speak no English. And he also knows that, in addition to the 75 seats in Quebec, there are 19 seats outside Quebec where French speakers represent at least 10 per cent of the population - and he won 10 of them."
Fraser adds that six of Canada's premiers are bilingual. Besides Quebec's Jean Charest, they include P.E.I. Premier Robert Ghiz, New Brunswick's David Alward, Dalton McGuinty of Ontario, Manitoba's Greg Selinger and Alberta's Alison Redford.
This, writes Fraser, is "a reflection of their interest in understanding national issues, but also the interest [these premiers] have shown in the minority language communities in their provinces. The lone unilingual candidate for the leadership of the
New Democratic Party withdrew from the race when he realized he could not communicate with one-third of the NDP caucus. It is now possible to go from kindergarten through to a post-secondary degree studying in French in every province except Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island."
And yet, the insular and narrowminded silliness goes on - recently the Parti Qu脙漏b脙漏cois' language critic, Yves-Fran莽is Blanchet, rapped the knuckles of Fran莽is Legault, a former separatist who heads the new Coalition Avenir Qu脙漏bec party. Legault's "crime" was tweeting in English.
"To whom is the English part of your campaign addressed?" Blanchet sniped back on Twitter. "Who in Quebec doesn't understand French?"
And who in Quebec doesn't understand English? Well, thanks in part to the provincial government's refusal to establish English immersion schools for francophone children - four million, and that number will only increase with provincial politicians' obsession with tightening language laws.
Not that Legault's party is any further advanced in its thinking about language issues. Its platform for a "strong, proud and confident Quebec" includes the tired old promise of "strengthening the role of the Office de la langue fran脙搂aise."
Nothing will change unless a new unifying vision creeps in to replace the perennially divisive old one. That new vision would not pit one language against the other, but instead would promote bilingualism for everybody.
In an environment that promotes both languages, one would no longer suffer at the expense of the other.
Quebec has frittered away decades squabbling over French and English.
It has gotten nowhere. And on the menu for the future? More of the same.
It doesn't have to be that way.
