A QUEBEC FOR US, TOO? My Farewell. Au revoir.

My Farewell. Au revoir.

by Colin Standish

Walking into Bay Street

I remember getting off the crowded streetcar, nearly being shoved out, as suited bankers, lawyers, and associated professionals barreled out the doors at the corner of King and Bay streets in Toronto. Looming high above the hustle and bustle, the first building was First Canadian Place, the headquarters of BMO, the Bank of Montreal.

Walking into my office, I remember my supervisor, originally from Beaconsfield, jokingly jostling another worker in the same office building. “We both went to LCC, Lower Canada College, together,” my boss explained, their relationship previously unknown to me.

The Partner at the firm I worked for was from the Eastern Townships; his wife as well, originally a Quebecer. “You know, we both saw the writing on the wall…” he said.

At last count, I have 33 blood relatives in the Golden Horseshoe, the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, stretching from Oshawa to St. Catherines. If I count their spouses and children, it would be several multiples higher.

How many relatives do I have in the Greater Montreal Area, from Blainville to Brossard, from St-Lazare to Saint-Bruno?

One.

It felt dystopian. In the heart of downtown Toronto, I was surrounded by other English-speaking Quebecers, and institutions formerly in Montreal.

This demographic, economic, and institutional shift across Canada has persisted for almost 50 years.

In the Eastern Townships, I do have numerous relatives, but my paternal family skipped over Montreal as it lost its economic status in the 1960s and as linguistic and independence debates gripped Quebec in the 1970s.

Around the dinner table at Christmas in Ontario or British Columbia, I have found myself starting conversations with distant relatives over the holidays with expressions English-speaking Quebecers find themselves repeating with the same frequency as “Pass the turkey” and “More mashed potatoes, please” ―  expressions such as “When did you leave Quebec?” or “What part of Montreal are you from?” or “Where in the Townships was your cottage?”

Missing Out

In Quebec, we often speak about the “Children of Bill 101,” those who came of age post-1976 and attended, generally forcibly, French-language school. They are held up as models for a new French-predominant, and increasingly French-only, Quebec, of integration, success, and acculturation (or, more accurately put, assimilation).

If those are our “children” ― loved, lauded, and promoted with pride ― who are those excluded from our self-declared societal project?

What of the illegitimate, the shunned, those not invited to gatherings, swept into the corner at celebrations?

Who are the rejected, dejected, hidden, and excluded?

Who are the “Orphans of Bill 101?”

Over 50 per cent of English-speaking Quebecers have left Quebec since the 1970s. The total number is not actually known, as this is only tabulated if they show up in the census in another province, excluding those in the United States, the United Kingdom, or further afield.

Two key terms are useful for understanding the plight of the community: the missing middle and the missing-out middle. The English-speaking community is defined by a declining population, an aging population, and what is described as the missing middle, with a low proportion of people aged 15-44 and a missing-out middle of people having, on average, lower levels of income and employment than their French-speaking counterparts (Pocock & Hartwell, 2010, Profile of the English-speaking Community in the Eastern Townships).

Language Rights Ecosystem

Under a variety of internal, financial, and external pressures and conflicts in the early 2000s, Alliance Quebec and the Equality Party ceased to operate. The language rights ecosystem ― an activist interest group leading the charge with policy initiatives, commentary, and legal challenges with a complementary provincial political party proposing legislation, contesting elections, and influencing legislation with amendments, and questioning the Government and other parties on their proposals ― ceased to exist.

The Task Force on Linguistic Policy, originally an ad-hoc committee, Language Equality / Egalite linguistique, was an advocacy group I founded in early 2021 to lobby against the “White Paper” on language that was to be proposed by the Government of Canada. It has grown into an incorporated federal non-profit organization with a Board of Directors and thousands of members.

Members of the Task Force established an Exploratory Committee on Political Options in early 2022, to see if a new political option was viable ― one that was language-rights and human-rights minded, and federalist. Our answer was yes, and we founded the Canadian Party of Quebec. Though we were not successful in winning seats, this party has raised and spent over $200,000 for advocacy and legal cases, became the seventh-largest of 27 parties votes in 2022, and framed the debate for non-francophone voters on Bills 96, 21, and 40.

All federal and provincial legislators sitting in the Parliament of Canada and Quebec’s legislature voted for Bill C-13 and Bill 96. (All of them sitting at the time so voted, at one point or another. Votes against the “Third Reading” are only one aspect of a complex 5- or 6-part legislative process.) No major political party proposed, if elected, to abolish or make holistic amendments to the Bills.

Where are the formal protests by legislators or mass resignations, like that of Clifford Lincoln, pronouncing the tautology, “rights are rights are rights”? Instead, a now-elected candidate said “Bill 96 has no place in a free society,” but ran with a Party that would keep nearly the entirety of Bill 96. My opponent in the last election described Bill 96 as the “fight of her life.” Since the 2022 election, how many amendments have been tabled by members of Quebec’s legislature to modify or repeal Bill 96 in whole or in part?

None. Zero.

Bill 96, the Saskatchewan First Act, and Quebec’s Oath Act all fail to mention the Constitutional amending formula with which they purport to modify the Constitution. Yet, as of the summer of 2024, the Government of Canada has incorporated these amendments into the official version of the Constitution.

What does this mean? Essentially, provincial governments are amending the formal Constitution in a way not contemplated in the 1982 Constitution: Section 45 allows Provinces to amend aspects of their internal constitutions, little spoken about, that are essentially their jurisdictions under the Constitution, not the formal Constitution.

Thus, the Government of Canada and Liberal MPs have legitimized the legal balkanization of Canada, where laws and regulations vary across different jurisdictions, creating a fragmented and complex legal landscape.

This past winter, the Government of Canada sought to legally recuse themselves from a Bill 96 court challenge, and was granted the right to not defend the Canadian Constitution.

Such is the current-day largely unspoken constitutional crisis:

Our Constitution is no longer inviolable.
Provinces are carving out their own new jurisdictions unilaterally.
Quebec has a distinct legal status no other province has.
The Quebec and Canadian governments have worked in concert on this initiative.

Resusitation

What can we do to actually cultivate a viable English-speaking community in Quebec?

Representative Elected Officials and Institutions

The English-speaking community requires leadership at all levels of government, but not just symbolic representation: we require individuals who can exercise agency, creativity, and intelligence in confronting the systemic indignities that confront our community. This requires institutional vehicles to cultivate leaders and institutions for them to occupy.

Representative Government Employees and Professions

English-speaking persons comprise less than 1 per cent of the Quebec public service, whereas members of cultural communities (i.e. visible minorities) comprise about 8.5 per cent of Quebec’s civil service, reported the Montreal Gazette (2018). These invisible leaders are sorely lacking in Quebec, from director-generals of municipalities large and small, to police officers, to CLSC Directors. English speakers must be educated, groomed, and be provided with professional, personal and educational support networks to cultivate these tertiary leaders that develop and apply policy.

As well, English speakers are underrepresented in the professions, with new onerous burdens for professionals under Bill 96 further constraining their supply, from respiratory therapists to land surveyors.

Economic Opportunities

English speakers in Quebec are poorer than French speakers in Quebec and the Rest of Canada, with an Anglophone now earning, on average, $5,200 less per year than a Francophone. The poverty rate for English speakers is 10 per cent, almost twice that of French speakers, 5.8 per cent (2021 Census, pertquebec.ca).

Although some English-speaking Quebecers are extremely well-educated, the community also has a high rate of low education. In the Estrie administrative region, 35.5 per cent of English speakers aged 25-44 have high school or less, compared to only 24.5 per cent of French speakers in that age group (2016 Canada Census, Pocock, 2018).

In regards to the percentage of Anglophones in the labour force, 66.2 per cent are working vs. 64 per cent of Francophones. However, their jobs are more likely to be temporary or part-time, and unemployment among English speakers has doubled since 2016, with 10.9 per cent of English speakers unemployed vs. 6.9 per cent of Francophones (2021 Census, pertquebec.ca).

This substantial socio-economic disparity needs to be rectified.

Freedom from Onerous Legislative Restrictions

For the full engagement of all Quebecers in civil society, we need to ensure they are free from legislative restrictions based on ethnicity, race, sex, gender, orientation, language, and other identifiers. We can promote French and a unifying Quebec identity with constructive measures that provide positive rights instead of punitive measures that hinder individuals, cripple the economy, and diminish the dignity of all Quebecers.

What Can We Do, Individually?

In a macro sense, we must encourage incentive structures for individuals, corporations, educational institutions, government employees, institutions, political parties, and actors to provide vehicles for our full engagement in civil society. And, when they act in a way that impedes engagement, we can provide a feedback loop and disincentives to these actions.

In short: We can buy from companies that respect us, complain if public services are not adequate, vote for legislators who will actually defend our interests, and engage in civil society.

You have a voice, a vote, and funds: Use them.

Conclusion

When thinking of the modern state of the Canadian nation, I sometimes reflect on the famous stanza from T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men”:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

If Canada ceases to exist at all or in its current form, as appears to be the elite consensus, let it go out with a bang.

Canada deserves more than a whimper.

I hope you will join me, and others, in making a lot of noise.

Lâche pas, mes amis, there is a Quebec for us too. We just need to grasp it.

 

Colin Standish was born and raised in Cookshire, educated in Lennoxville, and spent his summers on Brome Lake. He is a ninth generation Townshipper; his family first arrived in Philipsburg in 1783. Currently working as a Crown Prosecutor in Manitoba, Colin holds civil and common law degrees from the Université Laval and Osgoode Hall Law School, alongside a BA from Queen’s University and a business degree from Bishop’s University. Language rights, local history, and Canada’s role in the Battle of Hong Kong are several of his passions. (Photos: Courtesy, Colin Standish)