Robert Libman: Language, health care and the art of deflecting

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The Coalition Avenir Québec government was certainly not sitting idle this week. Health Minister Christian Dubé unveiled his mammoth piece of legislation, Bill 15, to restructure the health care system, creating a new agency called Santé Québec to take over operational control of the network from the Health Ministry.

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At this point, the structural details and how it will all fall into place are unclear, but it strikes me as a maneuver, in part, to shield the government in the monumental task of getting our health system on track. If successful, they will take credit. But if things do not go well, pushing control of the system to arm’s length allows them to shirk blame come election time by pointing the finger at Santé Québec.

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Another initiative unveiled this week, by French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge, is an online platform for public consultation on how to stop the decline of French. The province has budgeted $87.9 million for a series of measures, including monitoring the evolution of the linguistic situation and ensuring the application of the French Language Charter. That’s the equivalent annual salary of around 1,600 nurses — but I decline.

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This move also smacks of a government wanting others to carry their laundry and divert focus from, say, failures in the education system and the lack of effective initiatives to protect the French language and culture. The platform will solicit ideas from the public, researchers, specialists and organizations. It is likely to mobilize primarily the most ardent nationalists, those who subscribe to the zero-sum game of Quebec language politics. The platform might more aptly be called: How to Further Reduce the Presence of English in Quebec.

We can expect to hear doomsday scenarios spinning Statistics Canada’s recent findings, for example, that more Quebecers speak French at home, but their proportion of the overall population is decreasing. What we probably won’t hear is that the overall population is speaking French in much higher numbers because immigrants and anglophones are speaking the language much more easily and competently than ever.

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We can expect to hear about the anglicization of Montreal — but not about the fact that every level of government in the metropolitan region operates almost exclusively in French, including the City of Montreal with its 19 boroughs. All other municipalities on the island of Montreal provide all services in French, as do those hospitals and institutions considered as “English.”

We can expect to hear about the sea of ​​English in North America and the need for dams to stem its influence. What we are unlikely to hear is that this reality will not change, and Quebecers need not be afraid. Celine Dion, Guy Laliberté, Denys Arcand, Denis Villeneuve and others have dived into the sea beyond our borders with great success — shining a positive light on Quebec internationally — without sacrificing at all their francophone identity.

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This project could be extremely positive if the focus is on French, with less concern about the supposed threat of English. For example, the government must improve the quality of French taught in schools and attack the high school dropout rate, among the highest in the country. The 2022 Provincial Employment Roundtable’s report found that French-language training programs are not meeting the needs of English-speaking Quebecers looking to enter or advance in the labor market. Quebec’s free French courses for immigrants should be expanded to include all non-francophones.

Many positive initiatives are possible, but it seems that most of those who control the debate in Quebec prefer to focus on tutoring autres. It’s convenient sometimes to deflect and point the finger to avoid blame for failures. This government seems adept at it.

Robert Libman is an architect and building planning consultant who has served as Equality Party leader and MNA, as mayor of Côte-St-Luc and as a member of the Montreal executive committee. He was a Conservative candidate in the 2015 federal election. twitter.com/robertlibman