This week I couldn’t get an interview with the new liberal French language critic Madwa-Nika Cadet.
The elected members of the PLQ held a three-day meeting prior to the meeting. The echoes, of course, focused mostly on the failed reinstatement of Marie-Claude Nichols. Red-elected officials complained about it, saying they wanted to talk about “the issues”. Hence my question about the language.
On Wednesday, a press spokesman initially replied “we’ll take a look at that”. In the evening I insisted: “Yes, it will be fine until tomorrow. »
But since Marc Tanguay answered two questions about the language in his press conference on Thursday, I was denied the interview: “The chef said everything. I disagreed, but nothing helped.
companies
Questions to Tanguay concerned the application of Bill 101 to federal corporations. Old consensual demand in Quebec, full of common sense but which has long irked the PLQ.
However, in December 2020, six former Quebec ministers, including the three Liberals (Johnson, Charest and Couillard), signed an open letter in support of the measure.
Is the PLQ of 2022 correct? Tanguay simply answered “yes” without enthusiasm. However, it was the 20th of 27 proposals from the April 2021 PLQ for French: “Apply the provisions of the French Language Charter to companies subject to federal jurisdiction. »
Legault Government Law 96, Recast of Law 101, enacts it elsewhere. But the Trudeau government disagrees. By Christmas he wants his C-13 bill to be passed, giving businesses a choice between the Québec system and the federal government, which appears to favor bilingualism.
Anti-96 activists applaud. Specifically, the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) lobby. In his eyes, however, C-13 still has many flaws; including mentioning the Charter of the French Language (Act 101 amended by 96). According to QCGN, this is implicit “federal support” for a draconian law that “rejects the individual rights guaranteed by the Canadian charter.” As such, QCGN is requesting the removal of “all such references”.
When asked about this, Tanguay went ice skating. Freedom Killing, Law 101? It cannot “be qualified as such,” he initially replied, since it “represents what the nation of Quebec is.” Robert Bourassa, he recalled, made French the official language of Quebec in 1974. However, Tanguay regretted that Bill 96 had led to an unjustified “restriction of rights”.
After the press conference, Tanguay’s entourage texted me: “For the C-13, we are analyzing the impact and would like to reserve our comments for now. »
No wonder: in the new faction of the PLQ, anchored in western Montreal and in the Liberal Party of Canada, we support Ottawa rather than Bill 96.
For example, NDG MP Désirée McGraw, liberal spokeswoman for Anglophone Quebecers (and former adviser to Justin Trudeau), declared during the campaign: “Bill 96 has no place in a free and democratic society”. Not less !
