Reasonably Québécois

If Quebec were a reasonable province, Bill 101 would never have passed. Montreal would still be the country’s economic centre. Francophone children would have the right to go to school in English and allophones the right to choose between French and English education. If Quebec were a reasonable province, it would never have built the world’s second largest airport two hours away from the city it was meant to serve. Nor would they have built a stadium that took thirty years of smoking by Montreal residents to pay it off. Were Quebec a reasonable province, two hundred thousand Montreal residents would not spend their national holiday moving. Major grocery stores would be allowed to staff more than four employees after nine pm and bread would be delivered everyday, even on Mondays.

In light of these lapses of judgment, forgive me if I question the goals of a body established to discuss the issue deemed reasonable accommodation. Do I believe that newcomers to Canada should have the right to retain their culture? Absolutely; what would Montreal be without its Muslim population or its Jewish population? It would be a city without Schwartz’s and shish taouk. Diversity characterizes Montreal. Makes the city and the province more rich. In how many other cities of the world could you have ten friends sitting around a table, all of different backgrounds, switching back and forth between English and French as though they were one language? It should go without saying that values guaranteed every Canadian under the Charter of rights and freedoms will also be applied to newcomers. That is what made Hérrouxville’s code of conduct so shocking- that it was denying the newcomers basic rights promised to every Canadian. The Charter is not a buffet. It doesn’t allow us to decide that particular groups are exempt from it. The Charter is part of our culture in Quebec, and in Canada. There is no greater threat to this culture than a proposed code of conduct that contradicts what it means to be a Canadian.

My old roommate, Fajer, on the cover of a Quebec weekly

drawing attention to the reasonable accommodation debate.

The world is changing. Economics and communication are moving people more than ever from one edge of the globe to the other. It is not just Quebec that is changing. Korea has always been proud to have the most homogenous population in the world, but even they are starting to see blue-eyed Korean children. There is no need and no point in fighting these changes- they are inevitable. In a diverse city like Montreal, mixed race couples are now common place and there is no turning back. The argument that society is changing too fast is a weak one. The pace of change around the world has been accelerated, not just here.

As the reasonable accommodation debate heats up, I cringe. In a province that has never been known to be reasonable to any sort of accommodation, I fear the judgments that will soon flow freely. Quebec needs to wake up and realize they are dangerously close to falling behind the rest of the world. While children in China, Japan, North and South Korea are learning English, many Quebeckers are still unable to communicate in the world’s language of business. Bill 101 will not be remembered as Quebec’s saving grace, but rather as the nail in the coffin. If reason resided in Quebec, our street signs would be bilingual and bus drivers would all speak English, if for no other reason than to accommodate tourists. Quebec’s children would grow up perfectly bilingual and unconcerned about the politics of learning to speak English. If the Chinese are learning to speak Japanese, even after World War II, I’m sure we can toss French/English politics aside. But reason, I’m afraid, resides in Toronto. Which is what makes the reasonable accommodation debate so frightening here. If Quebec is unable to accommodate its English speaking population, what chance do other ethnicities have?