Bill 103 Suffers from Loneliness

Nobody but nobody likes the effort to reform Quebec's education laws to comply with a Canadian Supreme Court ruling yet deny most folks language choice.  Yep, that is what the Quebec government must do--thread the narrow passage between the Scylla of unconstitutional legislation and the Charybdis of French nationalism.  The Court had crushed the "fix" made earlier--just after I took my job here at McGill and before we moved in--that an immigrant sending a kid to private English school would then be eligible for the public English system.

The Parti Quebecois and its fellow travelers including the union representing CEGEP students [those in the unique post-high school, pre-university free two years of junior/vocational/whatever education), a member of the New Democratic Party (essentially betraying its ideology to pander to French nationalism), among others have spoke up at hearings and filed briefs saying that French is in danger and the changes here do not go far enough.  What they want is to prevent any and all immigrants from going to any and all English schools, including unsubsidized private ones.  Right now, people can send their kids to unsubsidized private ones, as my family does. 

The sovereignist "intellectuals," whose brief was presented by former PQ MNA Gilbert Paquette, argued that the government measure is based on false premises. It maintained that contrary to government assertions, applying Bill 101 access rules to all schools in Quebec, including unsubsidized ones, does not violate any universal rights recognized by the United Nations or even the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that there would be no need to invoke the notwithstanding clause.

Well, this "intellectuals" are, well, idiots, since the very fact that the Supreme Court has already ruled against the prior bill indicates that the Charter applies and that there would be a need to invoke the notwithstanding clause (which allows a province or the Federal government to say that the Charter and Supreme Court are not relevant--with a simple majority vote).*

The English associations are opposed to Bill 103 because it really does not provide much real access to English public schools, which have been in decline for some time now thanks to Bill 101 and the flight of many Anglophones in and around 1995.

So, who likes this bill?  Um, no one.  I am sure the party in power, the provincial Liberals, would have much preferred for there to be no Supreme Court ruling that forced a response.  The Liberals would prefer to sell out the Anglophone minority (who have no other party that can really claim their votes) quietly rather than loudly.  Instead, they are forced to try to pass a bill that antagonizes everyone. 







*  Does this mean that my bet with Jacob Levy is still on?  Hmm, I will wait until the deadline made by the Court is up and this legislation passes to call it.