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It’s been percolating for quite some time, despite the pandemic. Language has always been a political football in Quebec and issues have been flaring up over the past few months. François Legault’s CAQ government, not being interested in seeing a revival of the PQ, decided to go ahead with the first major reform in 25 years of Quebec’s language laws and strengthen the Charter of the French language, as set by the infamous Bill 101.

In nationalist circles, the perception has been that over time, the Charter had been weakened by courts’ decisions and by tweaks made by successive Quebec governments. To dissuade court challenges, Bill 96 is declaring from the get go that the notwithstanding clause will be invoked. For which parts of the Bill, you may ask? For all of it, stated Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette, who tabled Bill 96 on May 13th.

Just like with Bill 21 on religious symbols, the CAQ government is signalling that their new legislative proposal is going against the Canadian Charter of Rights. They know it and they do not want to waste time with numerous legal challenges. It won’t dissuade everyone, mind you, as we have seen with Bill 21.

Premier Legault labelled the Bill as solid, necessary and reasonable. Without going through its 24 different measures, Bill 96 aims to regulate the use of French in small businesses with more than 25 employees, restrict access to English-speaking CEGEPs, streamline French learning for immigrants and guarantee services in French to consumers.

Politically, it is a magnificent play. Cunning, even. At the National Assembly, the opposition is neutered. The Quebec Liberals, already mostly reduced to anglo ridings, have nothing to gain in franco ridings by posing themselves as strong defenders of the anglo minority. Instead, they will embrace what they now call a consensus for the preservation and sustainability of the French language. Quebec Solidaire is criticizing on the margins but is supportive in principle. The PQ is trying to raise a storm, but their lead argument of “it doesn’t go far enough”, is hardly enough to create an uproar outside of its ever shrinking voter base.

In Ottawa, the reaction has been prudent and measured. Justin Trudeau knows that if he were to engage in a language war, he would bid adieu to regaining a majority in the next election: the Bloc Québécois is salivating at that possibility. For the Liberals, just like their provincial cousins, wearing their traditional cape of defenders of the anglo minority has no electoral upside and limited downside in Quebec. Liberal strategists can’t imagine who else Anglo-Quebecers would vote for anyway. Especially since the Conservatives are onside with the Bill and the NDP is unlikely to base its Quebec strategy on becoming the champions of the anglo minority. An opening for a new Equality Party, perhaps? Or maybe the Maverick Party would consider stepping up?

These champions, if they are to rise up, may cut their teeth on the municipal front. If adopted, Bill 96 will strip the bilingual status of Quebec municipalities that currently have it if less than 50% of their population is of English maternal language. There is, however, a way to avoid that. Municipal councils can adopt a resolution to preserve their cities’ bilingual status within 120 days of the bill coming into force of law.

Depending on when the Bill is adopted, the timing could set the table for potentially explosive and divisive municipal elections in Quebec, scheduled for November. It is not hard to imagine PQ-friendly candidates running on a platform to make French the sole official language in their town. They are dying for a fight about French’s decline. This would no doubt trigger a mobilization of the anglo minority. Explosive, you say? We’ve been in that movie before.

Federally, the real political trap is about a symbolic move, as is often the case on these issues. A short passage of Bill 96 seeks to amend the Constitution Act of 1867 so that it specifies that Quebecers form a nation, that French is the only official language of Quebec and that it is also the common language of the Quebec nation.

The CAQ says it can proceed unilaterally, without asking permission from the House of Commons, the Senate and the other provinces, by using section 45 of the Constitution Act, which says that a legislature has exclusive jurisdiction to modify the constitution of its own province – which is Part V of the Constitution Act of 1867. It would be quite a coup!

After all these years and all these rounds of Constitutional negotiations, could it have been that simple all along? Doubtful. The recognition of French as the only official language of Quebec in the Canadian Constitution will no doubt lead to constitutional challenges. For instance, article 133 of the Constitution Act states clearly that English may be used in the Debates of the Quebec Legislature and in any of the Quebec Courts. Similarly, Quebec laws and court rulings must be published in English as well as in French.

How does one square that circle? The most likely route would be a modification under article 43, which would then require the approval of Ottawa. This is the kind of political process that led to the rise of the Reform Party.

Photo Credit: CBC News

 

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


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I didn’t feel faint. I looked down.

 

“Your next dose is scheduled,” it said.

 

That’s what the official Ontario Ministry of Health sheet said. The nice woman at the Shopper’s Drug Mart on Lakeshore Drive in Toronto handed it to me, and told me to stick around for fifteen minutes in case I felt faint or something.

 

I stuck around. I looked at the sheet again. 

 

I’d just gotten my first dose of what was described as “AstraZeneca Covid-19 Non-rep VV.” The sheet didn’t say when I’d be getting a second dose of vaccine. But it said I’d be getting my “next dose” of what the nice woman said was AstraZeneca.

 

That was back in March. Because I’m an old fart now, I was one of the first lucky enough to get AstraZeneca vaccine. After that, more than two million of my fellow citizens got AstraZeneca, too. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was one of them.

 

This week, Ontario and several provinces pulled the plug on giving Canadians a first or second dose of AstraZeneca. The stated reason is blood clots. You might, might – might – get them.

 

Never mind the fact that, in the United Kingdom – in Britain, Scotland and Northern Ireland, to be precise – Covid cases have dropped dramatically. Never mind the fact that, on one day this week, in fact, they had no Covid deaths whatsoever. And all they have given their people is AstraZeneca.

 

But never mind all that.

 

Here is Canada, millions got one dose of AstraZeneca, and were told they’d get a second dose of AstraZeneca.

 

Right now, they’re being told they won’t get it. Right now, they’re even being told they might get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Is it a good idea to mix vaccines? Will it be effective? Will it have nasty side-effects? We don’t know for sure.

 

What we do know, however, is a hoary old concept called “informed consent.” It’s been around for a while. It’s the law of the land, and has been long accepted as such by the Supreme Court of Canada, no less.  The Merriam-Webster people say informed consent is agreement “by a patient to participation in a medical experiment after achieving an understanding of what is involved.”

 

You don’t have to be a Supreme Court judge or an epidemiologist to understand the problem we’ve got, now. In this case, it’s more than two million Canadians agreeing to get the second AstraZeneca vaccine, and then being told they may not get it. Or that they may get something else entirely.

 

Did they consent to that? Did they consent to what the Government of Canada’s own Chief Science Officer called, in slightly different context, a “population-level experiment?”

 

Full disclosure: I’ve worked, for years, with some amazing lawyers on class action lawsuits. Those class actions mostly dealt with governments making bad decisions – decisions which adversely affected the health of citizens. We ultimately won those lawsuits.

 

You see where this is going, here. The Trudeau government has made a circus of the vaccine rollouts. They tried to get vaccines from China, where two of our citizens are being held contrary to international law. Then, they didn’t get enough vaccines. Then, they got vaccines too late. Then, they told us AstraZeneca was totally safe, and now they’re saying it might not be.

 

The result? Provincial governments are being forced to roll the dice with the health and well-being of Canadians. And “informed consent” – which is at the very centre of our entire healthcare system – is being shredded. More than two million Canadians gave consent for something to happen, and now it seems something else is happening.

 

Feeling faint yet? 

 

You should be.

 

[Kinsella is former Chief of Staff to a federal Liberal Minister of Health.]

 

Photo Credit: CBC News

 

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


A month or so ago, I wrote in these pages that, “McKenna is laying a lot of track for what a Liberal version of ‘build back better’ would look like”, referring to what I then called “bevy of announcements focused on transport infrastructure – from active transportation, to increasing the gas-tax transfer to municipalities and a new focus on rural transit” from federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna.

That “bevy of announcements” continued this week, with a nearly daily joint announcement between McKenna and Ontario Transportation Minister (and my local MPP) Caroline Mulroney.

It seems both the federal Liberals and the provincial Tories are metaphorically (and soon literally) laying track on major infrastructure plans that will be central not only to our economic recovery, but also to their reoffering offers in a federal election that could come this fall and an Ontario election that will be underway this time next year.

It shows a strategy articulated in Finance Minister Chyrstia Freeland’s budget to get the pandemic under control, and then like Ross from Friends “pivot” to stimulating economic growth through infrastructure.

What is intriguing to note is that the Ford Tories are undertaking much the same approach as their federal Liberal counterparts, of course with subtle differences.

Speaking of matching strategies, another interesting piece of Ontario provincial politics has emerged this week through the focus the Ontario Liberals under Steven Del Duca are taking to tie themselves to the Trudeau Liberals on childcare. Del Duca announced in front of a Zoom of mothers and babies (many of the former who are also MPP candidates) that he would match the Trudeau plan to deliver $10-a-day childcare.

It is no secret, and he has conceded it himself, that Del Duca has struggled to define himself, being elected mere days before the lockdown last March. With his childcare announcement, he seems to be banking on the strong brand equity of the federal Liberals having a reciprocal or halo effect on the provincial party.

With our politicians all on similar pages in terms of their economic thinking coming out of the pandemic, I’m reminded of comments former President Barack Obama used to make about epochal intellectual movements in public society – from the New Deal and Great Society liberalism, to Reaganomics and Thatcherism, followed by the centrism of Blair/Clinton/Chretien, we are now seemingly in an era where big government is back in vogue.

Look at President Joe Biden’s massive spending plans to remake American infrastructure, childcare and healthcare as the leading example, and the Trudeau Liberals’ plan as its Canadian equivalent (smaller in comparison largely because unlike the US, we have a fifty year head start on social programmes).

I suppose that means we’re all Keynesians, at least for now.

That leaves the federal Tories struggling for an intellectual foundation. What is their offering? Are they deficit hawks, despite the public appetite for government support? Or is there a way to retool Conservative playbooks to offer people support and social solidarity, but in a more small government kind of way?

Erin O’Toole has yet to answer this question, though he hints that he wants to. The problem he faces is that his party doesn’t yet have its marching orders, so they vacillate between austerity and attempts at appealing to blue-collar workers, depending on which MP is speaking.

And with the Ford Tories embracing a populist version of “build back better”, and their provincial Liberal rivals looking to one-up them on particular offerings such as childcare, it leaves O’Toole in a tough spot that looks a lot like the odd man out in the Confederation’s surprising intellectual and policy alignment these days.

To torture the metaphor, if there are no atheists in foxholes, it seems there are no libertarians or deficit hawks in pandemics.

Photo Credit: The Conversation

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.