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<h1 class="entry-title">Macpherson: From expelling immigrants to exiling young anglos</h1>
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François Legault and Jean-François Lisée couldn’t wait to show voters who could be tougher on minorities. </p>
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<a href="https://montrealgazette.com/author/dmacphersonmontrealgazette" class="gmail-author"><span class="gmail-name">Don Macpherson</span></a> </div>
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Updated: September 14, 2018 </div>
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<img class="gmail-wp-post-image" alt="" src="https://postmediamontrealgazette2.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/que-elxn-leaders-20180817.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=840&h=630&crop=1" width="840" height="630">
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Parti Québécois leader Jean-François Lisée and CAQ leader François
Legault participate in a youth-oriented event in Montreal, Friday,
August 17 2018.</span>
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<span>Graham Hughes</span> / <span>THE CANADIAN PRESS</span> </span>
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<p>The Quebec feminist, television personality and politician Lise
Payette, who died last week, once compared televised election debates to
contests between little boys to see who can pee the farthest.</p><p>But
in the campaign for the Oct. 1 Quebec election, François Legault and
Jean-François Lisée couldn’t wait until the first debate on Thursday to
show voters who could be tougher on minorities.</p><p>Since Lisée’s
Parti Québécois is fighting for its survival against Legault’s Coalition
Avenir Québec, it was inevitable that the two nationalist parties would
compete over identity.</p><p>And with even slight PQ gains <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/quebec-election-liberals-slipping-in-latest-poll-as-war-for-nationalist-votes-rages" target="_blank" rel="noopener">threatening a Coalition majority</a>, Legault reached for his “go-back-to-your-country” immigrant-expulsion proposal.</p><p>Nothing further needs to be said here about the <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/macpherson-francois-legaults-cynical-immigrant-snitch-scheme" target="_blank" rel="noopener">inhumane proposal</a> itself. But Legault’s timing in pulling it out the day Payette’s death was announced proved unfortunate for him.</p><p>To justify his proposal, <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec-election-caq-vows-to-boost-aid-to-parents-of-disabled-children" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Legault said</a>
Quebec is so overrun by immigrants that he was afraid that “our
grandchildren will not speak French.” At a grandfatherly age 61 himself,
Legault should know better.</p><p>His hyperbole recalled that Payette had once co-written and narrated an alarmist anti-immigrant documentary, titled <a href="http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/fr/notre-collection/?idfilm=4665" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Disparaître (Disappearing)</a>, warning that within 25 years, “the French-Canadian nation will be dying.” That was in 1989.</p><p>Legault
panicked Lisée into responding two days later, on a Saturday morning.
Lisée answered Legault’s promise to defend French Quebec against
invading immigrants with an offer of protection against anglophones
already here.</p><p>In Quebec, that end justifies a major party leader’s proposing a <a href="https://fichiers.pq.org/election2018/plateforme/PQ-Plateforme-Politique-linguistique.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">language policy</a> apparently inspired by Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China, when urban youth were sent to the countryside <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_to_the_Countryside_Movement" target="_blank" rel="noopener">to be “re-educated.”</a></p><p>Chairman
Lisée would temporarily exile young anglos from Montreal, where most of
them live, to distant French-speaking regions for some sink-or-swim
immersion.</p><p>Anglo students in English-language CEGEPs would be
denied their diplomas, and therefore admission to Quebec universities,
unless they had spent their final session in French-language colleges,
“preferably in the regions,” <a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1122603/immigration-parti-quebecois-jean-francois-lisee-langue-francisation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lisée told</a> reporters. At least there is no CEGEP in Arctic Ungava.</p><p>This is different from the voluntary exchanges for both English- and French-speaking CEGEP students proposed in <a href="https://pq.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/programme-octobre2017.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the PQ policy program</a>.</p><p>The
party policy says anglo CEGEP students would be “strongly encouraged”
to take an enriched-French course including a session in a
French-language college. But the policy stops short of making it
compulsory, and allows the students to choose a local CEGEP.</p><p>Lisée’s
discriminatory scheme, however, would single out anglophones as young
as 18 for punishment for the crime of being anglos.</p><p>He would
sentence them to at least four months mostly away from home, family and
friends, to study in a second language, in a strange school in a strange
town. And that’s regardless of whether they were ready and willing to
go.</p><p>At least, that’s what he says now. But, as with Legault’s
expulsion of immigrants, it’s unlikely that Lisée’s exile of anglos will
ever occur.</p><p>Analysts have demonstrated that Legault’s plan is unworkable as well as undesirable and unnecessary.</p><p>So
are Lisée’s chaotic annual migrations of hundreds of students between
English- and French-language CEGEPs in different regions, with the need
to place them in the right classes and find lodging for them.</p><p>Lisée’s brainwave was so hastily improvised that he was <a href="https://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/536332/pq-cegeps-anglophones-langue-diplome" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unable to say</a>
how much it would cost the government, how it would work, or whether
anglo students would have to pass the same final French test as
francophones.</p><p>But neither Legault’s immigrant expulsions nor
Lisée’s anglo exiles look like an actual policy to be applied by a
government. Rather, they look like entries in a peeing contest to show
nationalist voters who will go farther to put the minorities in their
place.</p><p>This will test the theory that the former PQ government was
defeated in 2014, not because of the referendum issue, but because of
its anti-Muslim “charter of values,” proving that you can’t win a Quebec
election by appealing to xenophobia.</p><p>Obviously, Legault and Lisée don’t buy it.</p></div></div></div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div></div>