Libman: Court's rebuke of tuition hikes a wider indictment of divisive CAQ tactics

Montreal Gazette

03-05-2025

'We observe an absence of data on which the minister claims to base her decision.'
'The evidence shows that the minister had no data on the matter, beyond tenuous information.'
Two very telling extracts from last week's Quebec Superior Court judgment rendered by Justice Éric Dufour, in overturning the Coalition Avenir Québec government decision to sharply increase university tuition for out‑of‑province students attending McGill and Concordia. The judge criticized Higher Education Minister Pascale Dery's contentions regarding the retention rate of students from outside Quebec and their ability of integrating into Quebec society, posing threats to the survival of French.
This is not just a slap-down of the minister, but a wider indictment exposing how the CAQ often seems to be improvising, particularly on matters of identity and language. Whether by design or incompetence, instead of working from hard data and facts, this government has adopted legislation and implemented important measures — with significant impact on Quebec society — based on anecdotes, hearsay and questionable perceptions.
Bill 94 is another recent example. Prompted by a few alleged incidents in 17 (out of Quebec's 3,000) public schools, Education Minister Bernard Drainville is expanding the ban on wearing religious symbols in schools to now include almost all workers, including janitors.
When it comes to language measures, forget hard data. Everything seems driven by the accepted orthodoxy that French is in serious 'decline' — thus the need to protect the language at all costs. If someone dares question just the means or the methodology, it's invariably seen as an attack on Quebec and unleashes relentless intimidation. When federal Liberal MP Emmanuella Lambropoulos cautiously asked at a language-committee hearing for more information or proof of the supposed decline, she was attacked from all sides, and subsequently quickly retreated.
Measures to promote and protect French and maintaining Quebec's uniqueness are important. But flimsy evidence or fearmongering about the intensity of a decline, to justify measures that unnecessarily go too far, rightfully deserve to be challenged. The court's scolding on tuition is a welcome reminder that governments should be basing major decisions on facts, not exaggeration or phantom menaces.
The French language is deeply rooted throughout Quebec as the dominant language at all levels of government and in public health care institutions and all professional corporations. According to the Office québécois de la langue française, even in neighbourhoods most heavily concentrated with anglophones, customers in businesses can be served in French 94 per cent of the time.
According to Statistics Canada, never in the history of Quebec have so many non-francophones and newcomers been able to speak French.
It's not the French language itself in decline, therefore, but the percentage of native-born mother-tongue francophones. That misleading statistic is often used to justify tougher French language measures, many of which go too far (Allez Canadiens Allez? Really?) Provisions of language Bill 96 — such as search and seizure, snitching and others — do little to protect French, yet clearly violate charter rights. Otherwise, the government wouldn't have used the notwithstanding clause pre-emptively to pass it.
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet recently called Canada an 'artificial country.' In Monday's federal election, his party was reduced to only about half the number of seats won in Quebec by the Liberals led by Mark Carney. Blanchet, in a display of exaggerated self-importance, offered collaboration but warned it was conditional on Carney not opposing Quebec's use of the notwithstanding clause when Bill 96 reaches the Supreme Court.
Hopefully when the time comes, Carney will show leadership and prove that Canada is a very real country that values rights — and, as judge Dufour did, expose the distinction between laws buttressed by reality as opposed to 'artificial' arguments and tired notions that divide and weaken our society.