Opinion: We're unlikely partners with a shared vision of a better Quebec

Montreal Gazette

6 days ago

Op Eds
We are unlikely partners. But shared history has brought us together, and a desire to make some history keeps us working together to express a common and powerful desire for a better Quebec.
The Mouvement national des Québécoises et Québécois and TALQ (formerly the Quebec Community Groups Network) have been engaging over the past several months, in positive, constructive ways, about how we can, together, build some important bridges and light a path to greater understanding and unity in our wonderful, shared province/nation.
It is worth noting that those talks also occurred recently in a convivial dinner on May 19, the Journée nationale des Patriotes. It was a nod to the publicly expressed will of former QCGN president Marlene Jennings, who in a 2023 column in The Gazette argued that National Patriots Day should be more inclusive and refer more fully to the participation of anglophones in the events leading to the 1837-1838 uprising.
We agreed that the English-speaking community of today is not the enemy many Québécois still believe it to be. Along with that, we reiterate what we have been saying for many years: The English-speaking community of Quebec is not in itself an existential threat to French in Quebec.
At the same time, the anglophones among us need to recognize more fully that their fellow Québécois whose mother tongue is French don't lie awake at night trying to figure out ways to suppress them, their institutions and their constitutional rights. Many of those institutions, by the way, such as hospitals, CEGEPs and universities, serve all Quebecers, regardless of their language.
We understand and agree that threats to the French language are serious — but they are more continental or global in origin. They are found in the powerful magnet of American culture — film, television, music, social networks — and its pervasive and seductive presence around the world. We have a shared interest in making our own cultural production easier to discover and to understand, and in so doing contribute to worldwide diversity.
We must not make English-speaking Québécois the convenient scapegoat of this difficult problem. We work better as allies to vigorously protect and promote the fundamental language of Quebec, which, we both agree, is French.
We both understand and agree that expending more energy on ancient grievances — on either side — is not something that will move us forward.
This fledgling collaboration is a leap of faith (if we can say that in a secular society) — c'est un beau risque, for both of us.
There are some essential things on which we don't and won't agree. We know this, and we respect each other enough not to try to change hearts and minds. But we can and do agree on the need to recognize and respect each other as fellow, equal citizens with far more in common than we often think. With more shared history than is usually taught or acknowledged, with more shared passion for this special place in the world than many of us realize.
Late last year, the outgoing Commissioner of Official Languages, Raymond Théberge, produced a report on this very subject, and pointed out in some detail just how well individual English- and French-speaking Quebecers get along on a daily basis, as they share common concerns, values, interests and needs.
Think about it: We wait for the same hours and hours in the emergency room; we drive the same rutted roads; our children go to the same crumbling schools; we both cheer loudly for les Canadiens; and we both take joy from a walk in the woods in Montreal or Les Cantons-de-l'Est. We curse the same snow plows, complain about the same price increases at the SAQ or in the Hydro-Québec bill.
We share so many elements of our lives in exactly the same way. We are Quebecers. Nous sommes des Québécois.
There are lessons here for us all. Having the courage to work together despite a lengthy and turbulent history is an enormous first step. We are immensely proud to be taking it. This is what happens when we talk. We begin to understand each other more fully, and then we begin to realize we are stronger together than we are as adversaries.
Frédéric Lapointe is president of le Mouvement national des Québécoises et Québécois. Eva Ludvig is president of TALQ (formerly the Quebec Community Groups Network).