March 29, 2007

What of Quebec’s Anglophones?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The big story in the Quebec election of 2007 was, of course, the amazing showing by Mario Dumont’s Action Démocratique du Québec and the dismal performance of the incumbent Liberals, whose leader, premier Jean Charest, barely held on to his own seat. The Parti Québécois also fared badly, suffering its worse defeat since the early 1970s.

The Liberals won 48 seats in the National Assembly, mostly in and around Montreal, while the ADQ took 41 and the PQ 36. Quebec will have its first minority government since 1878.

The ADQ’s platform in many ways mirrors that of the federal Conservative Party, and already many observers predict that Stephen Harper may strike while the iron is hot in Quebec, and call a federal election this spring.

Overlooked by most observers, though, will be the continued marginalization of Quebec’s dwindling anglophone minority, who find themselves with fewer options in every election.

Here’s an indicator of how far apart the anglophones of Montreal are from the majority of Quebec voters (and of Quebec political culture in general):

In most of Quebec’s 125 constituencies, the race was between the Liberals, the ADQ, and the PQ. But in three predominantly “English” constituencies in the west end of Montreal -- D’Arcy-McGee, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and Westmount-Saint-Louis -- not only did the Liberal candidates win their seats by overwhelming majorities (as usual), but in each of these ridings the Green Party ran second.

Two decades ago, many of these same voters elected members of the anglo-rights Equality Party, led by Robert Libman, to the National Assembly.

It was formed after Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa in 1988 used the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian constitution to override a Supreme Court of Canada decision that upheld a challenge to Bill 101, the law that had made French the sole official language of Quebec and imposed restrictions on the use of English on public signs.

Bourassa’s Liberals quickly passed Bill 178, which continued to ban English from all outdoor signs in Quebec. In reaction, the new Equality Party won four seats in west end Montreal in the 1989 provincial election.

But that four-member caucus fell apart due to internal bickering and its inability to do much on behalf of its constituents. As well, Bourassa in 1993 introduced Bill 86, which allowed English on outdoor commercial signs, if the French lettering was at least twice as large as the English.

So all of the Equality Party’s candidates were defeated in the 1994 election, as voters returned, reluctantly, to the Liberals.

Pity the poor anglophones – in the 2007 election, those voters who found the Liberal Party unpalatable, for whatever reason, could only deliver a protest by voting for a group that barely registered on the electoral radar elsewhere in the province.