Quebec anglos pack bags, not guns

Enlarge Image

Quebec elected premier Pauline Marois (PAUL CHIASSON / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Charles Manson found justification for the murders committed by his cultlike "Family" in the music of The Beatles' White Album.

But nobody blames the murders on The Beatles. For if one of the best-selling albums of all time could incite murder, there would have been many more victims.

It's the same with the apparently politically motivated attack on the election-night rally of the Parti Québécois at Montreal's Metropolis nightclub, in which Denis Blanchette was killed and Dave Courage wounded.

As the suspect in the attack, later identified as English-speaking, was being led away by police, he was heard to shout in accented French, "the English are waking up."

More than a week later, it has still not been determined whether the suspect also had other motives, and whether he was sane at the time he is alleged to have committed the crime.

Within minutes of the attack, however, some people, most of them apparently sovereignist partisans, took to social media to blame the attack on English-language media.

Yet no English-language commentator had incited violence (a criminal offence, by the way) against the PQ or its leader. None had even questioned the legitimacy of the election of a PQ government or had called for non-violent civil disobedience against it.

There are about 800,000 people in Quebec who most often speak English at home. If there were a rational, cause-and-effect relationship between criticism of the PQ in the English media and political violence by anglophones, we would have witnessed more than a single case of the latter in the 44 years of the PQ's existence.

When Quebec anglos feel political pressure, they don't start packing guns; they start packing their bags, as 44 per cent of them now say they have been thinking of doing, according to a postelection Léger Marketing poll for The Gazette and other sponsors.

That's a response not only to the election of a PQ government, but also to events that preceded it in the past year.

It all began last fall with a media hunt for unilingual anglos. Verbal anglo-bashing in politics, the media and popular entertainment became socially acceptable. There was an increase in reports of harassment of people for speaking English in public.

Then came the PQ's xenophobic election campaign in which it promised to defend Quebec's language and values against its own linguistic and religious minorities.

For that campaign, the PQ was rewarded in the election with 1.4 million votes, more than any other party received.

The Léger poll suggests that among French-speaking voters, the most popular reason for voting PQ was "to defend Quebec's identity and the French language."

It also suggests a majority of francophones support the PQ's proposals to strengthen existing language legislation and pass an anti-hijab law, or "charter of secularism."

And after the election, PQ premier-designate Pauline Marois said her minority government intended to proceed with its proposed "new Bill 101" as far as the opposition would allow her to go.

Prominent PQ supporters, such as Mario Beaulieu of the anti-English Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, and Lise Payette, a former PQ minister who writes a weekly column in Le Devoir, are among those who rushed to exploit the tragedy at the Metropolis for political purposes.

Tellingly, even while denying the sovereignty movement is anti-English, Beaulieu and Payette selectively attacked only the English media, without mentioning several French-language commentators who have expressed similar criticism of the PQ.

Their apparent purpose is to guilt the media -- and maybe not only the English media -- into self-censorship, into softening legitimate criticism of the PQ to the mildest of language acceptable to the sovereignists.

I doubt that they'll succeed.

Don Macpherson is a columnist for the Montreal Gazette.

dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 15, 2012 J11