Article as it appeared in The Gazette, January 7, 1998, p. B3

Easy to spot double speak in Quebec’s language laws

It is rare that Quebe’s language soap opera makes itself as laughable as it did through the pages of The Gazette on Sunday, Dec. 28. On page A3, we read that Julius Grey believes his legal challenge of Bill 101’s regulations regarding commercial signs may now havebeen made awinner by the Office de la Langue Française and its minister, Louise Beaudoin.

His case is that absurd regualtions must be beyond the powers of the regulators, and they must be absurd if they bring the hammer of enforcement down on L. Bergson & Fils’ bilingual (French and Hebrew) sign. Doubly absurd, presumably, if the minister had to stop that enforcement because it was an "error of judgment", not because it went beyond the regulations.

On pageA8 we read the quote of a week before from Guy Bouthillier, head of Montreal’s St. Jean Baptiste Society, reacting to news that the language troops were now setting their sights on Chinatown. "Chinese characters don’t bother anybody. We can’t read them. Chinese is not a threat. Hebrew is not a threat. Greek is nota threat."

RELISH ABSURDITY

Absurdity when we see it should berelished, particularly if the relishing helps us to live with the ridicule to which our province all too often exposes itself. If it helps Grey to show that we are regulated in a Kafkaesque way, somuch the better.

Grey should perhaps call Bouthillier as a witness, to prove that the impugned regulations fail the test of minimal impairment, just as the previous ban of non-French went farther than was necessary to protect French. If Bouthillier recognizes his quote he ought fairly easily to be brought to say something like this:

"Yes, Bill 101 and its regulations areneedded to protect the French language.

"No, neither Greek nor Chinese nor Hebrew is a threat to the French language.

"Yes, the regulations restrict the use of those languages when there is no need to."

No further questions, m’lord.

Now, Bouthillier would likely go on to say that the reason Greek, Chinese and Hebrew are no threat is that they are generally ignored, since "we" do not understand them. Grey ought to steer clear of this topic, for fear of impugning his own witness with the very absurdity he attacks.

What Bouthillier is really saying is that Greek would be a threat if enough of "us" learned it. He is really saying that Chinese would be a threat if only "we" could read the pictographs.

(These pictographs are read readily in any of dozens of languages and hundreds of dialects. There is no reason they could not be read by someone who does not speak Chinese; in fact, they are, by Koreans and Japanese,for example.)

If "they" wrote their English signs in a script which "we" could not understand, say Cyrillic, then the English signs would not be a threat, either, presumably. If "we" prohibited the teaching of English, perhaps all the English signs could safely go back up in a few generations. According to Bouthillier, it seems that "we" could afford to allow purely English signs in areas where nobody understands English.

ENGLISH IS THE ENEMY

Of course, to be fair to Bouthillier, he is only saying what we have all long known, that English, not un-French, is the enemy. And perhaps there is a certain logic in saying that a message which cannot be understood can hardly be a threat, but it is not the message that Bill 101 is after. It is the language. It is the "visage linguistique", the image Quebec gives to its own citizens and to visitors. And if "we" seek to create a particular "visage", it is not only the comprehensible languages and scripts but any language and any script that do not fit into that "visage" that must be curtailed.

Taking that just a short step farther, it would then be discriminatory, perhaps actionably discriminatory, to aim enforcement only at the comprehensible language.

And that is why it is clearly a deliberate policy decision to do the kind of thing that even Bouthillier thinks excessive and unnecessary and that Beaudoin declares, after the fact and only when the kitchen gets a little hot, to be an error of judgment.

It was not an error of judgement. It was a deliberate choice, an absurd choice made necessary by the logic of an absurd regulation.

"We", even I, might be in favour of the objectives of Bill 101 and even of Bill 101 itself, but that should not stop us from spotting double-speak and relishing absurdity when we see it.

Simon V. Potter is a Montreal lawyer.

 simon.potter.montreal@sympatico.ca (Simon Potter)
info@ogilvyrenault.com (Simon Potter)