Oh, come on… they say sarcasm is lost on some people.
I don’t know… in the “real” French I learned in English Canadian high school, the last letter of French words is rarely pronounced. (Trois is “Trwah”) In Mulroney’s “French” he pronounced the “s” with a distinct hiss at the end of words. OTOH, he sounds like a pretentious bastard in English (oh, wait…) with for example the way he pronounced schedule “shed-yool” rather than “sked-jewel” like a real person.
Yah, I know Lyin’ Brian grew up bilingual; but so did Charest and many others, but they don’t sound like the French version of Sarah Palin to ingratiate tehmselves with voters. They speak formal (Parisian) French in formal settings. Chretien - well, the joke goes he’s the only Canadian Prime Minister in recent times that was not bilingual in either official language.
I recall a short story in school (translated from the real French, I think) about someone growing up in rural Quebec in the late 1800’s early 1900’s era. He said in an aside that the local school board preferred to hire teachers from France to teach “proper” French. Or maybe he said “real French” - I don’t recall. Anyway, Parisian French.
Even back then, the more upscale or pretentious types thought it was better their kids at least be exposed to Parisian French. In the story, the kid remarks that the bonus of having a teacher from France was that he did not know any English and did not bother to teach it.
We had a French teacher (as opposed to a Canadian teaching French) when I went to high school. After a mention in one of our textbooks, he discussed the different accents of France itself, where Paris is considered the “Gold standard”, much like Oxford English. He referred to “L’asang de marsay” -the way “L’accent de Marseilles” was described and pronounced.
So really - Quebec is French, like France. The words, grammar, etc. can be pronounced somewhat differently, but so can English from Scotland, Newfoundland, Southern USA, or Australia. If I understand correctly, in all these situations, the degree to which the regional accent overpowers the intelligibility to outsiders can vary - from ELiza Dolittle “My Fair Lady” which anyone can grasp, to Guy Ritchie’s “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” which is completely unintelligible at times. It also depends how much the person wants to “put on” the accent / colloquialisms or speak mainstream.
I like to remark to people that there are a billion people in the world who speak English, but only the 20 million in Canada who speak it right.
But yes, I have never heard any Quebecker suggest that the language is anything but French.