I’m in Toronto right now for a few days, and I haven’t noticed much in the news about them at all. Oh, there is a bit, but it’s definitely not front-page stuff. Today, the news seems to be more concerned with events in Libya than in St. James Park.
I don’t know, but I kind of hope so. Unlike what people here seem to think about me, I don’t necessarily think Quebec should become an independent country, but I wouldn’t call myself a federalist either. It’s interesting in that regard, because while in other Canadian provinces you can both be extremely proud of your province and extremely proud to be Canadian (we’ve certainly seen this with some Albertans here), in Quebec labelling yourself as “federalist” suggests that you think there is something wrong with Quebec, its people and its culture, and that we need Canada and Canadian culture to justify our existence. Maybe we can blame the long-standing link between Quebec artists/culture creators and sovereignty for this, but it seems to me that self-identified “federalists” are likely to think that, well, there isn’t much good coming from here, and to look at Canada, that is, the rest of Canada, as an example to emulate in its entirety.
It’s also odd that anglophone Canadians, along with a fair number of Quebec federalists, seem to think francophone Quebecers are an extremely proud people, in fact a way too proud people, when looking at it from the inside, it’s obvious to me that Quebecers are a self-hating people. I’ve said it in another thread: I only wish Quebecers were as proud of themselves as other Canadians obviously are about themselves, their culture and their country. (In fact I think Gilles Duceppe said something similar yesterday at a meeting of sovereigntists; he also added something about how united Canadians are. English Canadians seem to think sovereigntists “hate” Canada, but in truth they don’t, some of them quite like Canada and also see a lot to emulate in this country.)
Anyway, while you may have something like 25-30% of Quebecers who really want independence, you may have a similar number who are convinced federalists. The rest are moderate, or unconvinced, or else they’re not really political and don’t really understand the issues. That’s why I’d be wary about polls. Wasn’t there another recent poll ordered by Quebec’s association of thanatologists telling us that 50% of Quebecers want their funeral to be held at least partly in church, while 70% want no religious symbols at all at their funeral? I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it was something equally contradictory. (And amazingly enough, these numbers actually make sense to me given what I know about Quebecers.) Political polls are equally unreliable, especially right now. A Léger Marketing poll from last week places the Parti québécois in third place with 20% of the vote with Pauline Marois as leader, but in first place with 37% of the vote with Gilles Duceppe as leader (link on 308.com; I know people are disappointed with his predictions, but his reporting on polls is quite accurate). It’s not that Duceppe is that more popular than Marois, or that more likely to lead a party to victory (he just lost an election, remember); it’s just Quebecers want to express displeasure with the current options. (The results of the federal election were pretty much in the same vein.)
And look at the questions asked in this CROP post reported on in that Gazette article Jimbo linked. 73% of respondents want Quebec to be recognized as a nation in the Canadian constitution? We all know that’s not going to happen. Will they care if it doesn’t? Who knows? And 63% are proud both to be Quebecers and Canadians? Again, define “proud” and define “Canadian”. All I can say is that if I ask an anglophone Canadian to describe what is Canada (not that we need to ask them, they seem to quite relish telling the world that they’re Canadian, and what that means), their response will probably not be anything that will speak to my experience. They’ll be describing what might just as well be a different country from the one I’m living in.
Oh, and while we’re talking about sovereignty: remember that this movement didn’t appear in a vacuum, when René Lévesque decided to sell his soul to the devil or something. It happened when some Quebecers realised that the policies of Canada, Canadians, and their federal government, would for the most part always conflict in many ways with the policies of Quebec, and even with the Quebec consensus when there is one (and it happens, more often than you might think), and that in such a conflict Quebec would always lose. It’s having to deal with Canada and with the federal government that made people jump to independence as an option, which must have seemed rather radical at first. Now, of course, we’ve talked about it for 50 years and it’s never happened, so people are tired of it, and successive federal governments have tried telling Quebecers that there doesn’t need to be conflict between both sides’ opinions. But this doesn’t mean that the problem is solved, or that it couldn’t flare up again.
Look at what’s happening this very day: Jean-Marc Fournier, Justice minister of Quebec, has testified before a federal parliamentary committee, telling the opposition of his government to the federal omnibus crime bill C-10 given the bill’s insufficient support for rehabilitation of criminals and especially young offenders. Here’s the CBC.ca article, even though the title makes it sound like a money issue by those greedy Quebecers. I was watching Le Club des ex on RDI earlier, and all three of their ex-politicians, even Marie Grégoire from the supposedly more right-wing ADQ (the one anglophone commentators were this close to calling the Neo-Nazi Party of Quebec back in 2007 :p) were on Fournier’s side and supported his contention that Quebec has 40 years of experience on rehabilitating young offenders and is an international reference on the question, so that’s as close to a “Quebec consensus” as you’re going to get. Does anyone think that the bill will be amended? The Conservatives have a majority, they’re popular everywhere but in Quebec, and they’ll do whatever they please. In other words English Canada will once again force upon us something we don’t want and which will make things worse, for ideological reasons. Maybe you disagree with the italicised text, but many people will see it like that.
As for those new judges to the Supreme Court, one of them (Michael Moldaver) doesn’t speak French. It’s actually mentioned in that Toronto Star article, but I wager it was much more of an issue here than in Toronto or in Manitoba where I believe Le Ministre lives. We can assume he won’t learn it either, so what will we have to do when he has to judge a case where all supporting documents are in French? I guess they can be translated, but in translation we can lose something. And will all cases in front of the Supreme Court have to be pleaded in English from now on? The new Auditor General also happens not to be able to speak French.
Anglophones don’t think bilingualism should be a big issue, because for the most part francophones can just switch to English. But it’s not so easy. Also, for those who think knowledge of Canada’s official languages (or French at least) should not be a hiring criterion for those important jobs in the public sector and in the judiciary, I’d like it if you would say so overtly. If you want to repeal official bilingualism, have the courage of running on such a platform, instead of trying to erode it slowly hoping nobody notices.
The incorrect notion here is that there is some sort of unanimity in the other 9 provinces, and that other regions of Canada do not have their own oxes that get gored by the feds.
Don’t forget that part of the passion behind the old Reform party was to redress the alleged screwing that the West (and in particular Alberta) allegedly got at the hands of “central Canada” - that is, Ontario and Quebec - which those arguing “Western alienation”, claimed dominated Canadian politics.
Fact is, every part of a federation feels perpetually put-upon. It is the natural state of being in a federation. Today, the provinces with the greatest populations do not have anywhere near proper representation by purportion in parliament, which pisses them off … while Quebec does. This, under a Harper gov’t.
You know, you could replace “Quebec” with “Alberta” in the above paragraph, and it would be just as true. Oh, perhaps the “Rene Levesque” and “50 years” parts wouldn’t hold, but otherwise, it would be accurate. As Malthus notes, Alberta in particular got pretty tired of central Canada telling it what it was going to do (the NEP, for example). And there is still a billboard on Highway 2 in Alberta, just south of Calgary, that says, “More Alberta, Less Ottawa.” It is true that the drive for independence/separation was never as strong in Alberta as it was in Quebec, but it is interesting to note that there was one–and it was caused by conflicts such as you describe.
Malthus is correct in stating that every province and/or region has their own pet causes that are “gored by the feds.” I’ve mentioned Alberta, but another example would include the Atlantic provinces, whose economies and way of life took a big hit when fishing was banned by Ottawa. And though it’s not exactly similar, we’ve seen how well the harmonization of sales taxes has gone over with the public in BC–a policy that the federal government has been encouraging the provinces to adopt since the introduction of the GST, twenty years ago.
I don’t mean to sound flippant, but why should M. Fournier have any say in criminal law? Constitutionally, the power over criminal law is reserved to the federal government; M. Fournier is not a part of the federal government although he is a minister in the government of a province. He has no more say in how criminal matters are to be run than the justice ministers of Ontario or Nova Scotia, or for that matter, a passerby on the street.
That is not to suggest, though, that M. Fournier has nothing worthwhile to listen to. Undoubtedly, he does; and if Quebec’s track record in this area is as you say, then perhaps the feds should listen to him. Certainly, by appearing before the parliamentary committee, it sounds as if he has been able to make his pitch to the feds; and if nothing else, at least he has registered an objection. But the fact is that constitutionally, neither M. Fournier nor the justice ministers of any province, has any say in criminal matters.
I personally would have no problem with a Supreme Court Judge who only spoke French. In today’s environment documents would be translated accordingly. If the judge is qualified to serve on the supreme court then so be it.
I don’t understand why an English-speaking judge would be a problem at all in a country with predominantly English-speaking people. Are you kidding me? You want to narrow the scope of applicants to only those who are bilingual? That’s discriminating against most of the rest of the country.
Listen, there are some English-speaking folks, like me, who took French in high school because we enjoyed it, and because we wanted to learn a second language. My son is in French immersion because he likes it and because we all see the benefits of learning a second language.
You seem to be painting all of English Canada with the same brush. There are a lot of us who want to learn some French, attain some parity, and live peacefully you know.
Do you seriously see nothing wrong with all of our supreme court judges coming from one province ? Because that is what will happen.
What’s the benifit again of limiting ourselves to a small part of the appoitment pool ?
Interestingly, according to the law, at least three of the nine judges must come from Quebec. See the Supreme Court Act, RSC 1985, c. S-26, s. 6:
As Quebec has a distinctly different system for non-criminal law, it makes sense to ensure the SC has appointees with experience of it. So that’s more than a language issue.
Personally, like Leaffan, I would have no problem with a purely Francophone judge. I am sure the Supreme Court can dig up some capable translators.
Oh, of course, and Quebec’s system of civil law is likely the reasoning behind the requirement for three judges from Quebec. I was just pointing out, perhaps in a rather oblique way, that Quebec is already well-represented on the Supreme Court. Not to the extent that Ibanez fears, perhaps; but certainly enough that Quebecers should have (IMHO anyway) no complaints about the personnel on the bench.
Looking at the current makeup of the judges on the bench (cite), I see three Quebecers (LeBel, Deschamps, and Fish), three Ontarians (Binnie, Abella, and Charron), and one from each of Alberta, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia (McLachlin, Rothstein, and Cromwell, respectively). No representation from BC, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, PEI, or Newfoundland.
Interestingly, it seems that both the new Supreme Court nominees (Michael Moldaver and Andromache Karakatsanis) come out of the Ontario Court of Appeal, and will be replacing Binnie and Charron, from Ontario. Give that the Supreme Court Act says nothing about requiring judges from Ontario, perhaps the five unrepresented provinces have more grounds to complain about the personnel on the bench than Quebec does. 
Neither would I. If we can have simultaneous interpreters in the House of Commons and the Senate (and we do), and all bills and legislation passing through those bodies are translated and available in both official languages (and they are), and the Charter provides that French and English are equally authoritative in Parliament and the courts (see ss. 16-22 of the Charter, paying particular attention to s. 19), then it would seem to me that as long as a Supreme Court judge has at least one official language down, there is no problem. Qualifications for the job, not necessarily language, should matter most.
The official languages of the Northwest Territories, including the courts there, are Chipewyan, Cree, English, French, Gwich’in, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, North Slavey, South Slavey, and Tlicho. The Northwest Territories are a federal territory in which presently there are three judges (there can be as many as four) of the Supreme Court (being the court of superior/ general jurisdiction), as well as judges of other courts, and judges from other jurisdictions who fly in as necessary.
Should all judges sitting in the Northwest Territories be fluent in all the Northwest Territories courts’ official languages?
Should the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada be fluent in all the Northwest Territories courts’ official languages?
Whatever your answer is to the above to questions is, now apply that same reasoning to the Quebéc issue.
As a resident of Saskatchewan, I am outraged - OUTRAGED! - that our 3% of the national population is not afforded the 11% representation of one supreme court judge. In fact, I am so exercised by this injustice that I think I shall endeavour to turn it into a provincial election campaign issue.
Mostly because our election campaign (the vote’s this Monday) has been dead boring. So far the most hotly contested issue has been whether school should start before or after Labour Day.
That’s because northwestern Ontario keeps snapping up the good ones from Saskatchewan when they are still lawyers.
My gut reaction is " OMG Supreme Court Judge should be bilingual!!!" but the more I think of it, the more I think that I’m OK with some minimum amount of them - three? five? - being fully bilingua is acceptable. They do not necessarily have to be the three from Québec - a unilingual francophone judge from Québec (are there many that make it that high in the judiciary, though?) would be acceptable to me as long as at least one person from another province was bilingual instead. Translations/translators can inadvertently add bias to a document/argument/whatever and I think it is absolutely fundamentally important that some non-trivial proportion of the judges be able to evaluate information in their original form in order to have faith in the judicial system. I think this might be part of the basis for 3 of the judges needing to be from Québec in the first place (along with a working understanding of the different non-criminal code).
I do not like the crime bill. I think it’s not so much “tough on crime” as “machissmo reactionary to crime”. There are serious flaws with the criminal system, sure, and I’m sure there are a lot of good ideas in the bill, but the more I read about it, the more I feel that the bad ideas - such as the lack of rehabilitation and stricter youth laws - make it a bad bill. I’d like to see tougher sentences for violent offences, but I hardly think a 17 year old with 5 grams of pot needs to see the inside of a jail. It’s too much, it’s too extreme, and the more I read about it, the more it seems like there’s a ton of evidence to show that it will be expensive and will not work to reduce crime rates.
I’d rather see each issue considered independently rather than pushed through in a massive “we are in charge, fuck all y’all who don’t agree” bill.
I’m glad Québec and Ontario have said they won’t pay more for it. I hope that’s possible to enforce, or to change the bill to something more reasonable.
I don’t have any stats handy on it, but I looked into youth crime rates a few years ago, and found that yes, Quebec has been more effective in dealing with youth crime than other provinces, so I quite understand why Quebec is so pissed off at Harper and his Conservative government, for the pending legislation will not be taking Quebec’s approach, and instead will force Quebec to spend more money to stop doing what it was already doing better than the rest.
The federal criminal law is applied by the provincially funded courts, who impose the federal penalties that the provinces also must fund. Perhaps the provinces can force the issue by not building more prisons, leaving it to the courts to release prisoners once prison overcrowding becomes too severe. Not a good thing not matter which way you cut it.
It would be less expensive to simply but the trash on busses with one way tickets to Alberta, the way Klein did to the ROC.
Since you’re all fluently bilingual:
You may not have political unanimity all the time, but many times Quebec has found itself alone against the federal government and all other provinces, so it’s kind of a recurring theme. And anyway you’re more unanimous than you might think, culturally speaking. You’re not wondering whether you’ll still exist as a people in 50 years for one. And while all of Canada may joke about gun-toting rednecks in Alberta, it seems to me it’s mostly Quebec that gets all the comments about there being something “wrong” with it that has to be redressed.
And why is criminal law a federal responsibility in Canada? If we can’t agree about the best way to operate our justice system, why can’t we do like the US and have it be a mixed responsibility?
Well I would. Translating is fine and good, but there’s so much it cannot do. The Supreme Court sometimes has the duty to harmonise the French and English versions of laws. How can you do this if you can’t read both, and at a high level?
Oh, and should we only nominate people with knowledge of law to the Supreme Court? That’s discriminating against most of the rest of the country.
There are jobs with a long list of requirements, and rightly so, and I think Supreme Court justice is one of them.
I’m going with what I see. You yourself aren’t the most mild-mannered person there is you know.
So your contention is that nobody outside Quebec speaks French, even high-ranking judges?
See, we Quebecers are much too mild and mellow and conciliating. Sure, we’d like high-level governmental positions to be bilingual, but… we know how hard that is for the rest of Canada, and how hard they’re working to please us, and we don’t want to be a bother. A few bilingual judges on the Supreme Court is enough. But why do we even need bilingual judges? Translation works well. But why do we even need translation? Google Translate works well, and is only going to get better! And anyway we can speak English, we can switch for you (or we should anyway). We don’t want to be a pain in your butt, please like us!
As I’ve said in my last post, the next Auditor General is also an unilingual anglophone. From what I heard today, not only is the job of Auditor General designated as requiring fluency in both English and French, but the guy who’s been designated for the job is from New Brunswick, has been in an officially bilingual position for 10 years, and never learned French. So what do we do? Do we care about this, or do we just accept that he’s the best man for the job (despite the fact that he doesn’t satisfy the job’s mandatory requirements, but it’s only speaking Minority Language, who cares about that?), and anyway it’s so hard for anglophones, even high-ranking ones, to learn any other language, so we’ll just shut up?
There’s a reason why those jobs are designated as requiring a person fluent in English and French. It’s because they may have to use both in the course of accomplishing their duties. If they don’t speak French, that means that everyone has to interact in English with them. My question here is for everyone: is it your contention that this is all right? Is Canada is an English-language country, where French is a tolerated minority language, but where English is the expected language of communication with the government? If so, just tell us so so we can decide whether we accept this, instead of just eroding linguistic rights slowly and quietly enough that nobody sees it happening.
The judges do not sit about translating. The courts use translators. It works quite nicely. When there is a question or disagreement concerning a translation, the courts deal with it by hearing what the expert translators have to say, rather than taking a run at it on their own.
Having knowledge of the law is necessary to deciding the law. Having a knowledge of a language prior to translation is not necessary to deciding the law.
Note that submissions before the Supreme Court of Canada are primarily in writing, which can be translated without time pressure. Oral submissions are used to draw attention to the most important points of the matter, and to have the lawyer answer questions from the bench. Neither of these will cause a case to turn on the nuances of a live translation.
What it comes down to is that in a homogenous world, we would all have the same culture and the same language, but we do not live in such a world. We have many cultures, sub-cultures and langages in Canada, so we must not expect every person in authority to be fully versed in each culture, sub-culture and language. What we can expect is for every person in high authority to be open to other cultures, sub-cultures and languages, and for every person in high authority to have access to the tools necessary to communicate with persons of other cultures, sub-cultures and languages. The Supreme Court of Canada does this admirably.