Robert Libman: The anglo community is sending out an SOS. Who will hear it?

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Message in a Bottle is a classic song by the Police about a lonely castaway who desperately sends out an SOS to the world, hoping someone gets his message in a bottle. The song ends with 25 repetitions of the line “Sending out an SOS.”

This refrain could resonate with Quebec’s anglophone community, which has been feeling like a political castaway more than ever over the past few years, stranded by all levels of government and respective opposition parties.

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The recent language directive in the health-care system that could put the health, security and dignity of some non-francophone patients at risk provoked the latest SOS. The government is again dismissing the community’s concerns, despite what its directives clearly say.

First, there was the Quebec government’s strengthening of the language law — shielded from the charters of rights through pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause — and now its regulations that seem to be trying to erase as many vestiges of English as possible. Then the blindsiding attack on world-class English universities with tuition hikes for out-of-province students. The law creating Santé Québec, which takes over the health-care system, has provoked considerable concern about the community’s management of its own health-care institutions, which it founded and sustained. Silence. Silence. Silence.

SOS. Is anybody out there?

Business groups and francophone universities initially murmured somewhat, but not much since. Where are patients’ rights groups, and the City of Montreal? Shouldn’t there be more outrage or support coming from the rest of Canada?

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Shamefully, the federal parties in the country that Quebec is still supposedly part of haven’t come to the English community’s rescue or responded to its concerns.

The federal Liberals passed their own revised Official Languages Act, which throws anglo Quebecers under the bus. Conservative and NDP leaders Pierre Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh have been abdicating leadership on these issues, seeming more interested in power than decency. Both were in Montreal recently and skated around questions about the anglophone community’s concerns, repeating the importance of protecting French. Weakening English universities, or potentially allowing patients to suffer because health-care workers could be worried about communicating with them in their language, has nothing to do with protecting French.

The provincial opposition Parti Québécois and Québec solidaire, the supposed party of compassion, seemingly couldn’t care less. Both have scoffed at the notion of the anglophone community being mistreated. Leading in the polls, the PQ likely wouldn’t walk back any of the new rules if elected, despite its leaders historically being very respectful of the community’s institutions.

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Will the provincial Liberals rescue the anglophone community? Don’t bet on it. Their leadership aspirants will likely try to feather their nest with the more politically lucrative francophone nationalist vote. Denis Coderre has already indicated support for government measures that have knocked the anglophone community to its knees. You can expect the same from Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez if he runs, based on his comments.

Some journalists in the French media may scoff all they want at what’s sometimes characterized as anglo whining or fearmongering when concerns are flagged. There are those who seem so blinded by disdain for the English community at times that they are incapable of recognizing how language politics in medical settings can put lives at risk, and unable to rigorously question whether these measures do anything to protect French.

Two lonely Liberal MPs, Anna Gainey and Anthony Housefather, have responded to this latest SOS, urging federal Health Minister Mark Holland to intervene. We’ll see if he has the guts to address the concerns, or remain silent for fear of being pilloried for “interfering” in Quebec’s jurisdiction.

In the Police song, billions of bottles with messages wash up on the shore from others who are also alone. As long as politics remains heavily slanted toward calculation and winning as opposed to right and wrong, the English community is on its own without anyone daring a rescue.

Robert Libman is an architect and planning consultant who has served as Equality Party leader and MNA, mayor of Côte-St-Luc and a member of the Montreal executive committee. He was a Conservative candidate in the 2015 federal election. X @robertlibman

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