Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

French endures on Parliament Hill thanks to the Bloc Québécois

MONTREAL—When Lucien Bouchard and his Bloc Québécois cohort stormed Parliament Hill in the mid-1990s, they certainly did not see themselves as the agents of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s goal of a Parliament that reflects Canada’s linguistic duality.

Ironically, the Bloc — which came to the federal capital to lead Quebec out of Parliament — may come to be best remembered for turning the House of Commons into a francophone-friendly environment.

New data about the use of French in the Commons suggests that over its two decades on the Hill, the Bloc presided over the equivalent of a cultural revolution. It endures to this day.
For the purposes of the study, Scott Piroth — a lecturer at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University — sampled five question periods selected at random in every Parliament since 1958 for a total of 5,532 questions and answers.

His numbers show that before the BQ’s advent, and notwithstanding the 1969 Official Languages Act, there was little French (13 per cent) spoken in question period. As often as not French-speaking MPs used English in their exchanges. Anglophone ministers seldom if ever used French in their responses.

After the Bloc’s arrival, everyone who could, from the prime minister on down, started using more French.

The use of French reached a peak when Bouchard was leader of the official Opposition to Jean Chrétien’s first government. But the trend survived the end of a string of prime ministers from Quebec.

Stephen Harper spends more of his answering time in the House speaking French than Pierre Trudeau (20 per cent) or Brian Mulroney (30 per cent).

There are a variety of reasons for the enduring post-1993 change in the French-to-English ratio of question period.

As of 1993, Quebec switched from being represented mostly in government to being represented mostly in opposition. Question period is primarily a stage for opposition MPs and since the first Bloc victory there have always been more francophone MPs on that side of the House than on the government benches.

But it is not only francophones who have given French a more significant presence in question period since 1993; anglophone MPs have had a big hand in the change.

The Bloc’s arrival on the Hill coincided with the advent of RDI — the first French-language all-news network. Against the backdrop of the 1995 Quebec referendum, having a presence in French in question period became a real necessity for the federalist parties.

The result has been the emergence of a new code of conduct that is seeing government MPs strive to answer questions in the language in which they are asked.

Piroth suggests there may be a more fundamental shift at play in this evolution.

In the late 1950s and ’60s, English was largely equated with power in Canada and its dominance in Parliament reflected that fact. For an ambitious francophone politician such as Chrétien, fluency in English was a prerequisite to advancement. The reverse was not necessarily true.

But today, French-English bilingualism has become a status symbol for anglophone politicians — an implicit requirement to aspire to the highest calling of prime minister — and it is increasingly widespread.

A year after the NDP replaced the Bloc as Quebec’s main voice in the House, there have been Conservative suggestions that the use of French is in sharp decline in question period.

The research paints a more nuanced picture.

Yes, the proportion of exchanges taking place in French has gone down — from 37 per cent in the previous Parliament to 29 per cent. And yes, that is mostly because the number of questions asked in French has decreased. But as the leader of a pan-Canadian party, Thomas Mulcair is bound to alternate between French and English.

The NDP’s Quebec MPs massively stick to French in their exchanges with the government (84 per cent). But by virtue of their neophyte status, they don’t all get to ask a lot of questions.

Overall, the proportion of French currently spoken daily in question period is higher than in Canada as a whole.

Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Chantal Hébert

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