Robert Libman: CAQ's punitive insurance policies will hurt Quebec's financial system

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You may’t “suck and blow” on the identical time, goes the proverb.

Premier François Legault will get very enthusiastic when discussing massive plans for Quebec’s financial future. Shortly after creating the Coalition Avenir Québec, he unveiled his grandiose imaginative and prescient for a “Quebec Silicon Valley” alongside the St-Lawrence River. Final month he was beaming on the announcement that Sweden’s Northvolt can be constructing a multibillion-dollar electrical car battery plant close to Montreal, creating 1000’s of jobs. He often discusses his necessary problem of lowering the financial disparity between Quebec and Ontario.

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However the identical François Legault then turns round and doubtlessly sabotages these very financial targets.

Final week, his French language minister, Jean-François Roberge, and Pascale Dery, the upper training minister, introduced Quebec will dramatically enhance tuition for non-Quebec college students who attend universities right here — successfully to discourage them from coming to English universities.

Roberge stated the inflow of those college students is certainly one of “the explanations for the decline of the French language” as a result of it will increase the quantity of English spoken on Montreal streets. (In contrast, college students from Belgium and France, for instance, are exempt.)

Exclusionary or punitive nationalist insurance policies like this don’t mesh effectively with financial development. However, as anticipated, the latest byelection victory of the hardline Parti Québécois in Jean-Talon driving appears to have motivated the Coalition Avenir Quebec within the battle for nationalist one-upmanship. By no means thoughts that this newest measure received’t do something tangible to advertise the French language. Attacking English or weakening minority neighborhood establishments offers political satisfaction to language hardliners within the sorry, zero-sum-game of language politics. However solely quickly. We’re certain to listen to extra exaggerated anecdotes concerning the anglicization of Montreal earlier than lengthy.

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The schooling announcement was solely a teaser for the CAQ’s “motion plan” on the way forward for French, to be unveiled subsequent month. So, what’s subsequent?

Roberge, in evoking English being spoken on the streets, is stepping on a slippery slope. Will the Coalition Avenir Quebec subsequent impose an additional charge in Montreal resorts for vacationers from the U.S. to maintain them away and thus off the streets? Will it oblige municipalities on Montreal Island to boost property taxes for anglophones, to ship them packing in order that they don’t unfold the pandemic of English? Will it legislate fines for shops the place pleasant clerks utter “Bonjour-Hello”?

From Invoice 96 and exclusionary immigration insurance policies to those tuition hikes and who is aware of what subsequent, one factor is obvious: These types of measures hurt our worldwide popularity, deter researchers, college students and others from coming right here, and encourage youth to look elsewhere. This solely worsens our crippling labour scarcity. Who will fill these Northvolt jobs?

And our financial system will begin to shrink. It’s been decided that college students from different provinces and international locations who examine at Concordia and McGill alone contribute $520 million yearly to Montreal’s financial system, not together with tuition.

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All this may solely widen the financial gulf between Quebec and Ontario. Montreal isn’t even in Toronto’s rear-view mirror anymore.

Legault should acknowledge and settle for that some English — the worldwide language of commerce and commerce — is inevitable in a contemporary metropolis like Montreal, and needed to assist economically maintain different areas of Quebec the place French is wall to wall. 

In launching his Silicon Valley of the north imaginative and prescient, which depends closely on synergy with universities, and their analysis vocations, Legault particularly confer with Université de Montréal and McGill. “Quebec already has two universities among the many high 100 on the earth,” he stated. “We have to construct on that and enhance funding. Significantly in science, expertise, engineering and arithmetic, areas the place the financial way forward for all industrialized societies lies.” Attention-grabbing!

Legault should make higher selections between his financial aspirations and exclusionary politics. In any other case, he dangers perpetuating irreversible injury to Quebec’s financial system. 

Robert Libman is an architect and constructing planning guide who has served as Equality Social gathering chief and MNA, as mayor of Côte-St-Luc and as a member of the Montreal government committee. He was a Conservative candidate within the 2015 federal election. twitter.com/robertlibman

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