Language used as wedge to instil fear, Clifford Lincoln tells Corner Booth

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Clifford Lincoln, who served as Quebec Environment minister, and later as a member of the House of Commons of Canada, sat down Friday to speak to the Corner Booth Podcast hosted by Aaron Rand of CJAD, Bill Brownstein of the Montreal Gazette and Leslie Chesterman, former food critic for the Gazette.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Lincoln gave his thoughts on the government’s use of the notwithstanding clause, of hiking tuitions at English universities and on Brian Mulroney.

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Here are some of the highlights, edited for length.

On the recent appeal court decision on Bill 21 validating most of Quebec’s secularism law and reversing an earlier exception granted to the English Montreal School Board:

“We all respect the court judgement. At the same time, I hope it goes to the Supreme Court. I see the justice minister made some sounds that he might take a stand. It’s about time they did. I found personally this judgement very sad for all of us because it gives license to a government now to use the notwithstanding clause just whichever way they want.

One of Canada’s great constitutional lawyers once said the minute you accept the notwithstanding clause you negate all the fundamental freedoms, and if you do that what freedom have we got?

It’s a sad day for minority rights. It happens now that this government is using it freely every day of the week, and it’s a crying shame because then if the courts allow the clause to be used willy-nilly, what other freedoms have we got?”

On tuition hikes at Quebec’s English universities:

“It’s really so sad. If any country, whether it was Switzerland, whether it was France or Germany or the United States had a university like Montreal they would be so proud — you know as the Americans always tout Harvard and Yale and the Brits Oxford and Cambridge. And what do we do? Instead of being proud, we try to destroy it. I mean, how stupid can you be?

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Instead of making us the base, of having the best of English and French so that you could get all these home offices here, we say ‘Oh, no, if you’re American and coming here we say make sure your kids don’t go to English schools.’ So what do they do? They go to Toronto. …

It’s all political. … They use it as a wedge to instil fear into the people. It’s a brainwashing that eventually makes people fearful of losing their culture and language.

McGill is an English language institution. That’s what its vocation is. So if there’s English at McGill that’s not very surprising. I mean, you’ve got to be very small minded and silly.”

On hearing too much English in Quebec:

“It’s all to do with this lack of confidence in themselves that they feel if tomorrow you learn English you’re going to lose your French. That’s crazy. My mother couldn’t have been more French than she was, so the first language I ever spoke with her was French. I read French at school, I wrote it, I still do, and I went to (high school) and university in English and I never lost my French. I can still write it, I can still speak it. …

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I’ve done a lot of work with the Scandinavians politically for 10 years, been to Finland and Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark, and those places, countries that are comparable in size to Quebec. They are  all so proud of their origins and at the same time they all speak English, they learn English at school, but you know they haven’t forgotten Finnish or Swedish or Danish.

It’s so sad this complex we have here that if you learn one language you’re going to kill the other. Instead of saying we can build a solid base here, we are much more powerful and influential within the federal system if we know both languages, as we have shown. We’ve produced more prime ministers than any other place, we produced more foreign affairs ministers and top ministers in Canada.

Instead of saying we’ve got the best of both worlds, instead of that, you create a little cocoon, you build walls on yourselves, you say ‘Oh well don’t learn English because you’re going to kind of lose your French.’ ”

On Brian Mulroney:

“Although I was on the Liberal side, I found him a real approachable person, genuine. When my first wife died in a car accident, he was one of the first people who called me. It was spontaneous, it wasn’t political. And even though we didn’t share the same parties, I found him a very friendly person, very approachable, very decent. A real Quebecer.”

rbruemmer@postmedia.com

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