Angry in the Great White North

Quebec seems hellbent on causing trouble for itself. Pauline Marois, leader of the Parti Quebecois, has tabled a bill that fundamentally changes the model of citzenship in order to compel more "Frenchness":

The Parti Quebecois has tabled a bill in the legislature that would prevent immigrants who can't speak sufficient French from running in elections.

The bill was one of two the sovereigntist party introduced with the aim of shoring up Quebec's identity.

The effort comes as provincial hearings are being held into reasonable accommodation for immigrants in Quebec.

Among the measures proposed by the PQ are the creation of a Quebec constitution and a certificate of citizenship, the reinforcement of the province's language laws and the revision of the provincial charter of rights.

Under the proposed law, immigrants who can't speak proper French after an appropriate apprenticeship in provincially funded language courses would be forbidden from running for election in provincial and municipal elections as well as those for school boards.

PQ Leader Pauline Marois said she sees the measure as "normal."

Normal? Not normal at all.

Participation in the political process is a right confered by citizenship. Participation means equally to vote or to run for office. There are circumstances under which a citizen can be barred from either of these, but they are tied to questions of behaviour. For instance, currently serving a sentence in prison can limit your rights to vote in some jurisdictions, or to run for office.

So there is a concept of a second-class citizen.

For obvious reasons, you don't want to be designating large numbers of people as second-class citizens, and certainly not for anything but the most serious reasons. Along that path lies civil unrest. But for the PQ, it seems obvious and natural that a skill be used to determine the quality of your citizenship.

Think about it. Citizenship is in most countries defined either by the location of your birth (jus soli) or by your parentage (jus sanguinis). Canada uses location -- if you are born in Canada, you are a citizen. There is also naturalization by which a person comes to Canada, establishes his or her intent to stay in Canada, and after a suitable amount of time, becomes a citizen.

But once that person is naturalized, he or she is a citizen. No hedging or limits.

The PQ would still allow a person to become a citizen by a process of naturalization. But the PQ does intend to create two classes of citizenship for naturalized immigrants, specifically defining limits of civic participation, based not on where you were born or your family tree, but on whether you have an ear for languages:

Pauline Marois says all immigrants without an 'appropriate knowledge of French' would be barred from running for political office, helping fund political parties, or having a petition tabled in the National Assembly.

Well, whether you have an ear for the French language.

And only if you are an immigrant, according to these reports. No mention is made on restrictions on people born in Quebec. So if a child is born in Quebec, is taken out of the province and never picks up French, then returns to the province of his or her birth, can this person run for office? This person is not an immigrant, so presumably this person can give money to a political party or run for office.

So jus soli trumps jus lingua for Pauline Marois. I suppose that makes sense. It's one thing to punish those immigrants -- they aren't real Quebecers, after all.

But perhaps the most insidious element of the PQ proposal is the limitation on funding and petitions. Money and power go hand in hand -- it would be naive to believe otherwise. That a working knowledge of French is required to run for public office offends me, but the practicality of such a requirement is clear. But the bill would also restrict the right of these second class citizens to help fund political parties.

Not only is an immigrant whose French is bad not allowed to offer his services to his fellow citizens as an elected representative, his money is no good either. That means the ability to influence this law in the future, should it ever be passed, is diminished. French-speakers, even those uncomfortable with this law, are not directly affected by it. Those who are affected cannot contribute money, and so are rendered literally worthless.

They don't like it? Then get a petition -- no wait, your name is no good either. Given that a petition is a form of vote (informal, of course), taking away their right to table a petition is a form of political ghettoization. For the PQ, these people are not even to be heard.

But then the PQ has always been offended by the sound of anything that was said in French.

And as with all slippery slopes, there is one more thing to consider. To make sure that the political influence of the demi-citizens is sufficiently circumscribed, it would be necessary to maintain a list of these people, and to compel them to carry identification that correctly identifies their secondary status. I mean, how else would you make sure that they could accidently help fund a political party by mailing in a cheque, for example.

Maybe a asterisk beside their name. Just not a six-pointed asterisk. That one's been used already, at another time and in another place, for an entirely different purpose, utterly unrelated to the PQ proposal to limit the participation, and even the visibility, of people considered not considered inferior in some way to the population at large.

Addendum: Oops, I seemed to have accidently drawn a line between the proposal to partition Quebec citizenry according to their command of the French language with some other notorious efforts identify and limit the participation of certain groups. That was unfortunate, as well as the use of the word "ghetto" in a metaphorical sense. Perhaps "marginalization" is a better word. Helps avoid making supporters of Pauline Marois' idea feel bad.