Among the targets in his new book: the supposed decline of French, the "Bonjour-Hi" controversy and the hot-button issue of immigration.
QUEBEC — The way journalist Michel C. Auger sees it, with a provincial election looming, there is probably no better time to debunk some commonly held political myths about Quebec.
And while he says it’s true we have been largely spared the “fake news” phenomenon experienced south of the border, there are examples galore of entrenched ideas that may have been true at some point but not longer are.
Yet they linger in the public discourse. In fact, Auger notes in a new book, one of the problems with taking on the issue of myths — and there are many — is that over the years they have been drowned out with a kind of “everybody knows that” complacency.
Michel C. Auger’s new book is available in French only for now.
Hence the arrival in stores of Auger’s book, 25 mythes à déboulonner en politique québécoise (Debunking 25 Myths in Quebec Politics).
“The goal of this little book, written on the eve of an important — perhaps historic — election, is to see how some of these givens, too often repeated in election campaigns, stand up to reality,” Auger writes in the preface of the 200-page book, so far available only in French.
“It is thus not a scholarly work but one of a journalist whose job it is to check facts and not be satisfied with rumours or dubious sources.”
But why was such a book not written sooner?
“I guess that comes with the territory of Quebec politics; that we hang on to stuff a long time,” Auger said in an interview with the Montreal Gazette.
“A lot of the myths were in fact true at some point. They just are no longer true or have evolved in a way that they should be interpreted differently.
“I’m not pretentious enough to think I can influence the election. This is a modest contribution to public debate which, after 40 years of journalism, I think I can do.”
And Auger, a veteran columnist of several media outlets who now hosts the popular Radio-Canada public affairs show Midi-info, takes on the taboos as only he can — with facts, devastating precision and a touch of his well-oiled sense of sarcasm and humour.
In some ways Auger picks up where another popular book about the things which make Quebecers tick, 2016’s Cracking the Quebec Code, left off.
Take the language issue. To listen to the public debate some days you would think the Charter of the French Language had never been adopted 40 years ago or it was not the success it was, he writes.
Instead, feeding the idea French is in decline has become a kind of cottage industry in Quebec, he notes.
But if you dig deeper into the facts, you get a whole other story. For example, Auger notes the 2016 Canadian census reveals 94.5 per cent of Quebecers can speak French. The number has never been higher.
“People usually use the most alarming numbers to talk about this issue,” he writes. “But this 94.5 per cent tells us Bill 101 was a resounding success and affected just about everyone.”
He deftly tackles last November’s raging debate about the use of “Bonjour-Hi” in Montreal’s shops, which was cranked up by Parti Québécois leader Jean-François Lisée, who set a trap for the Liberals on the issue. Auger takes the controversy down a notch.
“Bonjour-Hi” is essentially a slice of private conversation between a consumer and merchant, “nothing more,” he says.
In a big multicultural city like Montreal with a large non-francophone population, four universities, international head offices and an abundance of tourists, such an expression represents an “invaluable advantage” for basic communication.
There is no law on the books anywhere saying it cannot be used. Lisée himself is on the record as being in favour of bilingual ticket takers in downtown métro stations.
It also reflects the reality of Montreal, where citizens have been speaking English for 250 years and currently has the highest level of trilingual residents (21 per cent), Auger writes.
Auger is not done with his skewering, taking on the hot issue of immigration, which makes headlines day after day.
The current myth, spread largely by the Coalition Avenir Québec, is that the province absolutely must reduce the number of immigrants it accepts a year because it is unable to integrate and find work for the 50,000 who come here every year.
In fact, Auger says, if you calculate the number of immigrants who arrive and those who leave for any number of reasons, the real total increase is between 27,000 and 44,000, depending on the year.
There are more items on his list of exaggerations, including the the power of Quebec’s unions, and the idea [that] secularism is as [much a] part of Quebec’s modern identity as is social democracy.
Quebecers like to think they are greener than other Canadians, yet large gas-guzzling SUVs and truck sales outstrip those of compacts.
What about the idea that Quebec is the most corrupt province in Canada, as the magazine Maclean’s asserted?
Not so, argues Auger. Quebec is probably about as corrupt as any other province, except it tolerates it less, choosing to expose it at every level and create laws and agencies like UPAC to fight it. That creates the perception things are worse here.
Another zinger is the notion Quebecers are poor because they are overtaxed.
It’s true Quebecers are heavily taxed, but if you calculate the whole picture — including what the state gives back to citizens in terms of social benefits and services — the province is among the most progressive in the industrialized world.
Auger concedes his myths — some of which he has addressed in columns of the past — might be more pleasing to anglophones than francophones. But he says that’s part of the exercise.
He dedicates the book to his two sons and the new generation, who he says will one day be in charge of Quebec — perhaps sooner than they imagine.
“I don’t ask everyone to agree with me but let’s have a debate,” Auger said in the interview. “It would be nice if the election (in October) was more about ideas than people slipping up somewhere or putting on the wrong hat in front of the cameras.”
No comments:
Post a Comment