Mailing out election guides and voter documents in French only is “so preposterous” and there is “absolutely no justification” to deprive English-speaking Quebecers of that information, constitutional and civil-rights lawyer Julius Grey says.
“I think it’s a perfect illustration of both the pettiness and nastiness of modern Quebec nationalism,” he said in an interview Wednesday with The Gazette.
Not mincing words, the prominent legal expert described the development as “just meanness.”
Élections Québec announced this week the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s sweeping language reforms under the law known as Bill 96 require voting guides and reminder cards to be mailed only in French. The independent agency sought an exemption and wrote directly to the ministry in charge of the French language about its concerns, but to no avail ahead of the Oct. 5 election.
The mailed election documents will include a QR code, as well as website address and telephone address, for English information. Élections Québec also said Wednesday it heard from concerned voters but stressed it didn’t make the decision.
Anglophone advocacy groups such as TALQ have raised concerns about voters being left behind — a point that Grey and other legal experts also put forth Wednesday.
“In fact, there are many people who might need it,” Grey said. “Older people, people who are not well, people who are recent immigrants from other provinces, who therefore would have the right to vote.
“And there is absolutely no justification for depriving them of the information. So it is something that cannot be justified by any rational means, and only in the atmosphere of strident unilingualism can anybody take that seriously.”
Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, said “it’s a bad idea to put up barriers to any voters voting.”
“This is a barrier,” he said of the French-only mailouts.
Quebec’s French-language ministry has stood by the decision, saying French is the “sole official and common language of Quebec.” But Grey — who has helped mount legal challenges to the CAQ government’s language reform — said that “even if there were a certain danger to French … I think there could be no way of explaining how depriving somebody of a voting manual would enhance the French language.”
Asked about the possibility of taking on a legal challenge over this issue, Grey said “if somebody asked me to, I would, of course.”
“I certainly would be prepared to defend the position that this is contrary to equality and to the democratic rights,” he said.
“And also that it’s contrary to this new concept that the Supreme Court has talked about twice, at least twice, which is Charter principles. That, even where there is no direct violation of the Charter, the Charter principles must be exercised, must be used in terms of discretionary powers and so on. And this is a manifest violation.”
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association called it an “erosion of the democratic process.”
“The right to vote is a cornerstone of a democratic society. This constitutional right — which is not subject to the notwithstanding clause — protects voters’ ability to participate meaningfully in the electoral process,” said Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, Quebec spokesperson and director of fundamental Freedoms at the CCLA, in a statement Wednesday.
Democracy Watch’s Conacher is of the opinion that Quebec’s chief electoral officer should have included English-language information and let the province take the agency to court.
“I think the government would have lost because there would have been interventions from voters saying ‘This is a Charter right and it’s an official language,’” he said.
Earlier Wednesday, Quebec Premier and CAQ Leader Christine Fréchette said she would “look at” the decision to stop sending English-language information to voters, but declined to say whether she wanted to reverse it.
Grey said he hopes Fréchette “realizes and just says this is nonsense. He added it would be nice” if she and other people who are in positions of authority “simply stood up” to what he described as a “small minority of very hardline people.”
“I think it is so preposterous,” he said. “It’s what gives Quebec a bad name that it does not deserve because Quebec is one of the best places in the world.”
Are you affected by a lack of English-language voter mailouts ahead of the Quebec election? Write to me: klaframboise@postmedia.com
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