When Québec Puts Its Elbows Up

On June 24, 2019, I stood along the route of Montréal’s Fête nationale parade with my camera.

At the front of the parade came approximately 150 Franco-Ontarians dressed in green and white. They carried an enormous Franco-Ontarian flag, accompanied by the flags of francophone communities from across Canada.

They had been invited to open one of Québec’s most symbolically important celebrations at a moment when their language rights and institutions were under attack in Ontario.

I was born in Ontario. I am an English speaker, but I understood what that moment meant.

Doug Ford’s government had cancelled plans for the Université de l’Ontario français and eliminated the independent Office of the French Language Services Commissioner. Franco-Ontarians had spent generations protecting their language and culture within a predominantly English-speaking province, and suddenly they were being told, once again, that their institutions were expendable.

Québec understood.

Premier François Legault confronted Ford and asked him to reverse those decisions. Then Québec went further. It invited Franco-Ontarians to the front of its own national parade.

I remember watching them move through Montréal in green and white, surrounded by Québec’s blue-and-white flags. Leaders, artists, historical characters and ordinary citizens walked together. The crowd welcomed them.

Québec was saying: You will not stand alone.

Seven years later, I keep thinking about that day.

The scale has changed, but the pattern has not.

Franco-Ontarians know what it means to be a linguistic minority within English-speaking Ontario. Québec knows what it means to protect a French-speaking society within a largely English-speaking country. Now Canada is discovering what it means to stand beside a much larger power that believes its economic size gives it the right to dictate the terms.

Power depends on where you stand.

Québec has spent generations defending its language, culture and institutions. Its relationship with the rest of Canada has never been simple. There have been two referendums on sovereignty. There remains a significant part of Québec society that believes the province would be better off as an independent country.

Those convictions did not arise from nowhere.

Québec has its own language, civil-law tradition, culture and social model. It has built subsidized childcare, comparatively affordable university education, public hydroelectricity, strong parental-leave programs and a broader expectation that government has a responsibility for collective well-being.

None of this makes Québec perfect.

Our healthcare and education systems have serious problems. Québec publicly subsidizes a private school system that operates alongside the public system, something I strongly question. Language policies can be debated, and not every decision made in the name of protecting French has been wise or fair.

Nor does every Québécois think the same way. Some remain committed sovereigntists. Some may believe Québec should negotiate separately or make whatever compromises are necessary to protect its immediate economic interests. Others are deeply federalist.

Québec is not a single mind.

But it is a society with a long memory. It understands what cultural pressure looks like. It knows that a language can disappear gradually, not necessarily because someone formally prohibits it, but because the larger language becomes easier, more profitable and more powerful in every public space.

French has survived in Québec because generations refused to treat its protection as an inconvenience to commerce.

That history matters now.

Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed that the United States tried until the final moments of the latest negotiations to make Canada compromise on protections for the French language and culture.

His response was unequivocal: those issues were never on the table.

This was not a vague cultural disagreement. The American government has already described elements of Québec’s French-language requirements as barriers affecting American businesses. What Québec considers necessary protection for a vulnerable language, Washington increasingly treats as an obstacle to trade.

The United States was not simply negotiating over tariff percentages. It was reaching into Québec’s ability to determine how French is protected within Québec.

That should concern every Canadian, whether they speak French or not.

Donald Trump has repeatedly spoken about Canada becoming an American state. After the latest negotiations collapsed, he claimed that Canada wanted the benefits of being a state without actually joining the United States.

That claim is completely untrue. Canadians are not asking for statehood.

Trump has previously spoken about using economic force against Canada. Whether his statehood language is a literal objective, a negotiating tactic or an expression of how he sees the relationship, the underlying message is difficult to ignore: Canada is expected to accommodate American demands because the United States is larger and more powerful.

That is not a relationship between equal sovereign countries. It is closer to a demand for obedience.

Imagine what absorption into the United States would mean for Québec.

Québec currently holds substantial constitutional, demographic and political power within Canada. It can demand that the federal government protect French as part of Canada’s identity. It has jurisdiction over major elements of education, culture, civil law and social policy.

Within an overwhelmingly English-speaking United States of hundreds of millions of people, Québec’s struggle to preserve its distinct society would become immeasurably harder.

Québécois understand that.

This does not erase Québec’s historical grievances with Ottawa. It does not end the sovereignty movement or transform every Québécois into a passionate Canadian federalist.

It changes the scale of the threat.

Québec has often been the smaller society asking Canada to understand why cultural and political protection matter. Today, Québec is part of the Canadian body trying to protect the entire country from a much larger power.

And Québec is not facing only a symbolic threat.

The tariffs will have real consequences for businesses, workers, families and communities throughout the province.

Québec’s aluminum, steel, forestry, manufacturing, agricultural and cultural sectors are deeply connected to the American market. The province produces approximately 37 percent of Canada’s dairy, with around 4,000 dairy farms and tens of thousands of jobs connected to the industry.

Premier Christine Fréchette has warned that the new tariffs will affect businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises in every region of Québec. She has convened her cabinet and brought together crisis groups representing agriculture, forestry, aluminum, steel, mining, labour and other sectors.

Her government has promised measures to support affected businesses and workers. It has also made clear that Québec expects the federal government to provide assistance.

That expectation is reasonable.

Standing together cannot mean asking Québec to absorb enormous losses in the name of Canadian unity and then leaving the province to manage the consequences alone.

If Québec is standing with Canada during this confrontation, Canada must also stand concretely with Québec. Ottawa will need to protect workers, help businesses adapt, defend supply management, support affected regions and demonstrate that national solidarity includes sharing the cost of resistance.

Québec is not asking the federal government to surrender. It is asking the federal government to remain strong and to be present during the difficult period that strength may require.

That is an important distinction.

Québec has not suddenly forgotten every argument it has ever had with Canada. It has not become less Québécois.

It has recognized the scale of the threat.

When Franco-Ontarians were forced to defend their institutions, Québec understood immediately. It understood because French-speaking Québec had spent generations protecting its own language and culture within an English-speaking continent.

When it mattered, Québec stood beside us.

Now Canada is the smaller neighbour under pressure.

And Québec recognizes the pattern once again.

There is something profoundly Québécois in that response. It is stubborn, protective and unwilling to be bullied. It carries the same instinct that has allowed French culture to survive here for centuries.

Québec has put its elbows up.

Not because every old disagreement with Ottawa has disappeared, but because it knows that against a bully this large, we cannot afford to be divided into smaller and smaller pieces.

Québec does not love Canada by becoming less Québécois.

At this moment, Québec is helping to defend Canada precisely by being Québec: fiercely protective of its language, suspicious of domination, committed to its own way of life and experienced in the difficult work of standing its ground.

Québec has spent generations teaching Canada that sovereignty is not merely a border.

It is the right to protect a language, a culture, a social system and a way of living.

Canada may finally be learning that lesson because it must now defend those same things for itself.

In 2019, I watched Québec place Franco-Ontarians at the front of its national parade and tell them they would not stand alone.

Today, Québec is standing with Canada.

The rest of Canada should understand what that means, and make certain that Québec does not stand alone either.