Federal language law passes report stage, one Quebec MP dissents

The federal government voted on its update to the Official Languages Act, Bill C-13 – a piece of legislation that has weathered its fair share of controversy in Quebec for its reference to provincial language law, Bill 96.

Lawmakers voted Thursday on the report stage of the bill, a final step before the final debate, after which it could become law.

The final vote was nearly unanimous, with just one dissenting voice from Mount Royal Liberal MP Anthony Housefather. Housefather has previously criticized the bill, saying that it would "reduce English services in Quebec."

CTV News spoke to political analyst Tom Mulcair for his take on the vote. Watch the full interview with CTV News Montreal Anchor Mutsumi Takahashi in the player above, or read the transcript below, which has been edited for clarity.

TAKAHASHI: Tom, today’s vote was not the final vote, but it’s unlikely the law is going to change very much.

MULCAIR: I can't see why somebody would have not stood up today and shown their disapproval of C-13. Good on Anthony Housefather. He's been consistent all along, and he has very carefully explained the problems with the bill. I'll give you the two main ones from my point of view.

One is the incorporation by reference to Law 96 here in Quebec. That bill, of course, removes the equality of English and French before the courts. It is patently unconstitutional. By including that reference in the federal legislation, as Marc Garneau correctly pointed out when he was stepping down, it was very hard to plead before the Supreme Court – “well, look, what Quebec did is illegal,” because the answer on the other side is going to be “well, almost everybody in the House of Commons voted for it.”

The other one, of course, is controlling the management of school boards, because it has to do with defining what is or is not a linguistic minority in Canada, and this bill C-13 could really play havoc with that.

By the way, Sherry Romanado should be mentioned. She abstained. That’s not the same thing as voting against, but since she’s deputy house leader, it took a lot of courage for her to do that. There are almost a dozen other representatives of the English-speaking community or in ridings that are largely English-speaking. Most of them have either sat on their hands during this thing, and not shown up, or voted in favor of the line. (Meanwhile), there are serious problems for the community.

TAKAHASHI: I want to get to more on C-13, but what could be the consequences for an MP – Anthony Housefather – to have voted against the government, when it was a whipped vote? He was under pressure to vote with the government.

MULCAIR: Right, and that expression is probably not one that a lot of people have heard before so I’ll explain it very quickly – a whipped vote is where the whip's office phones around and says, “you're showing up for this vote, and you're voting on the side of the government.” It takes a lot of political courage for somebody like Housefather to do this.

What are some of the consequences? I don't think they'd ever have the nerve to go after his riding, or his ability to run. However, they could say, for example, “you no longer have any role on a committee for a while,” or “you're not allowed to do parliamentary travel.”

With regard to Romanado, they could decide to remove her status as deputy house leader, so it could have consequences for both of them. That's why it's so courageous and so rare that people actually say, “I was elected to represent the people in my riding, I see serious problems for the English-speaking community and Quebec, and I'm going to vote against it.”

It's going to be interesting to see whether the (English-speaking) community does as it's done in the past. When Quebec City, for example, would go after the rights of the English-speaking community, you had people step down, and you had other people voted in instead of the Liberals because they couldn't really sanction what was being done.

Is there going to be a price to pay? Trudeau is betting that Quebec’s English-speaking community is going to vote Liberal come hell or high water. I'm not convinced that he's right on that.

TAKAHASHI: Just one MP voted no, and one abstained, in the entire House of Commons. So where does this leave the English-speaking community?

MULCAIR: Very isolated. That’s the key thing.

Justice Minister David Lametti, he represents a riding in the Montreal area (LaSalle—Émard—Verdun). He knows. He's an experienced lawyer. He used to teach law and McGill, for heaven's sakes. He knows the precedents, he knows the Blakey case, he knows the Supreme Court decisions. It's completely illegal what Francois Legault has done with Bill 96, and yet he's voting to include Bill 101, and its newest iteration, Bill 96, into a federal statute without any possible justification for that.

There should be a price to pay for somebody like David Lametti. But again, I suspect the English-speaking community is going to be predicted to just stay on the side of the Liberals, who will have no price to pay. We'll see whether or not there can be a little bit of rallying from the people saying “this is not on for the community, it's really hurtful.”