EXCLUSIVE: Gérard Bouchard, “The Most Important Québecois Intellectual,” Speaks with MBR

Sociologist and historian Gérard Bouchard is one of Canada’s foremost intellectuals. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Québec at Chicoutimi and has taught at Harvard University and at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. He is a Knight of the Legion of Honour, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and holds honorary doctorates from many universities, including McGill. He won the 2000 Governor General’s Literary Award and was co-chair of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodations. On January 18th Bouchard wrote an op-ed in Le Devoir discussing secularism and nationalism that received significant attention. Richard Martineau, a well-known pro-secularism columnist, responded to Bouchard’s column two days after.  

In the following interview, which was conducted this past December, Bouchard discusses in more details his thinking on these controversial matters. His answers have been edited for clarity and concision. 

MBR: There currently is in Québec a debate about the quality of Québécois French. Do you think that its quality is indeed getting worse? 

Gérard Bouchard: The impoverishment of the French language in Québec is an idea that has been circulated for two centuries by elites and intellectuals (laughter). Despite this, we are still speaking French today. Not as well as elites or university professors like me would like, but every language evolves, and we have to cope with that.  

The danger is assimilation by the English language. And the risk is not mostly coming from English Canada, but from globalization. Now it is not the same as when the joual was criticized in the 1960s. Globalization will have an impact on the French language. And among the French, the motivation to preserve this language is not as intense as it was two generations ago.  

Are you bothered by franglais? 

It bothers me a little bit because it is one of the expressions of globalization. This franglais is very different from joual. Joual was a mixture of rural language, city dialect, popular French, old French expressions inherited from the 17th century, with a little bit of English. But now globalization is a new threat for the French language here. I do not know how we are going to survive that. You see, now I am talking like those people in the early 20th century (laughter). Maybe the French language is more robust than we believe, and it will find a way to survive differently. Every language is undertaking changes all the time. I am concerned like every French Canadian has been for the last three centuries, but I am careful (laughter). 

You said that the nationalism of François Legault’s CAQ is an “empty shell.” Explain. 

I think what the CAQ is doing right now is absolutely fascinating, because in some ways they are simply replicating the Duplessis model. They say they want to protect our identity and autonomy against the attacks of the Canadian government. This is exactly the game that was played by Duplessis.  

The Parti Québécois built a discourse that was somewhat similar to Legault’s. But the big difference is that it was not only a symbolic fight. It was attached to very precise projects to develop and advance our society. You do not have any of that with Legault. That kind of planning and substance is absent. There is no depth in Legault’s nationalism. This is a protective and reactive nationalism. 

And this makes sense, because this guy has been elected by the most homogeneous parts of Québec, the regions. He is practically not represented by the most heterogenous part, Montréal, where immigrants and minorities are now a majority. It is dangerous to govern Québec only with regards to the regions and the more traditional French-Canadians. If you play the nationalist cord with the French-Canadians, it will always be successful because it connects with a deep feeling of cultural insecurity. We are in a minority in North America, so this is not surprising. This feeling is deep, and it has always been there. Legault is keeping it alive, because he understands that politically he needs that feeling to be alive.  

I think there will be tomorrows that will not be pleasant, like with regards with the decision that the courts will make someday about Bill 21. I think the courts will reject this law. What is Legault going to do? He cannot do a lot of things, because if the Parti Québécois was in power while this would happen, they would want to separate. But Legault will not do that. 

You think Legault will not do that? There are people saying he will. 

Oh, never, never, never. 

But doing that over something like Bill 21, an issue that divides people, would not be the best. 

This is not the main thing that will impede from going ahead with that, because he does not care about what happens in Montréal. He has his majority outside Montréal, and he works on this majority. The problem is he could not use a rejection of the law by the Supreme Court as ammunition, because he is afraid of seeding the saw of sovereignty another time. He does not believe in that.  

He does not believe in sovereignty, or he no longer believes in sovereignty?  

I am not sure he did believe in it in the past, even when he was in the Parti Québécois (laughter). (Editor’s note: Gérard Bouchard is the brother of former Québec premier Lucien Bouchard, who is current premier François Legault’s mentor and close confidant. Legault started his political career under Bouchard’s separatist Parti Québécois.) 

There is a lesson that politicians have learned. The defeat of the two referendum is quite clear: Quebeckers do not want to separate, despite the Parti Québécois having had very good leaders. René Lévesque, Jacques Parizeau, and my brother, who was very much liked by the population, were all defeated. I am not sure Legault would be interested in trying to fill these shoes. They are too big for him. Especially knowing that the population will not follow. So, he will try to keep close to his base, but how will he do that? It will be interesting to see, because the door of sovereignty was closed. 

Are the defenders of Bill 21 right when they said that the Bill is only a logical continuation of the Quiet Revolution? 

This is a nice way to depict the law, but I think it is not true. What Quebeckers did in the 1960s was to separate the church and the state and to give to the state the responsibility of social services. That is all. For most Quebeckers, the job was done. For decades after, we never talked again about laïcité.  

I think that laïcité came back in the agenda when people realized that there was a lot of immigrants that were coming in with different religions. Quebeckers have a very bad relationship with religion, and this is something that is very easy to understand because of the way the Catholic church has behaved with the people in Québec—the violence, censorship, excessive measures to supress freedom. Women have suffered a lot because of the church. This has created a memory that lives on and it will not disappear tomorrow. And then, there is this instinctive distrust of religion, whatever it is. 

When we realized that a lot of the immigrants we had chosen from the Maghreb because they spoke French were Muslims, that was a game changer. I think this has revived the issue of laïcité on very different grounds and very different motives. 

In your latest book, Les nations savent-elles encore rêver?, you ask, for example about sovereignty, if Québec may have dreamt too big. Has it? 

I think this is a question that must be asked. You will notice that I do not provide an answer (laughter). But this is a good question, because this is an old aspiration among Québec’s elites. Even at the end of the 19th century the idea was there, and before with the rebellions of 1837-38. This is an old idea that comes and goes. The idea of Québec sovereignty is not very much alive now, but it will inevitable come back. If it comes back, and is again defeated, we will have another reason to ask that kind of question.  

Do you think at the moment it is maybe sleeping? 

It is a flat curve at the moment (laughter). And I do not believe that the success of the Bloc Québécois at the last election will change a lot of things.  

Do you think the success of the Bloc Québécois has more to do with sovereignty or the support for Bill 21? 

I think Yves-François Blanchet has been elected as a nationalist who will defend Québec’s interests in Ottawa. He did not say more than that during the campaign. He was very careful not to play with the sovereigntist issue. It was rather absent for his discourse. I think part of the success of Blanchet was a replication of the Legault scenario; this is the same context, the same wave. There is also the fact that the NDP was weakened in Québec. The leader with a headgear was a non-starter because of this feeling against religious matters in Québec. I think many people who had supported the NDP moved to the Bloc.