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Not since the Battle of Agincourt has there been such a setback to the French cause.

Tuesday’s fixture in Moncton was billed as the first “bilingual” debate in the Conservative leadership race. In fact there were at least seven languages spoken from that stage: English, French, and the various strains of pidgin several of the candidates essayed.

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Their adventures in the language of Molière ranged from solid (Chris Alexander, Rick Peterson) to workmanlike (Michael Chong, Andrew Scheer) to laboured (Erin O’Toole, Andrew Saxton, Pierre Lemieux) to execrable (Brad Trost, Kellie Leitch) to worse than execrable (Lisa Raitt) to whatever it was Deepak Obhrai was playing at. Put it this way: neither Maxime Bernier nor Steven Blaney speaks English especially well, but their English — Bernier’s, certainly — is better than all but two of the anglo candidates’ French.

So the first issue to be decided in this race is whether this matters: whether it should be a condition of eligibility for any aspiring national party leader that he or she be able to speak both official languages with some facility. The question is not objectionable in itself. Who knows? Maybe it doesn’t matter to the Conservative party whether they win seats in Quebec. Maybe it doesn’t matter to Quebecers whether a party leader can speak French. Maybe the conventional assumptions on that score are wrong.