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Others disagree. Ken Whyte, founding editor of this newspaper, recently argued in The Globe and Mail that the Conservatives should stop worrying about their prospective leaders’ bilingualism, for the simple reason that “Quebec isn’t attracted to bilingual leaders from outside Quebec.”

The debate will rage on, and it will have two main thrusts.

One is: “Does it matter?” The answer is, simply, no one knows. It’s up to the voters — and almost exclusively to Quebec voters, who are charmingly unpredictable. Whyte includes Jack Layton in his contention that Quebecers are only attracted to “their own” bilingual politicians, but Layton, who had lived in Toronto for 40 years before the NDP’s 2011 breakthrough, could just as easily disprove the rule.

Two is far more complicated: “Why isn’t the person in question bilingual?”

It is surprising that someone with as much experience and longstanding ambition as MacKay wouldn’t speak better French. And if you want to be judgmental, you could say there’s no excuse: government ministers have access to the best available instruction.

Inevitably in these discussions, however, someone dares mention the unspeakable truth: that when it comes to bilingualism, not all Canadians are born equal. Conservative MP and possible leadership candidate Michelle Rempel Garner suggested bilingualism was a matter of “privilege” — “either financially, access to education, or time required.” And the National Post’s Alberta correspondent, Tyler Dawson, ventured that in most of the country, “it’s nearly impossible to finish high school fluent in French and English.”