QUEBEC CITY — The resurgence of aggressive language-rights rhetoric on the part of the Parti Québécois during the most recent provincial election campaign should have come as no surprise, given that the enforcement of language laws is a substantial part of the PQ’s platform and that the ideas behind such policies have been around for decades. What is surprising is some anglophones’ recent passion on this issue. Wherefore this anger, this indignation, this — dare we say it? — paranoia?

The root of it seems to be nostalgia for the way things used to be, before many of today’s anglophones were born, when their parents and grandparents had advantages that in retrospect can only be deemed unfair. It is time to abandon this nostalgia.

A populace legitimately elects its representatives who, in turn, enact policy. In Quebec, the Quiet Revolution really did change everything, and legislation meant to protect French has been on the books for ages now; it is not going away. As for the constitutionally protected rights of the anglophone community, sometimes these are infringed, and for these situations there are the courts. But Quebec anglophones are hardly an oppressed minority.

Most anglophone Quebecers, as patriotic Canadians, respect federalism and bilingualism. Well, in 2012, here’s where we’re at with bilingualism. First, all but two of Canada’s provinces are almost entirely anglophone; members of linguistic minorities (francophone and otherwise) who live there, as well as travellers from the rest of Canada, are expected to speak English on a day-to-day basis. Second, Quebec is a French-speaking province with a large bilingual city. Visitors to Quebec may run into trouble if they try to get by in English alone, and screaming “We’re in Canada, a bilingual country” at the top of their lungs seems unlikely to change that fact.

What’s more, the constant anglophone appeal for bilingualism in Quebec comes off as specious; it seems to be a one-way exchange. The Quebec anglophone would do well to remember that the Manitoban whose native language is French is actually losing that native language due to the failed implementation of Pierre Trudeau’s dream of bilingualism. That is a fate that no Quebec anglophone can realistically expect. English is not dying in Rouyn-Noranda, but French in Moose Jaw is an assimilated mess.

The provincial government is entirely within its constitutional rights to do what it can to protect the French language in Quebec, and anglophones can and should understand this. If for English-speakers language is how one expresses herself, for many francophones language is part of who they are. Just as a man from Alabama whose father had to drink from a separate water fountain would never be expected to forget the colour of his skin, so a French-speaking Quebecer whose ancestors lived as a colonized majority cannot really be expected to forget the characteristic — language — that was used for centuries to differentiate her.

Finally, if the Parti Québécois’s linguistic agenda is harmful (and it very well may be), only francophones’ and allophone immigrants’ opportunities are in the balance. If anything, such policies give English-speaking Quebecers an advantage: when francophones and non-anglophone immigrants are incapable of speaking the world’s lingua franca, bilingual anglophones reap the benefits, scooping up jobs that demand both languages.