L’École de la minoritéfrancophone au Canada(1867—1927):àla recherche d’unéquilibre politique(I)

1867年,北美英属殖民地的政治精英们筹划建立一种新型政治体制,即未来的加拿大联邦,在此期间,加拿大法语少数族裔及其未来的教育权问题则成了新宪法制定过程中最敏感的挑战。问题的复杂性主要是因为加拿大不是单一族群文化和宗教在全国范围内占主导地位的单一民族国家(Etat-nation)。在此背景下,联邦政府的创始者们同意加拿大法语地区建立一个法裔占多数的自治省政府,并在宪法框架下确保他们的某些教育权利。这一政治授权让省政府能在职权范围内保护少数族群的教育权,有效抵御多数族群的“专制”。但是,正如本文所揭示的,在加拿大联邦政府成立的前50年里,它并没有完全履行保护加拿大法语地区居民教育权利的职责,而更多的是放任英语省份执行所谓的自治权。

In 1867,the political elites of the British colonies in North America negotiated the creation of a new political regime,which would become the Canadian Federation.However,the issue of French Canadian minorities and its educational rights was probably the most sensitive issue in the negotiations on the adoption of a new constitution.The complexity of this issue was probably related to the fact that Canada was not a nation-state with a predominant ethnocultural or religious group throughout the territory.In these circumstances,the founders of the federation chose to grant French Canadians a provincial government in the territory where they were a majority and to guarantee them certain educational rights in the constitution.This political recognition also conferred on the Canadian government the power to protect minorities in an area of provincial jurisdiction,education,against the power of the majority.However,as this article attempts to demonstrate,in the first 50 years of the Canadian Federation’s existence,the Canadian government failed to protect the educational rights of French Canadians by respecting rather the principle of the autonomy of the provinces.