The reverse ventriloquist

When speaking to anglos, Landry's lips move but no sound comes out

DON MACPHERSON
Montreal Gazette Saturday, March 30, 2002

Landry winged it without notes during speech to anglophones this week.

In the year since Bernard Landry became premier, he has already gone to speak to Quebec anglophones more often than any of his Parti Québécois predecessors throughout their entire periods in office - and had less to say than any of them.

Last fall, he was the first PQ leader to visit The Gazette's editorial board since René Lévesque in 1980. And this week, he became the first to address an audience of Quebec anglophones since Lucien Bouchard delivered his speech to the English-speaking community at the Centaur Theatre almost exactly six years earlier.

If nothing else, that speech gave us Bouchard's memorable line that "when you go to the hospital and you're in pain, you may need a blood test, but you certainly don't need a language test."

This week's forum was a meeting of the umbrella organization called the Quebec Community Groups Network. Some billed it as Centaur II. It should be remembered as Centaur Lite, that is, a watered-down version of the original, if it is remembered at all beyond the date of publication of this column.

As when he finally met this newspaper's editorial board, several months after completing the rounds of all the French-language ones, Landry had nothing of any significance to say to the English-speaking community this week.

He didn't even bother preparing speaking notes, which is what he usually does on occasions he considers important. Instead, he winged it, figuratively patting his audience on the head with the customary recognition of the English-speaking community's contribution to this province's development.

Landry also dazzled his audience with his insight that English is the true Esperanto of the modern world, which would be as true if there weren't a single anglophone living in Quebec.

Say this about our premier: he's a man of ideas, many ideas. Too bad most of them aren't original.

Even his own office deemed his remarks so insignificant that two days after his speech, it hadn't got around to posting on its Web site a transcript of them that had been promised for the day before.

Landry made no new announcements or firm commitments. The only news, such as it was, was that the event showed should his government feel the need to deal with the English-speaking community, it will do so through the "lambs" who dominate the QCGN rather than the "pit bulls" at the increasingly marginalized Alliance Quebec.

In fact, the premier had less to say that day that was of interest to the English-speaking community than did his senior health minister.

While Landry was mouthing his greeting-card platitudes, François Legault was confirming in an interview with Le Devoir he was scrapping the plans of his predecessor, Rémy Trudel, to reduce English-language health and social services in francophone regions.

It would have been entirely fitting if, immediately after Landry finished speaking, somebody had stood up and said: "That's it?!" Unfortunately, the child who on another occasion pointed out the emperor was naked was not in the room.

So instead, everyone in Landry's easily pleased audience gratefully gushed at how nice Landry had been and how well it had all gone, in obvious relief the luncheon hadn't degenerated into a food fight. Even Alliance Quebec president Brent Tyler declared himself impressed with Landry, who had shown himself to be "a very civilized and cultured man."

And others talked hopefully of how Landry's speech might open a new dialogue between the PQ and the English-speaking community. Question: how can you have a dialogue when one side has nothing to say?

Landry now has pulled off the exploit of pleasing separate audiences containing Tyler and Raymond Villeneuve, the convicted terrorist killer currently awaiting sentencing for having threatened Tyler, in the space of less than four months. If nothing else, Landry has shown he can get along with everybody.

How does he do it? It's simple: he performs a sort of reverse ventriloquist act; he moves his lips, but he doesn't say anything.

- Don Macpherson Is the Gazette's Quebec-Affairs Columnist, Based in Montreal. His E-Mail Address Is Dmacpher@thegazette.Southam.Ca.