Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet must have figured he’d found a clever backdrop for his campaign photo op last week when he stood outside the Roddick Gates of McGill University to demand that the federal government cut off funding for Quebec’s English-speaking community.

He likely thought the world-leading institution francophone nationalists hate to love for its inferred association with anglophone privilege and power was the perfect place to send the message that the world’s most spoiled minority (that old cliché) is not in need of federal support.

Professing himself “proud” of McGill’s sterling reputation, he argued that since English isn’t threatened in Quebec — only French is — Quebec should be exempt from the federal Official Languages Act, which offers protection for the province’s English-speaking community and French-language minorities elsewhere in this officially bilingual country.

We’ll come back to this assertion in a minute — one of the few times Quebec anglophones have figured directly into this campaign. But Blanchet missed the mark with both his visuals and his point.

English may not be declining in Quebec, but English-speaking Quebecers and particularly their institutions are struggling these days, thanks to the punitive policies of the government of Premier François Legault.

McGill is a case in point.

The university recently announced it is laying off nearly 100 faculty and staff to staunch a $45-million deficit in large part caused by various measures that unfairly target Quebec’s English universities.

The decision to raise tuition for out-of-province university students hampered McGill’s ability to recruit from elsewhere in Canada, which has long comprised a significant proportion of its student body.

Quebec is also clawing back a portion of international tuition revenues from McGill to redistribute to........

© Montreal Gazette