Where is Mordecai Richler when you need him? The novelist, satirist, humorist and National Post columnist died in 2001, in a great loss to sanity, lucidity and fun. He would be 92 if he were still alive and you’ve got to think the Quebec government’s latest language legislation, which applies the honour system to anyone wishing to indulge themselves in English-language services, would have inspired the author of “Oh Canada, Oh Quebec!” to new heights of sardonicism.

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I was checking out my Quebec Pension Plan account over the weekend. As a lifelong Montrealer I get QPP, not CPP. And the service has been terrific. My pension information comes to me in English. Responses to any queries are prompt and in English. And payment of what’s owed me is always on time and, so far as I can tell — though pension calculations can be opaque in any language — correct. The contrast with Ottawa’s ramshackle running of Old Age Security couldn’t be starker.

This time, though, when I checked my QPP account website there was a new item, a box with an exclamation point warning: “Service in English is reserved for individuals covered by the exceptions provided for in the Charter of the French language. If you continue browsing to this content, you are attesting, in good faith, that you are such an individual.” It’s a little like a porn or gambling site asking you to swear you’re 18 years of age. I’m guessing some who do maybe aren’t really. Hey, kid, whispers the man in the dirty raincoat, want to read some English?

If you check out the government’s (English-language) web page, “Modernization of the Charter of the French language,” you learn that people entitled to English-language services are: those who received them before May 13, 2021; those who qualify for English-language education, which I do, though being in my eighth decade I am getting a little old for it; Indigenous peoples; and immigrants who have been here less than half a year.

The usual Quebec term for we who benefit from acquired rights is “historic anglophone.” That sounds like it’s referring to Shakespeare or Darwin or John Lennon but it’s just English-speakers who have been in Quebec for some time. The 2021 census says there are 639,365 of us reporting English as our mother tongue — that’s out of 8.407 million Quebeckers in total — and 1.1 million who are native speakers. You’d think a million people — more than the population of four provinces and three territories — was critical mass enough to provide a range of public services in English. In fact, tiny upticks in our numbers, especially in Montreal, are what sparked the hue and cry among Quebec nationalists for upending a language equilibrium most people thought long settled (French had won) and rewriting Bill 101 so as to end Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s policy of official bilingualism for federally-regulated businesses — an initiative resisted, shame to say, by only one MP, Anthony Housefather, member for Mount Royal, Trudeau’s old riding. Would he were the house (of Commons) father.

Confronted with the admonition not to read the forbidden English-language website, what is a person to do? Newcomers who have used up their six months’ probation and are from countries where the tradition of individual liberty is not as strong as it is here might be a little nervous. Will the government be tracking my choice? What if it finds out I’ve broken the honour code? And will I be an effective liar when I go to a government office and ask a real person for service in English? Will there be any bounds to the imperiousness of government clerks suddenly empowered to make life uncomfortable for immigrants who have not yet mastered French?

For now, the Bill 101 website says, “A supporting document is not currently required if you declare on your honour that you qualify for services in a language other than French.” But how long will that last? Richler-like responses to the new honours system are proliferating online. Governments inevitably respond sourly to becoming the butt of jokes. Will there soon be a system of user names and passwords and maybe even physical ID cards so only historic anglophones get access to English?

It’s all so futile and pointless. You go to the bother of writing up a web page in English and the marginal cost of people using it is zero. Let them use it! And in terms of web English, at least, people can go to Google Translate and translate anything they want, instantaneously, complete with original fonts and layout. In fact, the thought occurred to me that Google Translate may be how the government gets its own translations of its French web pages. But it clearly isn’t: the Google Translate version is much smoother.

King Canute gets a bum rap. People think he thought he could stop the tides. No, he was showing his advisers that that wasn’t in his powers. In Ottawa and Quebec City alike all the advisers seem to think they can regulate the internet. Is no minister a Canute?