Quebec's Qualms with Questionable (phone option) Queue

Quebec has once again dissolved into a heated language dispute over the use of English vs. French when calling the government. Apparently, Quebecois activists "don't like the fact that people who phone into government offices are given the option of linking to an English menu before they hear French instructions." When they make calls to any government auto-response pickup, the first message says 'Press 9 for English.' Apparently, this is enough to spark off a protest in the province, as "Michel Morin, a French language activist [...] and other activists have been bunkered down in a call centre, calling government and municipal offices demanding changes."
I've written about the language debate in Quebec before, and the issue is a long-contested one between a French majority proclaiming that it is being marginalized and a government trying not to discriminate against other minorities. According to the CIA World Factbook (always a trustworthy source), "Canada faces the political challenges of meeting public demands for quality improvements in health care and education services, as well as responding to separatist concerns in predominantly francophone Quebec." The language division is representational of a pervasive cultural boundary between Quebec and the rest of Canada. The legal dispute is a long-lasting one, according to Wikipedia, which began soon after 1977, with "the Charter of the French Language[, which] was a legal framework defining the linguistic rights of Quebecers, and a language management policy giving the state of Quebec the power to intervene in many sectors of public life to promote French as the common language of all citizens." This Charter gave the Quebecois government a virtually unlimited justification for restricting the use of English in the territory. Although Supreme Court rulings have prevented Quebec from enforcing French as the only language of instruction or commercials, the province has still been making attempts to institutionalize French in schools and enforce a French-only rule for businesses (which came up in a previous post).
The fear is that this will heavily marginalize and maybe even eliminate the English-speaking minority in Quebec, as well as repulse future immigration from non-French speaking cultures. Referring to the issue of French vs. English in government phone responses, "Lobbyists for minority rights in Quebec say they find the entire debate ridiculous. 'These guys have got way too much time on their hands,' anglo-rights lawyer Brent Tyler told the Canadian Press. 'They must be scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to complain about if that's what they're coming up with.' Minority rights groups in the province say they are being increasingly marginalized, and English is in danger of disappearing in Quebec." This fear is legitimized by recent bills introduced to submit new immigrants to language testing and make French a prerequisite for running in any elections.
However, activists "said it's French -- not English -- that is under assault. [They say] that's why [one activist's] group has teamed up with another hardline language group, Imperatif francais, in the campaign to provide French before English on the phone. 'It's urgent because French is declining in Montreal,' [they] said, according to CP. '"For us it's a crucial question, it allows the integration of newcomers to Quebec's common culture.'"
The point that I'm trying to make in this post is that language has become a tool in the fight for cultural supremacy in Quebec. Obviously, language is very important to the inhabitants of the province, but it seems increasingly to be playing a role only as a means of asserting Franco-cultural supremacy. Without language as a divisive trait, would there still be such a conflict between these two parties? Language here is used exclusively as a dividing force, regardless of the claims of French activists. The distinctions drawn between French and English point to an official policy of exclusion, which would be much more difficult to enact without the language differences. Apparently, language here acts as a line to seperate parties into opposing sides, and thus stimulate the conflict in the first place. I would like to posit the notion that, without a language separation, there would be no legal or overarching conflict between the citizens of Quebec. But the irony is that, in the presence of distinct languages, the conflict is only fought over what those language differences signify, not over the language differences themselves. It's as if a group of homosexual people in Quebec wore pink shirts and the majority reacted against that group, not because they wore the shirts, but because they represented a different lifestlye. The majority here isn't reacting against the shirts, but against the people, yet without the shirts, there wouldn't be any identifier to stimulate conflict. The same applies to language: language is not the goal of the Francophile movement, just the tool they use to advance their claims. Yet, without language, it would be impossible to separate people into cultural groups, thus impossible to wage this conflict.

article: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071109/Quebec_language_071109/20071109?hub=Canada