While Bill 96 landed with a thud in the English-speaking community, some nationalists argued that it doesn’t go far enough.
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QUEBEC – The year 2021 was marked by a resurgence of the debate on the status of the French language in Quebec. And it is not over.
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When the fall session of the National Assembly was interrupted on December 10, the chamber committee that examined Bill 96, legislation introduced by the government of the Avenir Québec Coalition in May to strengthen the Charter of the French Language, it had struggled to progress through just five of 202 articles in the bill.
The opposition MNAs asked a lot of questions and proposed some amendments, but the bill remains largely unchanged at this time. Work will resume in 2022.
Bill 96 landed with a thud in the English-speaking community and was criticized by CEGEP administrators and the business lobby. It also failed to garner widespread support among nationalists who complained that it does not go far enough.
The views of the two solitudes seemed as ingrained as ever.
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Some believe this is in the government’s best interest. The CAQ, a coalition of federalists and nationalists, thrives by finding a middle ground among the electorate. However, Prime Minister François Legault ended the year facing pressure to further toughen the bill.
The main stumbling block with the nationalists is the government’s decision not to extend the rules of the language statutes to the CEGEP system, which would have prohibited Francophones and allophones from attending CEGEPs in English.
Bursting at the seams, with allophones outnumbering Anglophones in some cases, English CEGEPs have become the lightning rod for the nationalist grievances that the English system is assimilating to Francophones.
Sociologist Guy Rocher, a 97-year veteran of the Silent Revolution, sounded the alarm when he appeared during public hearings on the bill, arguing in favor of extending the statutory rules to CEGEPs.
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“We really should have done it in 1977,” Rocher told the committee. “We made a bad evaluation. Things have changed, the context has changed. If I am here it is because I am concerned about the future of the French language. At my age I have the right to be worried about the future ”.
At the other end of the spectrum was the province’s English-speaking community, represented by the Quebec Community Groups Network and others, including the recently created Working Group on Language Policy, which went to war.
Community anguish was further fueled by the federal government, which at around the same time introduced reforms to the Official Languages Law in the form of Bill C-32, which the QCGN called a “clear attack” on the equality of the public. English and French in Canada. . (The reforms were not adopted due to the federal elections.)
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But the immediate concern of the English-speaking community is Bill 96, which the CWC government wants to pass before the October 2022 provincial elections.
“In essence, Bill 96 is an attempt to delegitimize our community,” said Marlene Jennings, president of QCGN, in a year-end letter to her membership. “The bill denatures the Charter of the French Language, trying to make it exclusive and divisive.”
At the hearings, Jennings, a former federal congressman, became entangled with Simon Jolin-Barrette, the minister responsible for the French language who did his best to sell the idea that Bill 96 does not in any way affect the rights of the English-speaking community.
“This battle is not over; It’s not over, ”Jennings told the Montreal Gazette after the hearings concluded.
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The QCGN objected to the government’s use of the term “historical English speakers” to define who would be eligible to receive services in English. The designation would apply only to those who are currently eligible to attend English school (which does not apply to many Anglophones and ironically does apply to some Francophones).
As of December 16, a total of 42 groups backed a QCGN-sponsored resolution opposing the use of the term. The resolution, which followed an open letter sent to Legault with 4,200 signatures, says that any attempt to define English-speaking Quebecers as “historical” or limit their right to receive government communications and services in English is “deeply objectionable.”
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Meanwhile, Jolin-Barrette found himself entangled with the business lobby. Michel Leblanc, president of the Montreal Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, told the committee studying Bill 96 that efforts to clamp down on the use of English in the workplace could bring headquarters to Toronto and stifle the export economy. from Quebec.
But efforts by the English-speaking community to gain public support for his arguments met with major upheaval in early November, courtesy of Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau, who delivered a speech to the Montreal board of commerce. only in English and then told reporters that he had been able to live in the city for 14 years without having to speak French.
Unsurprisingly, Rousseau’s comments sparked a firestorm. Although he quickly apologized and said he would make efforts to improve his French, the incident reinforced the idea in the minds of many Quebecers that the language is under siege in Montreal.
Reference-montrealgazette.com