Quebec’s new language law has dozens of municipalities in the province shoring up their bilingual status, and few are considering giving up the right to serve their citizens in both English and French.
Nearly 90 cities, towns, or boroughs in Quebec are considered officially bilingual, a designation that allows them to offer services, signage, and mail communications in the country’s two official languages. Jurisdictions without this status must communicate only in French, with few exceptions.
House Bill 96, the new language law that took effect June 1, proposes revoking a municipality’s bilingual status in places where fewer than 50 percent of citizens have English as their first language. However, a bilingual town or city can avoid losing its status by passing a resolution within 120 days of receiving notification from the province.
Scott Pearce, mayor of Gore Township, north of Montreal, said choosing to remain bilingual was an easy decision for his town of just over 1,700 people.
“We were founded here by the Irish in the 19th century, so it’s part of our history – speaking English and English culture,” he said in a recent interview.
While the percentage of Gore residents who speak English as their first language has dropped from more than 50 percent to about 20 percent, she said maintaining bilingualism is popular with French- and English-speaking citizens alike.
Language, he said, “has never been a problem here.”
what people are reading
Pearce, who represents bilingual municipalities in the province’s federation of towns and cities, Fédération Québécoise des municipalités, said most mayors he has spoken with plan to pass similar resolutions, or have already done so.
“I spoke to mayors from all over the province and they are very proud of the bilingual status and how their communities get along, English and French,” he said.
While House Bill 96 has been criticized by groups representing English-speakers, Pearce, who is married to a sitting member of the legislature, says he believes the ruling party has done the ruling party a favor in this case. peoples by giving them an easy way to formalize their rights. condition.
#Quebec cities protect the right to serve residents in #English after the new #LawLanguage. #polqc
Canadian Press reached out to all bilingual municipalities and counties to ask if they had passed or planned to pass a resolution to maintain their status. Of more than two dozen who responded, all but three said they intended to remain bilingual. The others said they were still studying the law or declined to comment. Neither said they planned to stop being considered officially bilingual.
A spokesman for the province’s language office, Office quebécois de la langue française, said in an email that notices will be sent “shortly” to cities that no longer meet the 50 percent threshold.
While they may offer services in English, “a municipality recognized as bilingual must ensure that its services to the public are available in Quebec’s official language, French,” Nicolas Trudel wrote in an email.
The official purpose of Bill 96 is to affirm that French is the sole official language of Quebec and “the common language of the nation of Quebec”. But four mayors who spoke to The Canadian Press by phone, as well as many who responded by email, said the decision to operate in two languages was unanimous among city councilors and generated little or no debate among citizens.
“I think the French language is already protected and well protected,” said Richard Burcombe, mayor of the city of Brome Lake, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. “They do not need to eliminate services to the English population to protect the French language.”
He said his city, which falls below the 50 percent threshold, has yet to pass a resolution but will once it receives notice.
Kirkland, a city in the Montreal area, described bilingualism as a “core value in all aspects of municipal life,” while Ayer’s Cliff, Que., in the eastern townships, said it was “essential to character. of the municipality and as a testimony to the historical presence of the two communities, Anglophone and Francophone”.
Otterburn Park, a city 40 kilometers east of Montreal, said it wanted to maintain its bilingual status despite the fact that only 5.7 percent of its population reported English as their first language in the last census.
“The English-speaking population is largely made up of older people,” Mayor Mélanie Villeneuve wrote in an email.
“In order to provide quality service, particularly to the most vulnerable groups of people, we believe it is important to be able to communicate with English-speaking citizens in the language that works for them.”
Several of the mayors expressed their hope that the option to remain bilingual would be accepted as permanent and that they would not have to pass new resolutions every time there is a census.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 14, 2022.