The First Nations want Quebec to also recognize their “official languages”

The First Nations will have the opportunity to challenge the bill to strengthen the French language in court if its author, Simon Jolin-Barrette, remains deaf to their concerns, argues law professor Jean Leclair. “If the government wants to avoid a possible legal challenge to its law, it would have every interest in immediately consulting and accommodating the aboriginal nations of Quebec,” maintains the specialist in constitutional law and aboriginal law.

Earlier this week, the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador (AFNQL) urged Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette to amend the Charter of the French language so that it “respects[e] the fundamental rights of indigenous students ”.

“Bill 101, like PL96, poses systemic barriers to the educational success of thousands of First Nations children and youth in Quebec,” said the Director General of the First Nations Education Council, Denis Gros. -Louis, before giving an overview of the “devastating effects” of Quebec legislation on the French language.

First Nations students, who are educated outside their community, are “forced to go to school in French even if their mother tongue is an ancestral language or the English language”. “Many of these students find it more difficult to obtain their high school and college diplomas because of the second language credits in French that are imposed on them,” worries the AFNQL.

Suddenly, she asks in particular the Quebec government to exempt First Nations students from the uniform French test, the success of which is currently a condition for obtaining a college diploma, “even if” they are English speakers or they [ont] studied in their mother tongue ”.

In the eyes of the Chief of the AFNQL, Ghislain Picard, the adoption of Bill 96 in its current form would harm the “essential reconciliation” between Quebec and the First Nations and the establishment of “a real relationship. from government to government ”between them. “The First Nations also have their ‘official languages’ and demand that they be respected,” he said.

If nothing is done, the indigenous nations could, according to Professor Jean Leclair, present “very good arguments to support that the right to speak one’s own language could qualify as an“ ancestral right ”” in accordance with article 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

“As we know, the existence of an aboriginal right entails an obligation for governments to consult and accommodate,” explains the professor of the Faculty of Law of the University of Montreal in the brief he submitted. to the Committee on Culture and Education. “However, the Supreme Court recently declared that the drafting of a bill does not trigger this obligation. She qualified this assertion by stressing that a bill, once adopted, could be challenged if there had been an unjustified infringement of an ancestral right, ”adds the academic.

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