On Saturday, protesters gathered at Dawson College for a rally against Bill 96 in Quebec. Thousands marched from the English CEGEP to the office of Quebec Prime Minister Francois Legault in the center of the city.
Marlene Jennings, president of the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) spoke at the rally and called the government’s attention to its decision to implement Bill 96, saying it is directly “suspending” the Quebec Bill of Rights. She said the previous Quebec premier, René Lévesque, made sure everyone’s rights were respected.
The bill would impose an enrollment cap at CEGEPs in English, among other changes to the curriculum that would require Anglophone students to do some of their studies in French. Among the crowd were several MNAs and Liberal leader Dominique Anglade, who openly opposed the measures imposed by the French language bill.
Robert Leckey, dean of the McGill University Law School, said the government is sending a negative message about what it means to protect the French language as it neglects the fundamental rights of citizens. He concluded his comments by saying, “Everyone is watching!”
“(Bill 96) will affect everyone,” said Andrew Caddell, chair of the Language Policy Task Force. “Immigrants, people whose first language is English.” Caddell called the bill “offensive” and said it will also have a negative impact on small businesses.
The timing of the final vote on House Bill 96 is not yet clear, but it will surely be within the next few weeks.
At the gates of McGill University, Bill 96 protesters engaged in a chanting battle with a small pro-Bill group, the latter with musical instruments.
Matt Aronson, QCGN secretary and Westmount councilman, said he thinks communities protesting Bill 96 have some clout this election year.
“The influence we have now is what we’ve always had in a democracy, with votes,” he said. The Suburban. “Maybe we can’t stop this government to pass an unfair and illegal bill, but we can stop the next one by changing the government. We have elections on October 3 and all Quebecers who want to defend our rights, whether they are Francophones, allophones or Anglophones, should think very carefully about how and where they cast their vote.
“All of us have to show up and speak up.”
Hampstead attorney Harold Staviss, who along with the late Côte St. Luc councilor Ruth Kovac, has worked to promote bilingual signage and communications within Quebec’s language law by businesses and municipal governments and provincial authorities, said that this protest should have been held last year.
“Bill 96 will be approved in the next two weeks,” he added. “This should also have been done 45 years ago, when they wanted to put it in the Charter of the French Language. You had Eaton and Steinberg getting rid of their apostrophe-s and nobody did anything. This is what should have been done. We students did it 10 years ago (the 2012 protests against college tuition hikes) and it made a splash, and that’s what we should have done. Unfortunately, it is too little too late. And we did it in 2013 and stopped Pauline Marois’s Bill 14.”
Côte St. Luc councilor Mike Cohen wrote on his blog that the rally was a “necessary activity.”
“It won’t cost Legault any votes. In fact, he’s likely to get more PQs and liberals as a result. But what ex-businessman Legault hasn’t realized is how the media coverage of a rally like this affects the image Quebec nationally or internationally.”
Reference-www.thesuburban.com