It is a pity that Emilie Nicolas did not take advantage of her column agents of decline, appeared in The duty April 28, 2022, a report on the Charter of the French language (40 Years of Bill 101 in Quebec, Language Problems & Language Planning 43-2, 2019). However, The duty echoed this in his column Des Idées en revues of January 7, 2020 by taking excerpts from the article that I published there by invitation (Successes and weaknesses of immigrant integration). Too bad, because nowhere in this article is there any question of “the decline”, or even a fortiori, “the decline of the French language” based on the “mother tongue” of people. Moreover, in this assessment, the mother tongue is not exclusive to the two demographers who took part in it, Marc Termote and myself; other contributors have mentioned it.
In terms of success, the increase in enrollment of children of immigrants in the French-language primary and secondary education sector has been very rapid. Through Bill 101, the government of Quebec wanted to build “a Quebec as French as Ontario is English”. In this respect, I noted that the knowledge of French in Quebec by people of third languages was almost on a par with that of English in Ontario. With regard to the adoption of French as the home language, part of the gap has been filled, with Ontario remaining a land of anglicization, including for its Francophone minority. I also pointed out that Quebec has succeeded in recruiting more and more immigrants with a knowledge of French before they migrate.
In terms of weaknesses, apart from the fact that the free choice of language of instruction at college still acts to the detriment of French, francization programs for adult immigrants still leave something to be desired. Although the father of Bill 101, Camille Laurin, hoped that this language policy would “restore confidence, pride and self-esteem” to Francophones, it is to be deplored that very many bilingual Francophones remain even more proud to speak English in situations where it is not necessary. These bilingual francophones should blush with shame at the testimony of Ms.me Nicolas who “has always spoken French [avec l’un de ses amis], even when words failed him and English would have been easier”. Exemplary in this respect, Emilie Nicolas is an asset rather than an obstacle to the use of French in Quebec.
The mother tongue
Recalling her “master’s studies in Toronto”, the columnist claims to have been “accounted for […] as proof of the decline of the language [française] “. The same is also true for three people among his acquaintances, whether it is a colleague who was educated in English before Bill 101, an old friend born in Alberta, or a “child of Bill 101 came from Latin America. I do not see how, from this information, Mme Nicolas can deduce that demographers would count these people “as “threats” to the language all their life, regardless of their behavior and learning”!
All this reflects an openness to the world, not only for her and her friends, but also for my daughter, my son, my wife and me. At the turn of the 2000s, my daughter and my son worked for a few years in Ontario and British Columbia, respectively. Born in Austria, my wife first migrated to Belgium before settling in Quebec; his children and grandsons, all of French mother tongue and spoken language, live here in French. Finally, as far as I’m concerned, in the 1970s, I studied in the United States before teaching for a few years at Bishop’s University (Lennoxville, Quebec), all in English, of course.
As a teacher of English as a second language in a college in Montreal, my daughter invited me a few times to teach basic notions of demography to a group of students in social sciences. On one of these occasions, a student found it incongruous that a demographer who had worked in Bill 101 organizations was the father of an English teacher. His remark gave me the opportunity to recall that the Charter of the French language was never intended to create a unilingual French society refractory to English.
Not only was Camille Laurin in favor of learning the majority language of the North American continent, but he also wanted a third language to be learned. It was heard because Spanish is the most common third language in Quebec, outside of the Spanish-speaking communities of Montreal, thanks to Quebecers whose mother tongue is French.
Contrary to Emilie Nicolas, I do not see any contradictions between all these specific cases, on the one hand, and the statistical indicators that make it possible to take stock of our language policy, on the other. These are normal openings to the world, compatible with Law 101. Emilie Nicolas seems to me to be an unwitting ally.