Premier François Legault’s statement on Louisiana drew mixed reactions from two elected officials from the southern US state.
Louisiana State House Representative Beau Beaullieu believes Mr. Legault was right to point to the decline of French in the Louisiana population to justify his demand for new powers.
“It’s very fair, it’s a very good example,” he said Thursday in an interview with the To have to. He talks about the history of Louisiana where it happened. He just sees. »
Mr. Beaullieu is the president of the Acadiana delegation, which brings together some fifty elected representatives from traditionally Acadian and Cajun counties in the House and the Senate.
A descendant of French speakers who were forced to abandon their language, Mr. Beaullieu did not comment on Mr. Legault’s immigration applications. However, he encouraged him in his efforts to protect the French language and culture in Quebec.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable what he’s trying to do to protect the French language,” he said.
Mr. Beaullieu, who used English during the interview, lamented the decline of French in Louisiana since the turn of the 20th century.
“I have colleagues who speak French well in the legislature but they count for 3% whereas around the 1900s it was probably the opposite proportion, with 90% of French speakers,” he said.
Common challenges
Louisiana state senator Jérémy Stine took a colder stance at the comparison Mr. Legault used last Sunday. He sees a lack of solidarity and sensitivity.
“Without wanting to disrespect the Premier of Quebec, Mr. François Legault, I speak French better than him,” he told the To have to, Friday, in an interview in French. Both of our countries have challenges in maintaining the language but I hope we can both work together to resolve this issue. »
The two elected officials were not inspired by the demands of Mr. Legault, who is calling for more powers from Ottawa in terms of immigration to protect French.
Mr. Beaullieu judged that the situation of French has deteriorated too much to hope to have an impact by intervening on immigration, which is administered by the federal government of the United States.
“We don’t manage immigration state by state,” he said. In addition, French is no longer used mainly in Louisiana. It would be too difficult to reverse the situation since so few Louisianans speak French. »
Mr. Stine, for his part, insisted on the importance of French immersion programs in schools.
“Here we need more French teachers to teach in immersion programs,” he said.
The French-speaking population of Louisiana has grown from one million in the 1960s to around 250,000 today, according to figures from the Center de la francophonie des Amériques.
The Acadiana delegation serves to promote laws that correspond to the interests of this region of southern Louisiana where Acadian exiles settled after the 1755 deportation, explained Mr. Beaullieu.
More recently, its representatives had to mobilize to pass a new law to protect French immersion classes in Louisiana.
“We fought in the legislature to protect French because at one time, we were a mainly French-speaking state,” said Mr. Beaullieu. Now we’ve lost that, let’s go. We look at all this a hundred years later, French is virtually absent from everyday life.