At the start of the campaign, the party leaders talked a lot about the state of French in Quebec, but very little about its situation in Canada. The subject would have deserved more attention, because, here too, French is doing badly. Very bad.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Warning: across Canada, Francophone minorities are campaigning and fighting every day to live in French. Their courage is immense. Their fight is essential. Their fight is ours. Quebec must strongly support them. But respecting their fight does not change a certain reality. It is about this reality that I want to speak to you.
In Canada without Quebec, so out of 30 million people, there are 532,000 people whose predominant language spoken at home is French. I choose this indicator because it represents the core of people outside Quebec for whom French is not only a means of communication, but the vector of a culture. So today, in English Canada, only 1.8% of people have French as the predominant language at home (so 98.2% of people don’t). This is almost half of what it was when the Official Languages Actin 1969.
French is doing badly in itself, but also in relation to other languages. It is no longer even the second most spoken language at home.
In Canada outside Quebec, there are now many more people (861,000) whose predominant language at home is Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese). Within a few short years, Punjabi and Tagalog, two languages experiencing strong growth, should also overtake French.
The situation in the big cities illustrates rather cruelly the place of French: in Vancouver, it is in 11e position and in Calgary, in 12e. For the record, in June of this year, a Scotiabank branch in Toronto was criticized for having posted on its front door, in 14 languages: ” We speak your language “. French was not there. This is the Canadian reality, French is at 17e rank of the most spoken languages in metropolitan Ontario.
In 2022, French is no longer part of the daily life of English Canadians outside Quebec.
Latest data: the number of French-English bilingual people is increasing in Quebec, but decreasing in Canada. In Canada outside Quebec, only 6.2% of the population who do not have French as their mother tongue can carry on a conversation in French (therefore 93.8% of people cannot).
Ottawa, the officially bilingual federal capital, is in fact only 36.4% bilingual, while Quebec, our national capital, is 42.7%. The cities of Montreal (60%), Laval (60%), Gatineau (58%), Longueuil (52%), Sherbrooke (46%), Terrebonne (45%) and Lévis (38%) all have a more bilingual population than that of Ottawa.
Bilingualism is more than ever a matter for Quebecers.
The political struggles for French currently being waged in Canada also illustrate the immense defeat of French throughout the country.
You have to fight for the head of state (the representative of the king) to speak French, which should go without saying.
We have to fight for Supreme Court justices and senior federal officials to speak French, which should go without saying.
You have to fight to be served in French by Air Canada, which should go without saying.
Recently, Minister François-Philippe Champagne, a federal minister, was criticized for making his speeches outside Quebec mainly in English. He does like federal civil servants who have ambition, he writes his memos in English. He does like companies who want satisfied customers, he speaks to them in their language.
The reality is crystal clear: everywhere in the country, French is losing its demographic as well as its symbolic battles.
This all-out decline of French is occurring in the absolute indifference of English Canada.
Have you heard English Canadians tearing up their shirts in defense of French? Demand strong actions? Demand a certain vision of a bilingual Canada? No. Not a word. Total silence. The federal government and the provincial governments are smiling and doing nothing.
While it knows that the solution is there, Canada has never achieved its targets for Francophone immigration outside Quebec since their adoption in 2003. Never achieved. Not even close. I suspect bad faith.
I suspect bad faith because the decline of a language is not inevitable, it is a political choice. Thanks to Bill 101 and a good dose of courage, Quebec was able to make a fundamental shift. With law 96, he still tries to help the French.
What is Canada doing? He is mobilizing against Bill 96. At the risk of sounding like someone who wants to sow division, I will say that Canada protects its language, not ours. What do the chefs think?