The federal Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Marc Miller, refused to say on Wednesday whether he considers that French is in decline in Quebec, preferring instead to affirm that the only official language of the province is threatened.
The minister, who is a member of a Montreal riding, was closely followed by the Conservative Joël Godin and the Bloc Mario Beaulieu in the standing committee on official languages. Mr. Miller came to testify on French-speaking immigration to Canada.
The two spokespersons for official languages for their respective parties questioned Mr. Miller on the state of French in the country.
“When we look at people who speak French, whether inside Quebec or outside Quebec, French is threatened in a sea of English […] I completely agree that French is threatened in North America,” the minister first responded to Mr. Godin.
He had just asked Mr. Miller whether he recognized that “the demographics of French speakers are in decline throughout Canada, including Quebec.”
Judging the minister’s response to be evasive, Mr. Beaulieu returned to the charge asking him if he considers “that there is a decline of French in Quebec”.
“It’s clear that French is threatened in Quebec […] It’s clear, clear and precise,” declared Mr. Miller, before mentioning that the Quebec government has made efforts to strengthen the French fact over the decades.
“But there is always this threat lurking due to the fact that Quebec, geographically, is located in North America,” he added.
Mr. Beaulieu stressed that French is in decline on several levels in the province, mainly in Montreal, particularly in terms of mother tongue, language used at home and at work.
“There is a lot more English according to all these indicators in Montreal, so there is a decline in French in Quebec. But you don’t seem to want to admit it as such,” said the Bloc MP, who criticized the minister for playing with words.
Statistics Canada repeatedly confirms the trend that French is following in Quebec. The most recent census data indicated that French continues to decline in Quebec and the rest of the country. The percentage of Quebecers mainly speaking this language at home increased from 79% to 77.5% between 2016 and 2021.
Projections published in March by the Office québécois de la langue française also reveal that, as a language used at home, the weight of French will continually decrease over the coming years, in favor of English.
Mr. Miller recognized that “French must be preserved and vitalized in Quebec.”
“If we do not admit that French is in decline, it is difficult to take the means to counter it,” however retorted Mr. Beaulieu.
This is not the first time that Montreal MPs from the Liberal Party of Canada have remained silent on the decline of French in Quebec.
This was the case last June with the new Liberal MP for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount, Anna Gainey, who steadfastly refused to advance on this ground in the face of persistent questions from the parliamentary press on the subject.
In recent years, the Liberal MP for Saint-Laurent, Emmanuella Lambropoulos, was forced to resign from the official languages committee after denying the decline of French in Quebec.
With information from Michel Saba of The Canadian Press