Liberal activists from West Montreal told their party convention on Friday that not everyone is happy with the agreement between Quebec and Ottawa on the protection of the French language in the workplace.
“It’s my party. But it’s just super important, as president of an association, as an Anglophone, to use my voice within this party to demonstrate that it’s not just MPs who are angry, it’s also the grassroots,” says liberal activist Chelsea Craig.
The English-speaking woman from the Laurentians proudly wore a badge on her badge where it was possible to read, in English, “correct Bill C-13”. Along with other activists from the Montreal region, she distributed stickers on the second day of the Liberal convention in Ottawa. The message, in the language of Shakespeare: “support the two minority linguistic communities”.
“We are treating the two minority languages of Canada differently,” explains in French the one who chairs the Federal Liberal Association of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount, in Montreal.
According to her, Anglophones in Quebec and Francophones in other provinces have been longtime allies, campaigning for minority language rights. ” NOW [avec C-13] we put the two communities against each other,” she laments, explaining that she wants to draw attention to this issue with delegates from other provinces.
A Toronto-area activist who hung the sticker among his Justin Trudeau buttons told the Duty be “against these laws on language at work”. However, he declined the interview request, claiming that he did not know enough about C-13’s file.
The agreement is not unanimous
At the end of March, the Trudeau government reached an agreement with Quebec’s Minister of French Language, Jean-François Roberge, to harmonize the new law on the promotion of French in federal enterprises with the Quebec Charter of the French language. Under this agreement, the Liberal Bill C-13 still offers companies under federal jurisdiction an escape from Quebec’s “Bill 96”, but imposes equivalent obligations on the territory of the province.
The Quebec law, officially named the Act respecting the official and common language of Quebec, raised an outcry within the English-speaking community of Quebec, who perceived a decline in their rights. Federal Liberal elected officials then came to the defense of Anglophones in Quebec to prevent Bill C-13 from referring to the Quebec charter, without success.
“If they are worried, let them come see me! “, answers the Acadian deputy René Arseneault and president of the standing committee on official languages which studied C-13.
“Even if it horrifies me to refer to the Quebec Charter of the French language — a provincial law — where it is in the bill, it is completely harmless from a legal point of view. […] We are a government that has taken a position to say that the only threatened language is French, no one can deny that, not even the anglophones of the west of Montreal. »
Replace Marc Garneau
The Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount riding association adopted a resolution at the end of 2021 to criticize references to the Quebec Charter of the French language in federal Bill C-13, which must reform the Official Languages Act. A handful of other Quebec liberal associations have since taken a position in this direction, says its president. Ms. Craig adds, however, that C-13 is good for French-speaking communities outside Quebec, and ensures that she supports the government of Justin Trudeau in a different way.
The federal riding has been vacant since Marc Garneau left politics in March. The ex-astronaut took the floor during the study of C-13 to urge his colleagues not to “leave the field open to Quebec to do whatever it might want to do in terms of language in Quebec. »
When he left, he said he took this position contrary to that of his party “in principle”. He denied that this file contributed to his departure. The former president of the Liberal Party of Canada, Anna Gainey, is in the running to replace him. She will face Fred Headon, who works as a lawyer at Air Canada.
The government expects to soon pass Bill C-13, which is supposed to reform the Official Languages Act promised by all the federal parties. This, even if elected Liberals have announced that they will oppose it. The most up-to-date version of the text has received the blessing of the Quebec government. The text must still be adopted in third and final reading in Parliament and by the Senate.