(Quebec) The Legault government will this week pass its Bill 96, a vast linguistic reform and update of Bill 101, despite the rejection displayed by a good part of the elected members of the ranks of the opposition.
Posted at 10:44 a.m.
The official Liberal opposition will vote against it, because the bill goes too far, in its view infringing on the rights of Anglophones, while the PQ opposition will vote against it because the bill does not go far enough, not having the teeth needed to reverse the trend and avoid the decline of French.
For its part, Québec solidaire will vote for 96, while displaying significant reservations, particularly on the issue of public services offered only in French six months after the arrival of allophones, a period deemed too short.
The Minister sponsoring legislation, Simon Jolin-Barrette, will therefore not have been able to rally the opposition parties to his approach and his vision of things, regarding his proposal for a new linguistic framework likely to better protect French. in Quebec.
Be that as it may, and despite the controversy, the Caquiste overhaul of the Charter of the French language should have the force of law by the end of the week, during a final vote in the National Assembly.
Contrary to what the government claims, according to the leader of the Parti Québécois (PQ), Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, the future law 96 announces the decline of French in Quebec, for lack of the necessary push to ensure its sustainability.
“We don’t have to give moral backing to something that is misleading,” commented the PQ leader on Tuesday at a press briefing, confirming that his political party would vote against the reform, despite its few real advances. It is a matter of “moral duty” in his eyes.
According to the PQ, the CAQ government seeks more to “look nationalist” than to be really nationalist by proposing reforms worthy of the name.
The main thorny subject for the PQ was the government’s refusal to extend Bill 101 to the CEGEP. But other issues made him say that Bill 96 lacked teeth, including the question of the bilingual status of municipalities and the absence of indicators to measure the progress made thanks to this law.
According to him, “the government does not provide assistance to an endangered language”.