It was written in the sky that businesses under federal jurisdiction that operate in Quebec would not agree to comply with the requirements of the Charter of the French language.
From the outset, opinions on the scope of Bill 96 diverged within the Legault government itself. While the Minister responsible for the French Language, Simon Jolin-Barrette, maintained that it would take precedence over the Official Languages Act, his colleague responsible for Canadian Relations, Sonia LeBel, believed that businesses would be free to submit to one or the other.
“Human nature being what it is, usually the company will [choisir ce] which is the least constraining”, she lamented. Indeed, why complicate your life by committing to a demanding francization process at all levels of the company when you can avoid it?
Under Law 96, federally chartered businesses with 50 or more employees have until 1er December to register with the Office québécois de la langue française. However, as of Friday, barely 100 of the 800 who had been contacted had registered, reported The Journal of Montreal.
Unsurprisingly, among those absent are the main subscribers to the complaints service of the Commissioner of Official Languages: Air Canada, Via Rail, Canadian National, etc. These linguistic dinosaurs are waiting for the upcoming adoption of the new version of the Official Languages Act, which they clearly prefer.
On paper, Bill C-13 enshrines new rights for employees of businesses under federal jurisdiction who work in Quebec and in regions with a strong French-speaking presence in the rest of the country, in particular the right to “perform their work and be supervised in French”.
Any employee who feels that his or her rights are not being respected can file a complaint with the Commissioner of Official Languages, but the chronic inability to enforce the law in federal services that the latter has demonstrated for more than half a century authorizes a certain pessimism, to say the least.
However, the police station will not be able to launch an investigation on its own, and the sanctions provided for do not seem to be likely to force a change of culture in companies where French has never really had a right of citizenship.
The impotence of the commissioner no longer needs to be demonstrated. Year after year, his report adds a new chapter to the chronicle of a patent failure. The latest reported a “real tidal wave of complaints” under which he was submerged.
Raymond Théberge made the same observation as all his predecessors. “What I noticed when I arrived at the police station a few years ago was that there was a shift [en matière de] official languages at the federal level for a number of years,” he explained.
Just last week, The duty reported that the report of a working group on the use of French at Global Affairs Canada had had practically no effect, despite the official discourse on the “unique identity” that French confers on Canada on the international scene.
After fifty years of “sliding”, the presence of French is essentially symbolic, not to say folklore. If the Canadian government is unable to ensure it in its own services, how can it be thought that it will be able to do so within private companies?
If the CEO of Air Canada was able to live in Quebec for 14 years without seeing the need to learn a minimum of French, can we seriously believe that he will take steps so that his French-speaking employees can work in their tongue ?
Last spring, the Minister of Transport of Quebec, François Bonnardel, had deemed it necessary to apostrophize the management of Canadian National, whose board of directors did not include any French speakers following the resignation of Jean Charest, and who had also just to appoint a unilingual English CEO.
In any event, the federal government has never and will never promote French, but rather bilingualism. In reality, this means the promotion of English.
If there is one area where it is vital for Quebec to be able to impose the rules of the game on its territory, it is language. Obviously, Ottawa does not see it that way. To give the impression of having delivered the “robust measures” promised, the Legault government has exaggerated the scope of Law 96. It looks more like another stab in the water. The table is set for another endless saga before the courts, the outcome of which seems uncertain to say the least.