Decline of French | Quebec and Ottawa tune their flutes

The climate was in harmony Monday between Quebec and Ottawa in a file, that of the place of French, where the two governments were generally at loggerheads.

The meeting between Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Federal Minister for Official Languages, and her counterpart Jean-François Roberge, Minister for the French Language and Minister responsible for Canadian Relations and the Canadian Francophonie, brought together on the same platform by the Chamber of Commerce of Montreal metropolitan to address the issues of French in the metropolis, had almost “love-in” accents.

“We can sometimes have disagreements, but one thing I would like you to remember today is that we share a common objective, that of protecting and promoting French throughout the country, including in Quebec” , launched Minister Petitpas Taylor.

M^me Petitpas Taylor also presented Mr. Roberge with a stuffed peregrine falcon, symbol of a species whose status has changed from threatened to vulnerable, as a gesture of recognition.

win-win

For his part, Minister Roberge said he was “very happy” to share this platform with “Ginette”.

“We did something special, Ginette and I, lately, he said. We surprised people, I think, by working in a real effort of collaboration and consultation. Much of the credit goes to him because finally, we have an asymmetrical vision. What that means, in reality, is that we are changing the paradigm. »

Ottawa’s decision to recognize for the first time that French is threatened in Quebec, not just in the rest of Canada, is at the origin of this change.

“They took note that French is in decline even in Quebec,” explained Mr. Roberge. It is majority and vulnerable. This is a documented statistical fact. But politically, it still took a whole leadership to say it, to name it, to have it inscribed in the Official Languages ​​Act. »

“We had ruts that told us that for Quebec to win, the federal government had to lose […] and for the federal government to win, Quebec had to be on its knees. This is no longer true. We managed to do something that is win-win. »

Bill C-13

Mr. Roberge pleaded in favor of the adoption of federal Bill C-13, in its current version “with its references to the Charter of the French language “. “Not in a washed-out version,” he said.

C–13, which aims to modernize the Official Languages ​​Actcould be adopted at the end of June.

This bill proposes targeted measures to reverse the decline of French, a trend that is “very, very worrying,” according to the minister, who recently announced an action plan to promote and protect the country’s official languages, with investments of $4.1 billion which will be used in particular to increase the share of Francophone immigration.

A divisive issue

“We will need much higher Francophone immigration targets outside Quebec,” insisted Jean-François Roberge, who went on to talk about immigration thresholds, which remain a point of contention between the two governments.

For his part, the President of the Chamber, Michel Leblanc, reiterated the importance of offering better francization programs to newcomers in the metropolis, by relying on people in the field.

“People who work hard, who have just arrived sometimes with children, families or wives or husbands who have to integrate, we have to make their lives easier,” he said, in a scrum of press, after the meeting with the two ministers. “That’s really the lesson. If we blame the immigrant, we lose sight of the fact that our system is probably not accommodating enough for their schedule, for their reality, so it’s up to us to do the extra to make it easy. »

Jean-François Roberge acknowledged the problem and said that the implementation, on 1^er June, the one-stop “Francization Québec” was going to offer solutions. The Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration, Christine Fréchette, is to announce the details shortly.