After a stormy morning on Tuesday, federal elected officials continued their study of Bill C-13 with more serenity. The bill represents the first in-depth reform of the Official Languages Act in 30 years and is currently being analyzed by the Standing Committee on Official Languages.
Liberal MP Francis Drouin took to the comments made by some colleagues from the Montreal region at the last committee meetings at the beginning of the day. ” THE Montreal Island does not have a monopoly on Canada’s language policy,” he wrote. on social networks.
Two of them — Marc Garneau (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount) and Anthony Housefather (Mont-Royal) — had tried unsuccessfully to remove any mention of Quebec’s Charter of the French language from the bill tabled by their own party. MP Emmanuella Lambropoulos (Saint-Laurent) had made misleading comments about Quebec’s Bill 96, falsely claiming that a doctor would have refused to treat an English-speaking woman in her language.
“I must emphasize the message of MP Francis Drouin,” said Conservative MP Joël Godin at the start of the committee meeting on Tuesday afternoon. The different parties have unanimously agreed on a few amendments to Bill C-13, which was introduced in the Commons in March 2022. One of them, proposed by the Conservatives, will ensure that Federal public communications will be in French regardless of the technology used.
The Liberals, for their part, passed an amendment that will enshrine in law the evaluation of bilingualism already carried out by the Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs. The latter will also have to provide the judges appointed by Ottawa with the necessary language training. NDP MP Niki Ashton also delivered a plea in favor of the Liberal measure “We have no judge in Manitoba who can preside in French. This reality needs to be changed,” she said.
This was one of the amendments proposed by the Fédération des associations de juristes d’expression française de common law (FAJEF). According to the president of the association, Mr.e Daniel Boivin, it is crucial to assess the “real ability” of judges to preside over a hearing in French. The evaluation currently carried out by the Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs is only a simple administrative practice, he notes.
No vote on Quebec demands
The Bloc Québécois, which relays Quebec’s demands for federal reform, was unable to obtain a vote from the Standing Committee on Official Languages on one of these demands.
The chairman of the committee, the Liberal René Arseneault, ruled out of order an amendment requiring that the implementation of the law be done “with respect for the areas of jurisdiction and powers of the provinces and territories, in particular with respect to the Charter of the French language” and that, in the event of a conflict, the Quebec charter prevails over the incompatible provisions of the law.
The committee has only reached the study of the tenth clause of Bill C-13, which has 71 clauses, and the number of meetings devoted to it is limited.
One of the most important amendments requested by the Bloc Québécois concerns section 54 of the bill. In its current form, the legislative text would give private companies under federal regulation on Quebec soil the choice of submitting to the Charter of the French language; Rather, Quebec would like them to simply be subject to it. According to The Canadian Press, Bloc members, New Democrats and Conservatives would be ready to vote in favor of this measure.
According to linguistic law professor François Larocque, of the University of Ottawa, the adoption of such an amendment could however be risky. “To allow a regime where companies under federal jurisdiction would be subject to Quebec rather than federal law is an abdication of federal responsibility,” he argues. Such an amendment would leave citizens and businesses with fewer legal remedies and could lead to litigation, the expert believes.
This story is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.