The Trudeau government presented its new Action Plan for Official Languages 2023-2028 even before Bill C-13 was passed, which gives the current Official Languages Act some teeth. This plan renews the amount granted in the previous 2018-2023 version, while adding 1.4 billion to reach 4.1 billion.
This is a level of investment that is said to be “historic”. It is unclear whether it is the delays experienced in the detailed study of Bill C-13 that means that the plan comes before the adoption of the new law, which should occur in May in the House of Commons. Clearly, there is no need for new legislative powers to fund the myriad of federal initiatives intended to support French outside Quebec and English in Quebec.
In this regard, the offensive by Liberal MPs from the island of Montreal Anthony Housefather, Marc Garneau and Emmanuella Lambropoulos may not have made it possible to remove any reference to the Charter of the French language in Bill C-13, but at least the Trudeau government felt the need to appease Anglo-Quebecers by setting aside an envelope of 137.5 million to finance various services intended for the Anglophone minority. Feigning surprise, the Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, would have liked part of these sums to be used for the francization of Anglophones. For its part, the lobby organization Quebec Community Groups Network has welcomed the plan which will finance better access, if possible, to justice, education, health care and social services, all services provided by the Quebec government, for the “1.3 million English-speaking Quebecers”. It should be noted that this definition of Anglophones is not limited to the 7% represented by the historical minority, as Quebec sees it. The group is particularly pleased that the plan emphasizes diversity and inclusion, which represents “opportunities” for the English-speaking community and its influence.
It goes without saying that the situation of Francophones outside Quebec is quite different. Generally speaking, the plan was well received, although in many respects the problems of access to French-language services, whether in terms of daycares, schools, colleges and universities, courts of justice and health care, will remain intact.
During the election campaign, the Trudeau government had promised 80 million per year for post-secondary education: the plan provides for only 32 million, underlines the media Francopress. The setbacks of Laurentian University in Sudbury, which declared itself insolvent, the difficulty of setting up the University of French Ontario in Toronto, and the precariousness of the Saint-Jean Campus of the University of Alberta , in particular, contrasts with the unbridled development of McGill and Concordia universities in Quebec.
As early childhood childcare services are deployed throughout the country, as already exist in Quebec, it is far from certain that French-language daycare centers will be accessible despite the aid of $50 million in five years. contained in the action plan unveiled last week by the Minister of Official Languages, Ginette Petitpas Taylor.
Data from the 2021 census showed a decline in French in Quebec. In Acadia, the decline was even more marked. In the rest of Canada, only disastrous metaphors are appropriate to evoke the situation. In Ontario, for example, the percentage of the population that speaks predominantly French at home has slipped below 2%, while Ontarians are twice as likely to qualify as Francophones.
To counter this decline, Ottawa is counting on Francophone immigration. The action plan provides for allocating an additional $100 million, for a total of $222 million, to support this contribution.
In his introductory remarks, Justin Trudeau welcomed the fact that, for the first time, the target of French-speaking immigrants outside Quebec had been reached last year with the admission of 16,300 French-speaking immigrants. The objective is set at 4.4%, which represents the percentage of Francophones outside Quebec in 2001, a proportion that has since dropped by 3.5%. But this policy is a decoy: at this rate, to restore the percentage of 2001, it would be necessary to repeat the “feat” for nearly 100 years, and this, without even taking into account the formidable assimilating power of English Canada. This is not serious.
With Bill C-13, the Liberal government is in principle abandoning the doctrine, developed by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, of perfect symmetry between English and French in a minority situation. The Liberal government promises to establish “real equality” rather than “formal equality” between the two official languages. However, it is rather an inequality, both real and formal, that Francophones outside Quebec will continue to bear in this essentially Anglophone country.