The minister responsible for the French language, Simon Jolin-Barrette, has found the “perfect formula” to “eradicate” the English-speaking minority in Quebec, warns the president of the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN), Marlene Jennings. She no longer knows in which language to say it in order to be taken seriously.
” Wake up ! launches the former federal deputy from 1997 to 2011, seeking to shake the apathy of Quebecers in the face of the linguistic offensives carried out in Quebec – and in Ottawa – on the faith, according to her, of the “fabulation” according to which the French language is “at risk” in the workplace.
The government is however categorical: the proportion of workers who give a predominant place to French at work has crumbled in Quebec over the past 15 years, falling from 82% in 2006 to 79.7% in 2016.
The abandonment of the Cégep Dawson expansion project as well as the freezing of programs leading to the Diploma of Collegial Studies (DEC) or the Attestation of Collegial Studies (AEC) in English provided for in the amended version of the Bill 96 will have “pernicious” consequences for English-speaking communities in Quebec, says Marlene Jennings in an interview with The duty. There will be fewer and fewer “bilingual” professionals in the health network, she says at the end of a conference table in the QCGN neighborhoods in downtown Montreal.
“We are not stupid [les caquistes] are strangling the system,” adds QCGN CEO Sylvia Martin-Laforge.
Simon Jolin-Barrette promised to ensure the “fullest respect for the institutions of the Anglo-Quebec community” when unveiling the bill on the official and common language of Quebec, French (Bill 96) in May 2021 .
The pressure group suspects the CAQ government of reducing the “Anglo-Quebec community” – which is entitled to receive services in English, according to him – to the “historic English-speaking community”, which excludes nearly 500,000 English-speaking Quebecers, including immigrants from an English-speaking state such as Great Britain or Jamaica, for example.
Moreover, Marlene Jennings says she is tired of hearing that the English-speaking minority in Quebec is “the best treated”, while English-speaking Quebecers are “underemployed” and “underpaid”. “The only linguistic minority that comes close, that has the same devastating statistics, are the Acadians and the francophones of New Brunswick, the only ones. But, we never talk about that, ”said the first black person to have represented a Quebec riding in the House of Commons.
The bills signed by Simon Jolin-Barrette (96) and by Ginette Petitpas Taylor (C-13) will certainly exacerbate not only economic inequalities between Anglos and Francos, but also social tensions, is convinced Marlene Jennings.
Cost for Quebec
“It’s not just the business of Anglos, minorities, it’s the business of Francophones,” argues Sylvia Martin-Laforge, according to whom the strengthening of Law 101 by “96” and “C-13” will not be done without economic and moral cost for Quebec.
The bosses of the QCGN cannot believe that the Trudeau government can give the possibility to private companies under federal jurisdiction present in Quebec to conduct “their communications with consumers” in compliance with Quebec’s Charter of the French language – that Simon Jolin-Barrette is working to shield in particular by means of the provisions of derogation from the charters of rights and freedoms.
“When I see our charters [des droits et libertés] suspended, and we are not in a situation of war, we are not in Ukraine […]I’m discouraged,” says Marlene Jennings at Homework, which is reminiscent of his now defunct February 24 tweet. The Montrealer expressed her astonishment to see François Legault support Ukrainian democracy in the face of the onslaught of Russia when he has the “willingness to suspend all the rights and freedoms of all Quebecers with his bill 96”.
“I have a big mouth and I’m proud of it. I’m a Jennings and a Garand! exclaims the “black woman of diverse ethnic origin” in almost empty premises. Marlene Jennings is the fruit of the union of a black man who emigrated from Alabama and a white French-speaking woman, whose ancestors, French and Belgian, had cleared Manitoba, one of whom alongside the great defender of Aboriginal peoples and of the French language Louis Riel. “I’ve always been in favor of Louis Riel,” she says.
Marlene Jennings, who is also proud to have voted in 1976 for Parti Québécois leader René Lévesque in the riding of Taillon, even though her mother “wanted [la] kill,” is now leading the resistance on behalf of Quebec’s English-speaking linguistic minority. And she makes an arrow of any wood.
The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, is not spared. The former elected member of the Liberal Party of Canada accuses her of “breaking with the fundamental values of our Canadian society”, including that of linguistic duality, by giving workers in private companies under federal jurisdiction in Quebec, in particular “the right to to perform their work and to be supervised in French” and “the right to receive all communications and documentation […] in French “. “We have English-speaking employees who work [dans une banque] in French, but for one reason or another, they would like to have their communications in English. They won’t have that right with C-13 in its current format. So what kind of atmosphere, work climate will it create? » asks Marlene Jennings, who denies being a « angryphone “, as depicted by its detractors.
Bad “timing”
Marlene Jennings attributes the weak mobilization against Bills 96 and C-13, starting in English-speaking communities in Quebec, to opportunities for socializing — discussions of current affairs around the office coffee machine, for example — which have become scarce during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also, more broadly, to the rise of individualism and misinformation in Canadian society.
That said, the president of QCGN took good note of the decision of the Quebec Liberal Party to oppose the adoption of Bill 96, which was made official by its leader, Dominique Anglade, during a visit by the Cégep Dawson almost a month ago. “I am happy that she finally rallied, with her deputies. She can’t back down on that now, ”says Marlene Jennings. The PLQ has not put its notebook of “27 proposals for the future of the French language” to the scrap for all that, informs him The duty. “That’s a whole other question. »