It is motivated by our militant commitments for the French language and for La Francophonie that we are speaking today.
On November 19 and 20, Prime Minister François Legault will travel to Tunisia (country of Habib Bourguiba, one of the four founding fathers in 1970 of the International Organization of La Francophonie [OIF] present) with its new Minister of International Relations and La Francophonie, Martine Biron. We want to take the opportunity of this summit of heads of state and government of the Francophonie, which has not met for four years, to urge them both not only to highlight the significant contribution of Quebec to the development of this space, but also to assume leadership to ensure the sustainability of the French language in Quebec and around the world. Because, in our mind, the two are connected.
It is through its imagination and creativity that Quebec has always challenged and reinvented the Francophonie as a full member of the OIF.
This was the meaning of our fight for cultural diversity which resulted, in particular thanks to La Francophonie, in the adoption in 2005 of a Convention at UNESCO. Today, the equally essential issue of the digital challenge, production and access to French-speaking content will be on the agenda of the Djerba meeting.
An existential challenge, because today’s fight for linguistic diversity is the logical continuation of that which we have led for cultural diversity.
The strength of alliances will once again be essential, with Spanish-speakers, Arabic-speakers, Creole-speakers and Portuguese-speakers, but also with the major African partner languages present in French-speaking states, such as Swahili (150 million speakers ) or Hausa (80 million). Without these alliances, the French language and its major partner languages present on the Internet will continue to be marginalized in a less diversified universe than it seems.
Quebec was a pioneer, and the Francophonie a forerunner, by bringing together in Montreal, in May 1997, the first conference of ministers responsible for “information highways” and by creating the first support fund for the production of online content in French!
The success of the battle at UNESCO against the commodification of culture and in favor of cultural exception in free trade agreements has not, however, enabled French speakers to invent, to create the equivalent of global platforms that have become almost hegemonic (Facebook, Netflix, Spotify, etc.).
The current challenge of content and its discoverability on these platforms, the often perverse role of algorithms that naturally favor the English-speaking creative space, so many subjects that deserve more than resolutions.
Only energetic actions on the part of La Francophonie will succeed in making these apprentice masters of the digital world listen to reason, replacing states and governments.
What means can be taken to have free access in French to cultural, educational and scientific content? TV5MondePlus, created a few years ago, is a good example of the way forward. Why not convince French-speaking countries at the Summit to adopt the concrete prescriptions recommended by both the Franco-Quebec working group and that of UQAM?1 ? Why not retain the proposal made during a symposium held at the Senate in Paris on October 3, in which many Quebecers participated, entitled “The diversity of cultural content of expression other than English on digital platforms”, to add to the UNESCO Convention a linguistic component?
The future of our language in the 21ste century depends on its ability to be useful and transmitted in the digital space. The development of La Francophonie will be partly dependent on our ability to take advantage of this digital universe, as recalled by the digital strategy of La Francophonie (2022-2026), to which Quebec has greatly contributed.2.
Without support for the creation, promotion, circulation of creators, artists and works and especially without their visible presence and remunerated at their fair value on these platforms, the Francophonie will wither and French and the partner languages too. Already many are alerting us, including Pierre Lapointe and Richard Séguin.
To inspire our Prime Minister, let us share in conclusion this vision, still current, which inhabited René Lévesque concerning the future of a united Francophonie, delivered in a speech in Paris, in 1985:
“To fight against incomprehension, to bridge the vertiginous gaps which still separate nations and entire continents, to banish incomprehension, to accomplish in short the scientific and technological ‘revolution’ like that of justice, fairness, we can rely on each other on a common language – not only of words but also of a way of thinking. […] We need, as French speakers, not only to be able to follow the rapid movement of the profound transformations of our universe but to know how to be an integral part of it, to know how to create, we too, the new world which is settling in our home, around us. . »