Clause-by-clause study of Bill 96 has just begun and the separatist and nationalist members of the National Assembly are faced with a dilemma: try to improve piecemeal a bill that is tragically insufficient or undertake to provide Quebec with its own constitution to truly achieve the objective of the bill: to make French the official and common language of Quebec.
We must first note the worrying decline of French in Quebec, of course over several years, which makes it difficult for many to notice. It is necessary to recall the enormous forces which play more than before and which explain it. The British and Canadian governments have always had the objective of minimizing Francophones in Quebec and Canada through immigration laws and policies. Currently, Canadian immigration thresholds are the highest in the Western world and Canadian immigration policies discriminate against immigration in French. The Canadian Constitution and the coup de force of 1982 also gave the courts the right to oversee the laws of Quebec, defeating the Charter of French. The majority of Canadian opinion outside Quebec does not in fact recognize the existence of the Quebec nation. At best, it recognizes the existence of a French-speaking minority, whose extension through immigration must be prevented and distinct values such as secularism countered. Finally, the international trend towards anglicization through culture and digital communications falls within areas of Ottawa’s jurisdiction, where the protection of French is not the primary concern.
Bill 96 in its current state is viscerally incapable of reversing the process of erosion of French, either because the Government of Quebec does not have the constitutional powers to do so, or because, when it does, it has preferred to opt for half measures. In education, the application of Bill 101 to CEGEPs (even with its scope reduced by the Canadian Constitutional Act of 1982) would at least limit access to English colleges to people who studied in English in Canada.
At the university, the bill could provide for eliminating the overfunding of the English-language system. At work, francization committees should be made mandatory in all companies with 50 or more employees (as requested by the FTQ) and the 1,760 companies with Canadian charters and their 135,000 employees should be subject to Quebec law. In the Anglophone health and social services system, a progressive plan for the francization of institutions should be included in the law. The law should also provide that the communication of the State and the municipalities with the citizens be done in French without the multiple exceptions that it contains, in particular with regard to the bilingual municipalities.
But even if these more vigorous measures slowed the pace of anglicization in the short term, they would prove insufficient in the medium term. The necessary objective of 90% transfer of immigrants to French to maintain the proportion in Quebec, in addition to being enshrined in law, should be accompanied by the necessary means allowing Quebec to define the immigration thresholds on its own and the procedures for choosing all immigrants to Quebec.
Unilingual French public signage, banned by the Supreme Court of Canada, must be reinstated so that the message of integration into French is clear. The bilingual system established by the Constitution of Canada in matters of legislation and justice must be abolished to restore the provisions of the original Bill 101, so that French is truly the only official language of Quebec. In education, Bill 101 must be reinstated so that at all levels English-language schools, colleges and universities are reserved for students whose parents did their primary studies in English in Quebec. As far as culture and communications are concerned, the primary concern must be the protection of French against the invasion of Anglophone culture. For this, as all the governments of Quebec have requested, these areas must become Quebec’s jurisdiction.
As long as Quebec behaves like a minority rather than a nation, the majority of immigrants to Quebec will naturally identify with the Canadian majority language and will continue to seek anglicization. We therefore expect the Legault government to behave like the government of a nation (if it insists on calling itself nationalist) by proposing, during the next election, a Quebec constitution that would take precedence over the Canadian Constitution, which we were imposed in 1982 without any consultation. If this attempt fails, everyone will understand that the only way to protect our language at home will be to give us a country before it’s too late.