The older ones among you will call me a killjoy, the younger ones “haters”. But I assume, I did not find it funny at all.
I am referring to the small gesture that was intended to be humorous by the federal Minister of Official Languages, Ginette Petitpas Taylor, to the Quebec Minister for the French Language, Jean-François Roberge. Referring to the minister’s “sick” ad, Ms.me Petitpas Taylor gave him a stuffed peregrine falcon as a gift, just to show that “the federal and provincial governments don’t always have to be at odds”1.
It’s probably the contrast between the lightness of the tone of Mme Petitpas Taylor and the reality of French in Canada that makes me lose my sense of humor.
To put the prank in context, I did a little press review, but only from the last 90 days. Three months. Nothing more. If I had covered the last three years, you would have made a depression out of it. No, the situation is not funny at all.
In April, we learned that in Ontario, the rate of French-English bilingualism was at its lowest in 40 years.2 (Across the country, bilingualism is becoming a matter for Francophones only).
Also in April, after a man from Saint-Jean-Port-Joli was unable to receive help in French from 911, it was discovered that the CRTC had known for at least 10 years that there were problems accessing 911 in French3. Ten years ! 911! And the CRTC, a federal agency, was doing nothing.
During the same month, Air Canada threatened to expel a businessman who wanted to be served in French. This explaining this, a little earlier, in March, we learned that the Air Canada employees’ union was complaining that the company demanded too much French from flight attendants (!). Around the same week, denounced from all sides, Air Canada and CN finally agreed to submit to the rules of the Office québécois de la langue française, which reminded us that they had opposed them for decades. .
The rachitic offer of Quebec television content on Air Canada flights also made headlines. Of the 200 fiction series, reality shows, documentaries and other variety shows, only five (2.5%) were from Quebec. In the same month of April, we learned that Air Canada had tripled, yes, tripled, the salary of its CEO, Michael Rousseau, the very man who boasted of being able to live in Montreal without speaking French. You can not make that up. Beautiful symbol, this Air Canada.
A few days later, a study revealed the “slow and irremediable” decline of French in science in Canada4. Nationally, from 2019 to 2022, 95% of federal research grants went to projects written in English. The explanation? To have a better chance of being funded by the federal government, researchers submit their applications in English. And they seem to have good reason to do so. Between 2001 and 2016, the Canadian Institute of Health Research accepted 39% of applications written in English compared to only 29% of applications written in French. Could there be something systemic there? Unless the French speakers are less good? Result: not crazy, French-speaking researchers switch to English.
Finally, on several occasions during the same period, federal elected officials were pleased with the achievement, for the first time in 20 years, of their recruitment objective of 4.4% of Francophone immigrants outside Quebec. They all forgot to say that at this rate it will take almost a century, yes, a century, to make up for the delay caused by their failures of the last 20 years, and that, without taking into account the phenomenon of assimilation. No, there is nothing to be proud of.
In Canada outside Quebec, French continues to fade. Today there are more people who speak Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese) than there are people who speak French.
Punjabi and Tagalog will soon overtake it too. French is the 17e language spoken in Toronto. Only 1.8% of Canadians outside Quebec speak French at home. This is half of what it was in 1969, when the Official Languages Act. No, it’s nothing to laugh about.
When the government of Quebec and the federal government meet to take stock of the situation of the French language, the atmosphere should not be a joke. Better still, the federal government should systematically start the meeting by apologizing: its management of the French language is a spectacular failure that should not make anyone laugh, especially not the minister responsible for the file.