Prime Minister François Legault expressed concern on Wednesday about new data showing a decline in French in Quebec in recent years.
“What I see is worrying, we were right to act with Bill 96,” he said, returning to the Council of Ministers.
The Minister for the French Language, Simon Jolin-Barrette, then accused his adversaries of being irresponsible by calling into question in whole or in part “Law 96”, adopted in June to reform the Charter of the French language.
“These figures show that Bill 96 was necessary to reverse the trend,” he said. We find ourselves at a crossroads and I hope that the oppositions realize the danger of French for the next few years. I hope they will reconsider their proposals to butcher Law 96. “
Mr. Jolin-Barrette argued that the Liberals are responsible for this most recent decline observed by Statistics Canada based on census data, for the period from 2016 to 2021.
“The Liberals gave up and that pushed new Quebecers to choose English,” he said.
Liberal leader Dominique Anglade, for her part, expressed no concern over these data showing that the percentage of Quebecers speaking French at home has fallen from 79% to 77.5% since the previous census in 2016.
“Mr. Legault continues to always feed the same question in relation to the French language to defend his bill 96, she said. We voted against “96” because it goes too far in the division. »
In particular, the Liberals want to eliminate the derogation clauses in the Charters and the six-month period imposed on immigrants to communicate in French with the State. Ms. Anglade also denounced the desire of the CAQ government to permanently freeze the number of places in English-language CEGEPs.
On Wednesday, Ms. Anglade said her party made 27 proposals to protect French.
“We are not obliged, to protect the French language, to make Bill 96,” she argued.
More details will follow.