After having repeatedly refused this week to recognize the decline of French in Quebec by preferring to speak of a “threatened” language, Minister Marc Miller is now taking the plunge, however keen to “add nuance” to his own government’s position. .
“I do not deny at all when we talk about the decline of French as a mother tongue,” he declared Thursday evening in an interview with The Canadian Press.
Moreover, according to Minister Miller, having learned French during early childhood is “the main indicator that is raised” when the Liberals shout from the rooftops that they are “the first government” to recognize the decline of French in Quebec.
Mr. Miller, who is Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship and who represents a riding in downtown Montreal, also protested that the Bloc Québécois cited this “famous statistic” “excessively” on the mother tongue which, he concludes, does not paint a “reliable portrait of Quebec today”.
He said he felt “excluded” by this data, just like, he listed, his fellow ministers Pablo Rodriguez and Soraya Martinez Ferrada.
“It affects me personally,” he said. It (also) eliminates an entire class of immigrant Quebecers who do not speak French at home, but who speak French. »
Mr. Miller said he feels that the Bloc Québécois leads “people to question whether or not I am a proud Quebecois,” so much so that he wonders “at what point am I a fully qualified Quebecois.” according to Mario Beaulieu”, the Bloc spokesperson for official languages.
“I don’t even come from the “West Island”,” he added regarding the comments of Mr. Beaulieu who described the reluctance of certain English-speaking liberals regarding the reform of the Languages Act as a “West Island Story.” official at the start of the year.
The statistics buffet
Thus, Minister Miller, who “refuses the dumbing down of the debate”, prefers the statistic that “94%” of Quebecers can speak French and judges that “we must talk about the number of people in absolute terms too” given that this figure increases in Quebec.
“It is to the honor of the Charter of the French language,” he insisted. This is obviously an increase since the Quiet Revolution. »
However, the latest census once again confirms the decline of French in Quebec across all its indicators.
From 2016 to 2021, Statistics Canada observed a drop in the proportion of Quebecers who had French as their mother tongue (from 77.1% to 74.8%), as the language spoken predominantly at home (from 79.0 % to 77.5%) and as the first official language spoken (from 83.7% to 82.2%).
This decrease is also observed in Mr. Miller’s statistics since the proportion of Quebecers able to carry on a conversation in French increased during the same period from 94.5% to 93.7%, although it was stable for several decades after experiencing a marked decline in the 1970s.
As for the language most often used in the workplace, French increased from 79.9% to 79.7%. The difference is even more marked in comparison with the 2011 census where French received 81.9%.
Sociologist Jean-Pierre Corbeil and demographer Marc Termote, respectively professors at Laval University and the University of Montreal, both indicated in interviews with the newspaper The duty that data on mother tongue loses its relevance over time due to the influence of immigration to the country.
If Mr. Termote judged that the language spoken at home is “an essential indicator”, the two experts were divided on the indicator of knowledge of French.
Mr. Miller acknowledged that English is not threatened in Quebec and even believes that “it would be stupid to say so.” He noted, however, that English as a mother tongue is in decline in the province. “It’s weird when we take this logic and then apply it to what Mr. Beaulieu was saying,” he said.
The controversy over the recognition of the decline of French in Quebec flared up again on Wednesday evening when Mr. Miller insisted, during testimony before a parliamentary committee, on repeating that French was “threatened” in the province, responding to the questions from Conservative and then Bloc spokespersons on official languages.
The next day, during question period in the House of Commons, the Bloc made a mockery of the minister’s reluctance. “You would have thought James Bond was being tortured and refusing to spill the beans,” illustrated his parliamentary leader, Alain Therrien.
Mr. Miller was until now the only minister to refuse to recognize the decline of French in Quebec, but other elected officials from the Liberal Party of Canada have done the same in the past.
This forced the MP for Saint-Laurent, Emmanuella Lambropoulos, to resign from the official languages committee. And very recently, the MP for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount, Anna Gainey, refused to advance on this ground despite the insistence of journalists.