(Ottawa) Without blaming her colleagues who are trying to water down the official languages bill, Minister Mélanie Joly, who was its architect, reminds us that linguistic minorities enjoy constitutional protections.
“We said it in the 2019 Speech from the Throne, French is a minority language which is a language that we must protect, and I will always be there as an ally of Francophones who want to defend their language,” said she pleaded by videoconference from Krakow, Poland, Thursday.
“At the same time, Canada has a system of constitutional obligations in terms of official languages, and we must be able to respect linguistic minorities,” added the former Minister of Official Languages, who had started the modernization project. of the Official Languages Act.
She did not want to qualify the remarks made in committee by her colleagues from the island of Montreal, whose Franco-Ontarian MP Francis Drouin had denounced last week the ” show disgraceful noise” that could derail the progress of Bill C-13.
“I think my colleagues have expressed their point of view,” she said. At the same time, I would say that C-13 will be a bill that will be voted on in Parliament, and the goal is to strengthen the protection of French, ensure its sustainability and respect the linguistic obligations of our minorities. And that’s all. »
A dozen Liberal MPs from Quebec are ready to snub their own government by voting against the legislative measure aimed at dusting off the Official Languages Actfive decades old.
Minister Joly had tabled in June 2021, before the dissolution of Parliament, the first version of this overhaul, Bill C-32, which died on the order paper, and which then became his bill C-13 in the new legislature.
She had previously presented a white paper on the issue, which had required years of consultation with a panoply of language stakeholders across the country.