Montreal MP Anthony Housefather followed through on his threat by being the only member of the House of Commons to oppose the final vote on federal Bill C-13 on official languages on Monday.
“There are many good things in the bill, but I felt the House and Canadians needed to be reminded that the fears of the English-speaking community in Quebec were not resolved and that a unanimous vote in favor of the bill would have swept away these fears out of hand,” explained the Montreal elected official in an email to the Duty.
In the end, 300 MPs representing all parties in Ottawa approved C-13, which will continue its way to the Senate before officially becoming a law of Canada. 37 elected officials were absent or did not register their vote, like Justin Trudeau and his Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly, on the plane for a diplomatic trip to Asia.
The Minister of Official Languages, Ginette Petitpas Taylor, was applauded by her colleagues during the count. Quebec Conservative MP Joël Godin also received congratulations from the opposition benches for bringing the case to his party.
Anthony Housefather had previously told the Duty that he did not intend to vote for Bill C-13 at third reading if he did not succeed in removing from the text the significant references to the Charter of the French language of Quebec. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then had to specify that all his ministers should support C-13.
The Liberal Party has never wanted to say whether it will force a party line. The elected Anglo-Quebecers who had expressed severe criticism, Patricia Lattanzio and Emmanuella Lambropoulos, nevertheless voted in favor of the bill. They did not respond to questions sent by The duty.
“People do their best to reflect what their citizens think,” said Montreal minister Marc Miller, who had cast doubt on his own position on C-13 this winter.
First reform in 30 years
The text reforms the Official Languages Act for the first time since 1988, and creates a new law on the use of French in businesses under federal jurisdiction. The Liberal Party had promised “substantial equality of official languages in Canada” in its most recent election platform. Minister Mélanie Joly drafted the outline of this political project shortly before the last federal election, in 2021, when she was in charge of Official Languages.
The reform modifies several aspects of the functioning of the federal machine. For example, it gives more teeth to the Commissioner of Official Languages, who will now be able to issue orders or distribute fines to public institutions that do not respect their obligations with regard to French. C-13 also requires the federal government to set Francophone immigration targets, in addition to forcing bilingualism on Supreme Court judges.
Anglo-Quebec dissatisfaction
It was his second part, on French at work, which proved to be a source of controversy within the Liberal Party itself. At the parliamentary committee stage, Quebec Liberal MPs went to the barricades to decry a rollback of Anglophone language rights.
The outgoing MP and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marc Garneau, took the floor to demand that the law be purged of all references to the Quebec Charter of the French language, amended last year by “Law 96”. The ex-minister then resigned from his post in February, citing other reasons.
Then, an agreement between Quebec and Ottawa gave rise to a whole series of amendments passed unanimously. Result: the bill grants equivalent protections in terms of French in federal businesses to those in effect in all other businesses under Quebec jurisdiction.
The Conservatives’ support for the French language protection bill comes as no surprise to Stéphanie Chouinard, assistant professor at the Royal Military College in Kingston and an expert in language policy. “The issue of official languages is not partisan. What if we had seen a wave against C-13 in caucus [conservateur], it would have provided weapons to the other parties during the next election. »