At the heart of the dissent of some Anglo-Quebec Liberal MPs against the official languages bill, there is the end of a myth that had lasted too long, namely the false equality that would exist between the English-speaking community of Quebec and the minority French-speaking communities in the rest of the country.
The white paper on official languages, published in 2021 by Minister Mélanie Joly, admitted, for the first time in an official Government of Canada document, that English was not in danger in Canada and that if one of the two official languages was threatened, it was obviously French.
The white paper said it was time to “recognize the predominant use of the English language in Canada and North America and the fact that, in this context, it is imperative to further protect and promote the language French”.
We can say that it was high time to make this observation. But that it was done by the Liberal Party of Canada, moreover by the government of a Prime Minister named Trudeau, it was still a minor revolution.
Bill C-13, which follows up on the white paper, is a little less direct, but it nevertheless affirms that we must “promote, within Canadian society, progress towards equality of status and use of French and English, taking into account the fact that French is in a minority situation in Canada and North America due to the predominant use of English”.
But what shocks some Anglo-Quebec MPs even more is the fact that the new Official Languages Act makes explicit reference to the Charter of the French Language (Bill 101), particularly for federally chartered companies doing business in Quebec.
Basically, they will be subject to the same workplace francization obligations as those of Bill 101.
This is followed by a rather convoluted reasoning that since the Charter of the French language, since the adoption of Bill 96, contains a recourse to the provision of derogation, the “notwithstanding”, the whole Official Languages Act would therefore be beyond the scope of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
On this point, the disinformation of the main spokespersons of the English-speaking community has been intense. And it does not serve the interests of the community they say they represent.
At the time of the debate on Bill 96, the president of the Quebec Community Groups Network, the former Liberal MP Marlene Jennings, said on CBC Radio – in a program to which I was also invited: “If the law 96 is passed, our right to privacy, our right to receive help if our life is in danger, our right to enjoy and dispose of our private property, our right to freedom of expression, anything you want, all this will be taken away from us1. »
This is the kind of talk that is totally exaggerated and does nothing to have an intelligent debate on these issues. But that’s what the woman who was then president of the main pressure group of the Anglo-Quebec community said.
This is also part of a narrow theory which claims that any defense of French is necessarily to the detriment of fundamental rights. Hence the fact that some Anglo-Quebec MPs in Ottawa are saying today that the mere mention of the Charter of the French language in Bill C-13 on official languages means that they will not be able to support it.
Thus, in parliamentary committee, this week, MPs Marc Garneau, Anthony Housefather and Emmanuella Lambropoulos even tried to have any mention of Bill 101 erased from Bill C-13 because it affirms that French is the official language of Quebec. They will not have succeeded, but the attempt says a lot about their state of mind: the mere mention of Bill 101 is intolerable to them.2.
Except that the fight of these deputies encounters another pitfall: the law is popular and demanded by the French-speaking communities outside Quebec who will benefit from this reform and who have long since ceased to see virtues in the false equality with the Anglo-Quebec community. .
But we know the song. Whenever there is a question of language rights, representatives of the anglophone community in Quebec do not try to debate the measures that are presented, such as the new official languages act. It seems like they feel compelled to make another attempt to go back to the days before the adoption of Bill 22 – by the (federalist) government of Robert Bourassa – which made French the sole official language of the Quebec.
The year 2024 will be the 50e anniversary of Law 22. But there are those who still think that we should go back half a century.