It is important to clarify certain ideas contained in Paul Journet’s February 6 column concerning the Liberal MPs and the study in committee of Bill C-13, aimed at modernizing the Official Languages Act from Canada.
Mr. Journet describes the interventions of MPs Marc Garneau, Emmanuella Lambropoulos and Anthony Housefather as a fight “against the protection of French”, describing their attempts to amend Bill C-13 in committee as a “crusade against the protection of French”. “.
This judgment, repeated aloud by some French-language media, is also echoed by Conservatives and Bloc members in the House of Commons. But this is a gross distortion of what the trio have clearly stated, namely that they understand and support the need to protect French, both in Canada and in Quebec.
What the members were trying to correct was a serious flaw in Bill C-13 that would have constitutional effects for linguistic minorities across the country.
This flaw is found in the adoption by federal legislation of the recently amended Charter of the French language. Thanks to Bill 96, the Charter preventively invokes the notwithstanding provision, thereby shielding it from legal challenges in the event of a violation of the rights guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Senior government officials repeated in parliamentary committee that Bill C-13, by approving Quebec’s Charter of the French language, would thereby become a federal law dictated by provincial choices.
If Quebec again amended Bill 96 to deprive English-speaking Quebecers of more rights, Ottawa would end up with an official languages law that would, in fact, support it. And any attempt by Ottawa to speak out against the unlimited use of the notwithstanding clause would be seriously undermined.
What the Government of Canada is proposing in Bill C-13 is to create a discriminatory language regime in Quebec that would not apply to the rest of Canada.
By including a reference to the Charter of the French language in the Official Languages ActOttawa would effectively abandon a half-century of official languages policy based on the principle that official languages and official language minority communities have equal rights.
He would transform the Official Languages Act, a quasi-constitutional statute, into legislation designed to protect and promote a single official language – French – while neglecting the language rights of more than one million English-speaking Quebecers. It would also open the door for other provinces to pass their own laws restricting the rights of official language minorities under their jurisdiction.
In October 2022, former Supreme Court Justice Michel Bastarache addressed these concerns before the Senate Committee on Official Languages stating the following: “I am personally opposed to a reference to a provincial law in a federal law. I believe that the federal language regime is very different from the provincial regime. The role of the Commissioner of Official Languages is also very different from that of the Office de la langue française. I would not like federal institutions to be subject to investigations by the Office de la langue française regarding compliance with obligations arising from Quebec laws that have not been adopted by the federal Parliament. »
Trying to avoid constitutional minefields and defending the fundamental rights of official language minorities – the rights of Anglophones in Quebec and of Francophones in the rest of the country – was not, for the MPs, a crusade against the protection of the French language.
They did not deny that French, as determined by the National Assembly, is the official language of Quebec.
They did not deny that Quebec is governed by the Charter of the French language.
They came out in favor of maintaining the Canadian value of linguistic duality – the equality of French and English – and of the historical symmetry of rights, which the two minorities of official language.
Reply from Paul Journet
Mme Ludvig, Emmanuella Lambropoulos has already questioned the decline of French in Quebec. She also led a disinformation campaign on Law 96. These deputies ran for a party that promised a reform of the Official Languages Act (LLO), in which it was in particular a question of better alignment with Bill 101. Their interventions in the parliamentary committee go in the opposite direction of the commitment of their party. You have surely noticed that their position is strongly contested internally in the Liberal Party of Canada, as evidenced by the declaration of Franco-Ontarian Francis Drouin, who denounced their “smoke show”.