Franco-Ontarian MP Francis Drouin will not seek a new mandate in the next general election. He plans to complete his term.
His office confirmed to The Canadian Press this information, first reported by Radio-Canada.
Mr. Drouin, a Liberal who has represented the riding of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, near Ottawa, since 2015, has been in the spotlight in recent months for calling two witnesses campaigning for the protection of French “full of shit.”
During this heated exchange at the Official Languages Committee, the two witnesses explained, based on Statistics Canada data, that when a Francophone or allophone attends an English-speaking university or CEGEP, this significantly increases the probability of leading their life in English.
MP Drouin made the controversial remarks after asking them if they sincerely believe “that the big problem with anglicization in Quebec is McGill and Dawson College.”
While Ontario’s Francophones supported Mr. Drouin by calling him an “ally,” things were different in Quebec. Premier François Legault denounced a “total lack of judgment” and his Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, judged that the entire Liberal government of Justin Trudeau had “some soul-searching” to do by refusing to “condemn” these “absolutely unworthy” remarks.
Despite the apologies, the Bloc members then tried to remove him from his position as president of the Canadian section of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Francophonie, and by extension from the same functions he held internationally. Hordes of Liberal elected officials, many of them English-speaking, foiled the attempt by joining the group to come to his rescue.
A year earlier, Mr. Drouin had come to the defence of the bill on the modernization of official languages by criticizing some of his own colleagues in the ” Montreal island “to make” a show of shameful smoke”.
In the last election, in 2021, Mr. Drouin received 46.1% of the support. The Conservative Party of Canada candidate obtained 33.3% and the New Democratic Party candidate 10.7%.