Positive thinking is definitely a good thing when embarking on an endeavor that will require a good dose of courage and determination. However, it should not be confused with jovialism, which risks underestimating the scale of the challenge and giving a false impression of security.
The Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, declared on Sunday that the new action plan on which he and five of his colleagues had been working for 14 months would make it possible to “reverse the decline very quickly”, even if it does not did not want to say how long it will take to see this reversal.
The minister’s good will is beyond doubt, and we would like to share his optimism, but the evolution of demo-linguistic indicators between 2001 and 2021 that his own document highlights reflects a dangerously serious trend. According to him, thanks to the measures that the Legault government has put in place since coming to power in 2018, “the changes have indeed begun”, but it is difficult to see the effects.
In fairness, we must recognize that this government has done more to protect French than all those that preceded it since that of René Lévesque. During her brief mandate, Pauline Marois had tried, but the opposition parties, including the CAQ, had prevented her from taking the stance she would have liked.
Despite its shortcomings, Law 96 has undeniably constituted progress. The question is rather whether it is still possible to ensure an environment conducive to the survival of a French society within the framework of a federation totally dominated by English.
The plan unveiled by Mr. Roberge essentially takes up the measures that the government has taken over the past year. The largest part of the budget, 320 million over five years, will be devoted to the Frenchization of temporary foreign workers. We will still have to find teachers, who are already sorely lacking in schools. And above all hope that Justin Trudeau will agree to slow down the influx of these workers.
It will not be until next year that the Minister of Culture, Mathieu Lacombe, will present his bill aimed at imposing more Quebec content on streaming platforms, the content of which he himself still seems to be unaware of. Here again, the “discoverability” of Quebec cultural content will require close collaboration with federal authorities.
The great novelty of Mr. Roberge’s plan is the creation of a dashboard which will allow annual monitoring of the state of health of French people. There is, however, a serious transparency challenge, with governments having the unfortunate tendency to want to embellish reality.
Recently, the PQ strongly criticized the methodology used in the dashboard that the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, launched two years ago. Some indicators were modified, which made monitoring over time impossible. When The duty highlighted certain “implausibilities” in waiting times in psychiatry, a spokesperson modestly acknowledged that it was necessary to “remain cautious in interpreting the results”.
For decades, the various reports on the French situation have regularly been criticized for distorting reality, either to embellish it or to darken it, each choosing the indicators which can justify what they wish to believe.
A government’s reflex is generally to see the glass half full. Three weeks ago, a study by the Office québécois de la langue française indicated that the proportion of Quebecers using only French at work had decreased by 7 points outside of Montreal between 2016 and 2023. Mr. Roberge instead noted that that of anglophones working exclusively or generally in French had increased by 5 points. “This is an advance that was made possible thanks to Bill 96,” he said, without however explaining why this same law had not had the same effect on the working language of French speakers.
Unsurprisingly, the PQ spokesperson, Pascal Bérubé, described his plan as a “public relations operation” which will not be able to slow down the decline of French, much less reverse the trend. His colleague from Québec solidaire, Ruba Ghazal, more specifically criticized him for not having imposed compulsory francization in the workplace.
The Liberal MP for Bourassa-Sauvé, Madwa-Nika Cadet, declared that the CAQ plan “cruelly lacked vision and ambition”. When we know that the PLQ voted against the adoption of law 101 in 1977 and that it has systematically opposed all attempts to strengthen it since then, it could have been a little embarrassing.