To curb the decline of French, the Parti Québécois (PQ) is proposing a major strengthening of the French language that would increase the share of French-speaking content on digital platforms like Prime and Netflix to 30% via the repatriation of the powers of the Broadcasting Council. and Canadian Telecommunications (CRTC).
“There is no measure that has made it possible to frame […] the Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, ”lamented the PQ candidate in Marie-Victorin, Pierre Nantel, during a press briefing in front of the former offices of the Quebec Office of the French Language (OQLF), in Montreal. “The agreement with Netflix didn’t yield much and do you see Quebec content on Amazon Prime? »
To reverse the trend, the PQ wants to create a Quebec counterpart to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and the creation of a new “office for the promotion of Quebec culture”. Saying to be inspired by France, Mr. Nantel said that Quebec could require 30% French content.
This measure is part of a vast plan to adopt, within the first 100 days of a PQ mandate, a substantial reform of the Charter of the French language.
“In the short term, the people of Quebec are threatened with seeing their language fade away,” said PQ leader Paul St-Pierre-Plamondon. “In the long term, it is the very existence of the Quebec people that is at stake.”
The “consenting” CAQ in decline
On the program: the application of Bill 101 in CEGEPs, the recruitment of 100% Francophone economic immigrants and the modification of the bilingual status of cities with less than 33% Anglophones.
“The Coalition Avenir Québec has decided to consent to our decline,” pleaded Mr. St-Pierre-Plamondon in front of a monument dedicated to the father of Bill 101, Camille Laurin.
Law 96 on the language that the CAQ passed in the spring does not go far enough, he argues. “According to all the experts, [elle] will not reverse the decline of French”. “Bill 96” did not apply to CEGEPs and gave bilingual municipalities with less than 50% Anglophones the option of maintaining or revoking their status. According to a recent compilation, most of the 90 municipalities concerned have maintained it.
The latest census showed that the use of the French language was declining in Quebec, with the share of the population speaking it at home falling from 79% to 77.5% between 2016 and 2021.
More details will follow.