Over the past year, Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette has adjusted the provisions of his bill reforming the Charter of the French language. The duty played the “96 differences game”. The solution.
The minister responsible for the French language has remained deaf in recent months to repeated requests from the Parti Québécois (PQ) and unions of French-speaking CEGEP teachers to apply “Bill 101” to the college education network. Instead, he decided to limit the annual growth of English-speaking CEGEPs, before going further by capping their intake capacity. Going forward, the number of places in English-language institutions cannot exceed 17.5% of the total network capacity in 2019-2020.
The Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) accuses the CAQ government of doing “through the back door” what the PQ proposes to do by extending the scope of the Charter of the French language to CEGEPs. “For some, we complicate access to higher education, whereas we should always, in all circumstances, remove the barriers to education,” laments MP André Fortin. However, in April 2021, the PLQ proposed in its plan “Because French is our language, our strength and our future”, accompanied by 27 proposals, nothing less, to “maintain the current number of students equivalent full-time in Anglophone CEGEPs”.
This winter, the PLQ convinced Simon Jolin-Barrette to amend Bill 96 in order to “make the success of a minimum of three courses in French conditional on obtaining the diploma of college studies” in an English-speaking CEGEP. …before begging him on his knees to back off.
The Caquiste minister bowed to the PLQ – and the Fédération des cégeps, according to which the liberal-inspired amendment threatened to push thousands of students “unable to graduate”… and to trigger a “social crisis “. Students “rights holders” will be able to choose between courses specific to their study program in French and French as a second language courses, has determined the CAQ government in the home stretch of the study of Bill 96.
Beyond CEGEPs…
The members of the Committee on Culture and Education also adopted an amendment to specify in Quebec legislation that the French language is “the only” common language in Quebec. The objective: “remove[r] any ambiguity” on the unilingual French character of Quebec, argued the instigator of the amendment, PQ MP Pascal Bérubé.
On the other hand, they specified that Bill 96 would in no way affect the provision of health services in English, guaranteed by the Act respecting health services and social services.
Moreover, Minister Jolin-Barrette has given himself the necessary tools to remove the bilingualism requirement for certain judicial positions, to which the Chief Justice of the Court of Quebec, Lucie Rondeau, is however attached.
If certain parts of the bill have been reviewed and corrected since the start of its examination by the National Assembly, eight months ago, several others remain unchanged. Once passed, Bill 96 will amend Canada’s Constitution Act, 1867 to affirm that “Quebecers form a nation” whose common language is French. This will, moreover, be “clearly predominant” in public display, promises Simon Jolin-Barrette.