A chaotic meeting of a parliamentary committee in Ottawa did not make it possible to guarantee, on Tuesday, the holding of a debate in good and due form on one of the main demands of Quebec regarding the Liberal reform of the Act respecting official languages.
“I think it’s important to be able to debate the proposals, especially this one,” dropped Bloc Québécois MP Mario Beaulieu.
Along with his colleagues from the Conservative Party, the elected member of the Bloc Québécois asked for more time for the clause-by-clause study of Bill C-13 at the Standing Committee on Official Languages. The text aims, among other things, to legislate the use of French in businesses under federal jurisdiction in Quebec.
The members of the committee agreed on Tuesday to add six and a half hours of study in order to examine some fifty proposed amendments. But, to the great disappointment of Mario Beaulieu and the Conservatives, the elected members of the Liberal Party and the NDP rejected a motion that was to put forward the issue of federally chartered companies in Quebec.
debates about debates
All the opposition parties say they want to amend C-13 to specify that businesses under federal jurisdiction in Quebec must be subject to the Quebec Charter of the French language. In its current form, the bill offers these companies the choice between the obligations imposed by Ottawa and those imposed by Quebec.
However, it is not certain that the Standing Committee on Official Languages has enough time to clearly present everyone’s points of view on the matter. Tuesday’s meeting was originally scheduled to be the eighth and final scheduled meeting to discuss proposed changes to C-13. But only about twenty amendments have been voted on so far.
However, sound problems among the interpreters delayed the start of the meeting by an hour and a half, then the remaining 40 minutes were monopolized by debates on the addition of study time. The members of the committee multiplied the proposals and the points of order, sometimes interrupting each other in a hubbub which continued until the final vote.
Liberal MPs were outraged by a Bloc motion that suggested adding meetings as long as all the suggested amendments to C-13 were not considered. “I remind the committee that if the pre-study [du projet de loi] had been made [comme le Parti libéral le suggérait l’an dernier]we would not be in this mess, ”launched Franco-Ontarian Liberal MP Francis Drouin.
NDP member of the committee, Manitoba MP Niki Ashton, proposed limiting the study of C-13 to two additional meetings, while withdrawing any guarantee that the proposed changes to section 54 of the act — the one on businesses under federal jurisdiction in Quebec — be debated. All Liberal members of the committee supported his proposal, guaranteeing its success.
The Liberals want to “take action”
“We added extra time, we are going to do the debates. There is not much to add. We heard the witnesses, the points of view […]. It’s been years. It’s time to take action,” said elected Liberal Marc Serré, who accused the opposition of wasting the Standing Committee on Official Languages’ time.
If the committee uses up all the time allocated to study C-13, the remaining amendments will be voted on in bulk — with the possibility of amending them, but without debate.
The Bloc Québécois and the Conservative Party of Canada are confident that they can modify the bill to the satisfaction of Quebec. The leader of the New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, meanwhile publicly reiterated his support for the application of Bill 101 to businesses under federal jurisdiction in Quebec.
Introduced last year, federal Bill C-13 should modernize Canada’s Official Languages Act, in particular by promoting the use of French in private businesses under federal jurisdiction.
Quebec Liberal elected officials have already threatened to oppose the text during the final vote before Parliament, at third reading, judging that its references to the Quebec Charter of the French language are too significant. They argue that this charter, recently amended by Quebec’s Bill 96, has no place in a federal bill.