‘Federal Parties Support French-Language Bigotry’

“It’s true that the proportion of people speaking French as a mother tongue has fallen… But that’s true for English, too—the real change is an increase in immigration and in mother tongues that are neither English nor French.”
{And the ‘Globalist’ federal government is not interested in doing anything about that…}

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was briefly tossed the current political football of language laws… And while his answer may not have been exactly what Quebec Premier François Legault wanted to hear—unlike what new ‘Conservative’ {Party} leader Erin O’Toole has said—it suggested that Ottawa is considering giving French some extra legal protection within Quebec. 

“I would like to highlight that I completely agree with the former premiers of Quebec and [with] Quebecers who are concerned by the decline of the French language, and I am as well”,
Trudeau said.

“The Prime Minister was asked in a Tuesday press conference about the two levels of language laws: federal and provincial.

“On the federal level, there’s the “Official Languages Act”, the legislation meant to ensure bilingual federal services across Canada.

“‘Bill 101’, meanwhile, is provincial and is concerned with protecting and promoting French as the primary language in Quebec {by repressing English}—including attention-getting measures like cracking down on English street signs, but also mandating that many Quebec businesses must operate in French as their day-to-day language.

“The CAQ government wants that particular part of the law extended: right now it doesn’t apply to businesses located in Quebec that are regulated by Ottawa, including banks and telecom companies.

“The CAQ government wants them to also be obligated to operate in French, applying ‘Bill 101’s provisions, but it would need federal permission for this. (The province is currently working on a suite of other changes to ‘Bill 101’ that don’t require federal help.)

“O’Toole, elected leader of his party in August, has said several times that he supports the change, including after his first one-on-one meeting with Legault in September, when he said it’s “a priority for me” to protect French.
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/in-quebec-visit-o-toole-says-he-supports-provincial-autonomy-including-ban-on-religious-symbols-1.5104036

“Trudeau was much more circumspect in his comments. He was asked by a ‘Le Devoir’ reporter how he sees the difference between the two laws when it comes to the goal of protecting French in Quebec, and what the ‘Official Languages Act’ would “allow you to do that Bill 101 doesn’t allow you to do”.

“Trudeau answered that an update to the ‘Official Languages Act’ is on the way, but he said the government is also looking at how to help Quebec.

“For Canada to remain a bilingual country, Quebec has to be first and foremost a francophone province”, {Why?}
he told reporters, in French.

“Among other reasons, “that is why we are looking at the ‘modernization’ of the Official Languages Act”, he said.
{It’s impossible to ‘modernize it except by its abolition…}

“This review is due and there will be measures to protect French everywhere, including in Quebec.”

“Then, without going into more details about those plans or about ‘Bill 101’, he segued back into talking about the need to protect French across the country.

“One of Quebec’s top experts in language laws, lawyer Michael Bergman, said this answer sounded like “an attempt to please everybody”. However, it also seems to contain an idea that would be a departure from the way the government normally uses the ‘Official Languages Act’, he said.

“The ‘Act’, “as it exists today… does not give priority to one language over another”, Bergman said. Nor does it specifically consider Quebec—it applies to the whole country.

“What I read in [Trudeau’s] comments is that he’s maybe considering giving a priority of some kind… for the benefit for the French language and Francophone majority in Quebec.”
{Trudeau’s own French bigotry makes this a given…}

“If so, it’s not the first time the Trudeau government has floated the idea that French may need some federal bolstering within Quebec, Bergman said.

“I have not heard a specific statement like Mr. O’Toole’s from the federal ‘Liberal’ {Party} government, but they seem to be hinting at that”,
he said.

“In late September, Melanie Joly, the minister responsible for languages, told Franco-Ontarian news outlet ‘ONFR+’ that the government is “talking about strengthening” the federal law “because we even want to go further, with a new vision…which recognizes the ‘vulnerability’ of French”. She didn’t provide details.

“Language laws have heated up quickly in the last six months as a political topic, but the review of the ‘Official Languages Act’ was underway well before—Joly launched it in 2019, and Bergman said he testified before parliamentary and Senate committees last year for it.

“Six former Quebec Premiers recently signed an open letter supporting the CAQ government’s proposal to extend ‘Bill 101’s provisions. But the statistics around French usage that have worried so many are far from clear. It’s true that the proportion of people speaking French as a mother tongue has fallen, said pollster Jack Jedwab of the ‘Association for Canadian Studies’.

“But that’s true for English, too, he said—the real change is an increase in immigration and in mother tongues that are neither English nor French.

“Bergman said he also thinks the situation is much more complicated.

“I’m fluently bilingual and I function every day in both languages… it is my view that the French language is not in decline in Quebec”,
he said.
“You can play with the numbers: the French language and its use is growing in Montreal and in Quebec. What’s changing is the demographic of who’s using it.”

“Right now, “newcomers, new immigrants, new Canadians, allophones”, are increasingly using French, and young English-speakers also seem to have more French skills than in past generations, he said.
{Because they are FORCED to…}

“To him, ‘Bill 101’ seems to be filling its intended purpose, he said.
“This is more about identity politics.”
{So was ‘Bill 101’…}

–‘Trudeau, ‘concerned’ about French in Quebec, signals he may be open to language law changes’,
Selena Ross, CTV News Montreal, December 19, 2020
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/trudeau-concerned-about-french-in-quebec-signals-he-may-be-open-to-language-law-changes-1.5238502

Protesters opposing language Bill 14 demonstrate outside the office of Quebec Premier Pauline Marois in Montreal, Sunday, February 17, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes.

“The CAQ government’s worries about the French language are off-base, statistically speaking, says one pollster.

“All the indicator says there’s a decline of French in Quebec, particularly in Montreal”,

Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said on Tuesday, as the province announced it will be overhauling ‘Bill 101’ in 2021. It hasn’t said exactly what solutions it has in store, but Jolin-Barrette, who is responsible for the French language, said the problem itself is clear.

“One survey published this summer found that the use of English was increasing in stores in Montreal, while Jolin-Barrette also referred to statistics showing that the proportion of Montrealers whose mother tongue is French has dipped below 50% in recent years.

“But the President of the ‘Association for Canadian Studies’ said that’s not the whole story — and accused the CAQ of pandering to pundits.

“They’ve been persuaded by some media, particularly by Quebecor media, that there’s a serious situation out there in which French is not only in decline but in freefall”,

said Jack Jedwab, the president of the association, which also conducts its own polls.

“The principal evidence that’s given to show the French language is in decline is that there’s a percentage decrease in the extent to which people’s mother tongue is French or the language they speak most often is French in Montreal”,
Jedwab said.

“But, he said, “that’s also true for English, paradoxically”.

“The real change is that there’s a bigger mix of languages in Montreal than ever before, with demographics shifting because of immigration — in other words, there are more people now whose first languages are neither English nor French.

“Jedwab said the numbers also show that more English speakers and “allophones” speak French now than in the past.

“The ‘Liberals’ anglophone affairs’ critic, Greg Kelley, said he’s worried about what the changes to the law could mean and is anxious to hear what they are. Seniors in particular, many of whom are unilinigual English speakers, can be “a little bit intimidated” to deal with Quebec institutions already, he said.

“Kelley said he’s not against protecting and promoting French, but that there are many ways to do that. For instance, he tabled a bill last year to make French classes free for all Quebecers.

“The bill is still on the table at the National Assembly, waiting to be called to be studied”,
he said.”

–‘French dwindling in Quebec? Not exactly, if you crunch the numbers, says expert’,
Angela MacKenzie, CTV News Montreal, November 25, 2020
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/french-dwindling-in-quebec-not-exactly-if-you-crunch-the-numbers-says-expert-1.5204950
From Aug., 2020:
“All eyes in the Quebec legislature seem to be on Montreal, where a new survey found that employers are increasingly asking new hires to have English proficiency. But while the CAQ government says it has a new idea of how to crack down, others say it’s dreaming.

“Precisely, 60% of businesses in Montreal now ask for English skills, according to the survey, which was released just last week.

“The province said immediately that it would look into it. And it’s already found a proposal: to apply the {anti-English} language law ‘Bill 101’ to all federally regulated businesses, which includes things like railways, broadcasters and banks…

“‘Bill 101’ was the {bigoted and hypocritical} legislation that declared French the sole official language in Quebec {And that made a mockery of Canadian so-called ‘language rights’}. Under it, businesses in Quebec with at least 50 employees must use French as their working language…

“A more cynical group sees the government announcement as a bid to appeal to its base during hard times. Most of the businesses that are federally regulated already function in French within Quebec, anyway, they say.

“There is demonstrably not a problem with the treatment of employees or the treatment of the public in regard to language performance in Quebec”,
said Geoffrey Chambers of the ‘Quebec Community Groups Network’, which represents English-speaking groups.
“The English language isn’t a toxic bad thing—it’s an advantage.”

“CAQ leaders say Montreal must fall in line, however, with its vision of a Quebec that’s fully French again {Montreal was never “fully French” except as a small colony of France…}.

–‘Quebec proposes making new group of businesses French-only; critics say that’s impossible’,
Emily Campbell and Selena Ross, CTV News Montreal, August 19, 2020
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-proposes-making-new-group-of-businesses-french-only-critics-say-that-s-impossible-1.5070570
See also:
‘Fake ‘Conservatives’ Support Language Bigotry’ (Quebec/Bill 101) {Dec.1, 2020}:
Right wing of the ‘Liberal’ Party betrays English-speaking Canadians yet again:
   “‘Conservative’ {Party} Leader Erin O’Toole has joined the Bloc Québécois and the New ‘Democratic’ Party in supporting Bill 101 rules for the {forced} use of the French language for federally chartered businesses and activities operating in Quebec… O’Toole spoke only in French during the debate… Aside from O’Toole, all the ‘Conservative’ {Party} speakers during the four-hour debate were Quebec MPs, in an apparent bid to woo voters in the province…”
https://canadiansforlegalequalityblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/fake-conservatives-support-language-bigotry/

‘Feds Pushing French’ (Francophone Immigration) {Oct.30, 2020}:
Another example of blatantly-hypocritical and discriminatory policies that enable the expansion of Francophone communities outside Quebec while ignoring the repression of English-speaking communities inside Quebec – all of it enabled by a flawed and discriminatory Canadian Constitution.
P.S. Why don’t provincial governments take over their own immigration, the way that Quebec has?
   “The federal government will give an advantage to skilled workers who speak French and are applying for permanent residency and immigration to Canada. The decision does not apply to those applying to come to the French-speaking province of Quebec, since that province runs its own immigration program…”
https://canadiansforlegalequalityblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/30/feds-pushing-french/

‘Danger: Bigots At Work!’ (Quebec Language Discrimination) {Dec.11, 2019}:
More blatant language discrimination from French bigots – and our Constitution enables this!:
   “A new language policy will ensure all ministries and organizations offer public services almost exclusively in French.”
https://canadiansforlegalequality.wordpress.com/2019/12/11/danger-bigots-at-work/

‘More Quebec Gov’t Language Bigotry’ (COVID Info) {Jan.11, 2020}:
“English-speaking Quebecers are upset about informational COVID-19 flyers the provincial government distributed last week because they aren’t bilingual… The minister responsible for relations with English-speaking Quebecers tweeted that he will be printing English copies. He and his colleagues are looking for alternative ways to distribute them, perhaps through a food depot that delivers baskets {???}…”
https://canadiansforlegalequalityblog.wordpress.com/2021/01/11/more-quebec-govt-language-bigotry/