Opinion: In Quebec, language is not a problem to be solved
The 1867 British North America Act created the geopolitical entity that, today, we call the Quebec nation.
In 1867, Quebec was populated by a French-speaking majority and an English-speaking minority. French and English had been spoken in what became the province of Quebec for over a century. This reality explains the BNA Act's constitutional guarantee of the equality of the French and English languages pertaining to the most important institutions of our democracy: the Canadian Parliament, the Quebec legislature and our courts.
This institutional bilingualism remains the linguistic baseline of Quebec. We have the right to speak either language in our federal Parliament and our Quebec National Assembly. Laws must be passed in English and French and are equally authoritative. Civil litigants, criminally accused persons and witnesses can testify in English or French in our courts.
The BNA Act provided the French- and English-speaking people of Quebec with the legal framework to chart a future — together. This blank page awaited a future fraught with social, economic and linguistic challenges, generated in no small manner by the economic model that Quebec and Canada chose to continue after Confederation: capitalism.
Capitalism creates wealth, but also inequities. Quebec's free market economy had an impact on language as well as on our environment and the health and welfare of workers, and produced income disparities. These failings prompted the progressive reforms of the 1960s and '70s. For the first time in its history, Quebec was required to legislate on language — a daunting task for that era.
Canadian federalism did not prevent Quebec from redressing linguistic imbalances requiring action. The 1977 Charter of the French Language was transformational legislation that confirmed and enhanced French as the official — but not exclusive — language of Quebec.
As the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was only adopted on April 17, 1982, the separatist Parti Québécois government possessed unfettered jurisdictional power in 1977 to abolish English education. That it did not do this speaks to the political legitimacy of the English language in the Quebec of 1977 and the pertinence of the English language in the new version of Quebec about to unfold.
The inconvenient truth that could not be ignored in 1977, or today, is that Quebec is a de facto bilingual society. French- and English-speaking people have lived here for centuries, building Quebec — a shared history of collaboration and accomplishment that certain politicians prefer to ignore rather than celebrate.
A bilingual society is not one in which everyone must speak both languages or in which two unilingual peoples live separate, compartmentalized lives. In a bilingual society, people and their languages intermingle. Relationships are formed, including ones in which bilingual children are raised. People may become bilingual, or not. Many make that choice. Many will continue to do so.
New France comprised 70,000 French subjects as of the 1759 conquest. Quebec's population today includes approximately eight million francophones and one million anglophones, most of whom speak French. Human rights lawyer Julius Grey rightly opined in Le français en déclin? (Corbeil, Marcoux, Piché, 2023) that French will never disappear from Quebec as long as French-language education remains mandatory and free.
No linguistic exigency justifies the egregiousness of Bill 96 and the pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause exempting it from judicial scrutiny.
In Quebec, language is not a problem to be solved. Language will remain a dynamic reality requiring the modulation of policies over time. The crafting of linguistic equilibriums that respect both French and English is a hallmark of Quebec history. A heritage repudiated by the Coalition Avenir Québec government.
Only political activism can forge a path back to linguistic equilibriums as the way forward for the Quebec nation.
So, let's get active — now!
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