The year 2024 will have confirmed that the allusions of the new Official Languages Act (OLA) to a recognition of the minority character of French Quebec in Canada will not have changed its essentially anglicizing purpose. The admitted responsibility of the federal government to also protect and defend French in Quebec was nothing more than an electoral mirage.
Minister Bendayan’s first statements and Justin Trudeau’s most recent speeches reiterate their objectives of “protecting” Anglophones in Quebec and Francophones outside Quebec.
This vision is shared by all pan-Canadian parties, whether the Conservatives, the NDP or the Greens.
Anglicisation
It’s a fool’s bargain that has been going on for 55 years. Ottawa claims to provide bilingual federal services and sprinkles inadequate subsidies to counterbalance the chronic underfunding of French-speaking institutions by the English-speaking provinces. It is a lure used by the federal government to actively support the anglicization of Quebec.
The study of the public accounts of Canada that I published in 2023 showed that from 1995 to 2022, more than $2.08 billion of our taxes were granted to develop the English-speaking community and services in English in Quebec. Nothing for the promotion and defense of French, which is nevertheless the only official language threatened in Quebec, and barely a few crumbs to improve the French skills of English speakers (6%).
The most recent public accounts indicate a slight increase in funding in Quebec ($102 million in 2023 and $104 million in 2024), still distributed as unequally…
Failure
Furthermore, in 2024, examples of the failure of bilingualism in federal services are everywhere in the news, from the Governor General to Michael Rousseau, including senior officials in bilingual positions who do not speak French, to the Court supreme which refuses to translate its judgments prior to the 1970s to the federal courts which threaten to stop translating their judgments for lack of funding, to Canada Post which hires unilingual English speakers almost everywhere in Quebec, to name just a few.
Quebec accepted that the new LLO would allow businesses under federal jurisdiction to evade the application of the Charter of the French language, in exchange for the addition of certain elements of Bill 101 for businesses that would instead decide to subject to federal law. But the Act on the use of French within private companies under federal jurisdiction is still not in force.
During this time, the assimilation of French speakers intensified in Canada and reached Quebec. The year 2024 will have demonstrated once again that only the Bloc Québécois defends the official and common language of the Quebec nation, and that independence remains the only way to ensure its future.
Photo BERNARD THIBODEAU
Mario Beaulieu, MP for La Pointe-de-l’Île, spokesperson for the Bloc Québécois on official languages
