A TALE OF TWO ONLINE SOLITUDES
The revamped Vaudreuil-Dorion municipal website doesn’t offer much English-language content. In fact, neither did the city’s previous version of its website.
However, that didn’t stop the website from becoming the first salvo in a political battle involving longtime Mayor Guy Pilon and declared rival Pierre Séguin in the run-up to the Nov. 5 election.
The newly stylized, userfriendlier website went up last week. Under a tab on the home page titled “English,” there is an explanation that the municipality of 38,117 residents doesn’t have official bilingual status under Quebec’s language charter. There are links to six PDF documents in English, the same English documents that appeared on the old website.
They include the municipal bulletin, the activities program, the municipal taxes bulletin and a leaflet on the emerald ash borer, an invasive bug threatening trees in the Montreal region and across parts of North America.
General information regarding security and health issues is also provided in English, said Jennifer Genest, city communication agent.
Pilon told the Montreal Gazette he is willing to add more English-language online content if residents demand it, as long as the additions comply with the language charter.
“Because we respect the (language) law, there are some people (running) in the coming election who decided to jump on it, to try to find something to come against us,” the mayor said.
Pilon, now in his third term as mayor, defeated Mario Tanguay by a wide margin in 2013 and won two previous elections by acclamation. He will seek reelection and is unveiling his slate of councillors this week.
Séguin, who plans to announce his slate of councillor candidates later, said the English-speaking community won’t be forgotten in his program.
The percentage of English speakers in Vaudreuil-Dorion is growing every year, Séguin said. That’s why the city should have a French version and an English version of its website, he said.
“It is my personal opinion that the English-speaking community is, together with the Frenchspeaking community, the basis of our city and its future,” he said. “English-speaking citizens are not second-class citizens.”
According to a 2006 Statistics Canada community profile, a little more than 20 per cent of Vaudreuil-Dorion’s population spoke English at home, while just over 60 per cent of residents had knowledge of both English and French. Statistics Canada will release updated information from the 2016 census in August.
Quebec’s language charter grants bilingual status only to municipalities where more than 50 per cent of residents declare English as their mother tongue. Hudson and Pincourt are two OffIsland municipalities that have bilingual status under the charter.
If English-speaking VaudreuilDorion residents want an online platform with more English content, they don’t have to wait for the upcoming fall election campaign. They can make their voices heard during the public question period at the next city council meeting, which is set for Monday at 7:30 p.m.
If officials are interested, neighbouring St-Lazare sets a fine example of how to incorporate more English content online without facing a backlash from Quebec’s language police.
BEATING THE STATUS QUO
St-Lazare offers significant English-language content, even though it doesn’t have bilingual status under the language charter and has over the years been targeted by the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF).
In 2003, the OQLF informed the municipality that the town’s logo, adopted in 1993, didn’t comply with the province’s language guidelines.
The 1993 logo, with green trees and a horse image in the background, used the abbreviation “St.” in the town’s name, while the language bureaucrats stipulated it should be written in its long form. In 2008, the town complied and officially updated its logo, used on stationary and signs, to read Saint-Lazare.
The OQLF also advised the town it could not post bilingual welcome signs, so a previous town council opted to black out the English wording under “vous acceuille” on existing signs instead of paying for replacements. The city has since opted to replace them but without a “welcome” or “vous acceuille” message. In 2012, the OQLF followed up on an anonymous complaint and then ordered the municipality to comply with the charter of the French language. All official documents, such as tax bills, mailed from town hall have to be issued in French only.
In 2015, St-Lazare launched a virtual online municipal bulletin with information in both of Canada’s official languages.
According to Statistics Canada, about 40 per cent of St-Lazare’s population had identified English as their mother tongue in the previous census. St-Lazare, like Vaudreuil-Dorion, doesn’t have bilingual status.
When it comes to St-Lazare’s website or Facebook page, the information is provided in English and French but on two separate platforms, so technically it is not bilingual, city spokeswoman Geneviève Hamel said.
“We are also entitled to respond to a user (website or other social media) in English as long as we also provide a French answer along with it. We are not allowed to mass-mail a bilingual document or English document. We may send a personalized English document to someone who as requested it but in a summarized fashion,” she added.
“Nothing in the charter says a unilingual town is not allowed to provide English content. We are allowed to provide any English content we want, just not bilingual, English and French side by side.”