Secretariat for anglo relations makes its mark

Skeptics should review what has been accomplished, Helena Burke writes.

It’s been a long road for the English-speaking community of Quebec since Bill 22 made French the official language of the province in 1974. Bill 101, two independence referendums and countless other events soon followed. The socio-linguistic context that has emerged has changed the English-speaking community of Quebec irrevocably.

Close to half a million anglophones have left the province, many of the community’s institutions have been assimilated or transformed, and the struggles with a host of socio-economic problems, ranging from adequate care for seniors to high rates of youth unemployment, have devitalized many communities.

I am among the many English-speaking Quebecers who understand that it was necessary to protect, preserve and promote the French language in Quebec, surrounded as it is by a sea of North American English. I just didn’t think that the English-speaking community in Quebec — my community — would end up paying such a steep price for that commitment.

Now, however, I think we’ve turned the corner with the creation of the Secretariat for Relations with English-speaking Quebecers. It was hard to imagine even five years ago that such an asset would exist.

The spark that lit the fire of change was a meeting in 2017 between the Englishspeaking community in the Gaspé and Premier Philippe Couillard. Despite continuous representations by English-speaking organizations, previous calls to the provincial government for change had simply not been acted upon. Since seeing the impact of provincial-government neglect firsthand in the Gaspé, the premier has taken the concerns of the English-speaking community to heart, as evidenced not only by the creation of the secretariat, but also by a change in attitude starting at the top: “Your issues are Quebec issues,” he has said on numerous occasions in referring to the English-speaking communities.

Those who are still skeptical would do well to review what has been accomplished since the Secretariat was established in November 2017. The secretariat is part of the Ministère du Conseil exécutif, a privileged position for any new program, and one that stands to help it carry out its mandate. An Englishspeaking minister, Kathleen Weil, was nominated to lead the way forward, and a fully fledged secretariat devoted to the English-speaking community has been started from scratch and fully staffed.

A series of pan-provincial engagement sessions and dozens of town-hall meetings were held by Weil along with other ministers, including the premier himself. A sixyear, $24.5-million commitment was passed in the 2018 provincial budget and more than half of that has already been allocated to programs and projects over the next three years (including, to be transparent, grants totalling $250,000 over three years to my organization).

The Quebec Community Groups Network now has resources to pursue policy changes and program development, a long list that starts with the miserably low rate of anglophone participation in the civil service through to Emploi- Québec, which receives masses of federal money, but pays little attention to the Official Language Minority Community it is supposed to serve.

The English Language Arts Network has additional funds to support English-speaking artists, some of whom are world renowned, such as Arcade Fire. Literacy Quebec can get to work on empowering its long under-resourced network that is an essential precursor to educational attainment. Seniors Action Quebec can better support those who look after seniors and the Community Health and Social Services Network can now help more than two dozen community groups to develop programs and services on a local basis.

The secretariat, with its growing influence on other government departments and its funding program, isn’t the be all and end all, but it provides a solid set of tools that the English-speaking community can put to work to ensure its own vitality. Helena Burke is executive director of the Council for Anglophone Magdalen Islanders (CAMI).