Fallacy over fact: Overturning a half-century of Canadian Official Languages policy

Inearly fell off my chair when I heard in the Throne Speech that the long-awaited Official Languages Act (OLA) overhaul would now scrap linguistic equality and French would now be prioritized over English. The federal government has also proposed that a new French-predominant OLA, or Bill 101 as advocated by the Bloc, NDP, Conservative, and the Quebec government, will now apply to all federally regulated workers in Quebec.

All these proposals are based on false premises: that renouncing linguistic equality is necessary, that French is threatened in Quebec, and that federally regulated labour markets discriminate against francophones. However, the proposals further highlight the real language and labour issue in Quebec: the poverty and socio-economic exclusion of nonfrancophones.

The reversal of official-languages policy

The Throne Speech justified this position with the intellectually, politically and legally irrelevant anchor of 8 million Francophones living within 360 million North American Anlgos. This is the minoritization complex. French-speakers are a powerful majority with socio-economic privilege, educational, media and political control of Quebec and a powerful minority within Canada. Francophone minorities outside Quebec grapple with a host of socioeconomic issues, but are buoyed by progressive policy measures. We should improve upon them with funding and new programs. This support does not mean extinguishing the equality of

English and French. Nor does it mean extinguishing the Canadian dream that all of us can live prosperous, happy, meaningful lives and enjoy services and legal rights equally in the English and French language from Halifax to Victoria to Iqaluit. This dream, so fundamental to our national identity, must be recaptured with bold visions.

The notion that French is threatened in Quebec

The intellectual, legal and rhetorical underpinnings of restrictive language laws are held together by one unassailable myth: that French is threatened in Quebec. Statistics show the expansion of French and Frenchspeakers. Never, in human history, have more people (95 per cent) spoken French in Quebec. While there are minor declines in the percentage of mother-tongue Francophones in Quebec, these are associated with more Allophone immigration.

Federal labour jurisdictions are not an anglicizing force

The vast majority of these workers work in French, and have the right to do so. There are 171,000 employees under federal jurisdiction in Quebec, representing 4.4 per cent of all employees. These employees fall under three separate regimes; the OLA, voluntary application of Bill 101, and ones without a linguistic regime. Of these workers, 36,400 are subject to the OLA. Around 55 per cent (63,411) of employees not subject to the OLA work for companies that have chosen to apply Bill 101. Some big names do so: Bell, Rogers, RBC, CIBC, TD, and Scotiabank. Census reports that 95.8 per cent of all Francophones reporting using French at work “most often,” 0.8 per cent never use French and 70 per cent never use English. Seventy-one per cent of employees in federal businesses in Montreal work mainly in French, with 20 per cent working in English. For unregulated businesses, “French seems to be the language of work and of internal communications in federal jurisdiction private-sector companies in Quebec…” So, definitively the language of work in Quebec is French. Changes to the current ‘triple entente’ will actually work to diminish the language of work exclusively in French and the right to work in either language. A critical question for the federal government is: are we going to fire, or not hire, people for not speaking French?

The French predominant OLA would be unconstitutional

The new OLA, or Bill 101, would be unconstitutional under the equality of English and French provisions of the Canadian Charter. The proposed legislation runs contrary to written and unwritten constitutional principles of bilingualism and respect for minorities in the Canadian constitution.

Let’s put to bed the myth of the wealthy Anglophone

The English-speaking community is defined by a declining population, an aging population, and what is described as the “missing-middle” and a “missing-out-middle” with a low proportion of people aged 1544 and lower levels of income and employment than their Frenchspeaking counterparts. Over 50 per cent of mother-tongue English-speakers have left Quebec compared to only 4 per cent of Francophones. Englishspeakers are substantially poorer than Francophones, with 38.5 per cent earning under $20,000 annually vs. 31.8 per cent for Francophones. Regarding median income, Anglophone men earn $29,405 compared to $31,412 for Francophone males. English-speaking women are slightly advantaged at $20,982$ compared to $20,351 for Francophones. English-speakers are much more likely to have a higher education, with 29.6 per cent having a university degree vs. 19.2 per cent of Francophones, and 65.2 per cent of Anglophones vs. 64.3 per cent of Francophones are in the labour market. However, unemployment is greater for Anglophones (8.9 per cent) despite this, vs. 6.9 per cent of Francophones. The level of bilingualism for Englishspeakers is high, at 69 per cent.

The new OLA will only compound these issues and penalize a population that requires assistance and understanding. Something is seriously wrong. A highly educated, bilingual population that is significantly poorer, more unemployed despite higher workforce participation rates and a majority of them have left for greener pastures. Systemic discrimination exists against Englishspeakers in Quebec labour markets. We need an OLA based on equality of languages, applied to all federal labour markets, and a nationwide provincial legislative framework for language rights. Governments need to commit to progressive programs for Englishspeaking Quebecers to ameliorate a socio-economic situation that exists for no other linguistic group in the country. It is costing us precious human capital and, more importantly, human dignity.

If you support language equality, please contact your local MP to stop these proposals.

Please see www.languageequality.ca for more information.