Quebec towns protecting right to serve residents in English
Bilingualism a ‘core value in all aspects of municipal life,’ says municipality
Quebec’s new language law has dozens of municipalities in the province shoring up their bilingual status, with few considering giving up the right to serve their citizens in both English and French.
Almost 90 cities, towns or boroughs in Quebec are considered officially bilingual, a designation allowing them to offer services, post signage and mail communications in the country’s two official languages. Jurisdictions without this status must communicate only in French, with few exceptions.
Bill 96, the new language law that came into effect June 1, proposes that a municipality’s bilingual status be revoked in places where fewer than 50 per cent of citizens have English as a mother tongue. However, a bilingual town or city can avoid losing its status by passing a resolution within 120 days of receiving notice from the province.
Scott Pearce, the mayor of the township of Gore, north of Montreal, said choosing to remain bilingual was an easy decision for his town of just over 1,700 people. “We were founded here by the Irish in the 1800s, so it’s part of our history — speaking English and English culture,” he said.
While the percentage of residents in Gore who speak English as a mother tongue has dropped from over 50 per cent to around 20 per cent, he said maintaining bilingualism is popular among Frenchspeaking and English-speaking citizens alike. Language, he said, “has never been an issue here.”
Pearce, who represents bilingual municipalities at the province’s federation of towns and cities — Fédération Québécoise des municipalités — said most of the mayors he’s spoken with plan on passing similar resolutions, or have already done so. “I talked to mayors from all over the province, and they’re really proud of the bilingual status and how their communities — English and French — get along,” he said.
While Bill 96 has been criticized by groups representing Englishspeakers, Pearce, who is married to a sitting legislature member, says he believes that in this instance, the governing party has done the towns a favour by giving them an easy way to formalize their status.
A spokesperson for the province’s language office, the Office québécois de la langue française, said in an email that notices would be sent “shortly” to towns that no longer meet the 50 per cent threshold.
While they can offer services in English, “a municipality recognized as bilingual must nevertheless ensure that its services to the public are available in the official language of Quebec, French,” Nicolas Trudel wrote in an email.
Kirkland, a city in the Montreal area, described bilingualism as a “core value in all aspects of municipal life,” while Ayer’s Cliff, Que., in the Eastern Townships, said it was “essential to the character of the municipality and as testimony to the historical presence of the two communities, anglophone and francophone.”