Former Quebec premier worried about future of French language
MONTREAL • Quebec’s first female premier has found a new role since leaving office: that of champion for the French language.
Pauline Marois, who governed from 2012 to 2014, told The Canadian Press that she’s worried there’s been some backsliding in the use of French, as noted by the province’s language watchdog, the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF).
While there have been no dramatic changes, French-language advocates cite the prevalence of bilingual greetings in stores, job postings requiring candidates to know English, and a one per cent decline in the number of Quebecers who list French as their only native language.
Taken together, these small changes paint a worrying portrait, Marois said.
“Without it being dramatic, that’s how we finally let things go, gradually,” she said in a phone interview. “We say to ourselves: ‘it’s not so important, since we don’t see a tragedy on the horizon.’ ”
This past spring, the OQLF reported that the number of businesses who offered customer greetings in French only had declined from 84 to 75 per cent between 2010 and 2017.
In 2018, almost half of customers reported having been greeted in a language other than French at least once in the last six months, which represented a 27 per cent increase from 2010.
Marois also noted that 80 per cent of Quebecers said French was the language they used most often at work in 2016, which was two per cent lower than in 2011.
Marois said she wasn’t sure the province needed to create a French language commissariat to independently oversee the French-language watchdog, as François Legault’s government has proposed.
In the short term, Marois advocates extending Quebec’s French-language charter, Bill 101, to apply to small and medium businesses with between 10 and 50 workers, since that’s where many new immigrants work. Legault’s government remains opposed to such a change.