CEGEPS give bill a failing grade
Committee warned language criteria may be discriminatory
QUEBEC — The Charter of the French Language appears “amply sufficient” to protect French and it is unnecessary to alter the preamble to Quebec’s charter of rights, the Bill 14 committee has been told.
And the province’s CEGEP federation has come down squarely against making native tongue the determining factor to enter an English college.
Saying the proposed CEGEP admission criteria in Bill 14 is “potentially discriminatory” and would create unsolvable admission headaches, the sole criteria should be a student’s academic record — as it is now, the Fédération des CEGEPs said.
“CEGEPs should not have to bear the burden of alleged anglicization of Montreal and it would be excessive to imagine it can solve it, if this phenomena is something to settle,” Dawson College director general Richard Filion told the committee as part of the federation’s panel of presenters.
The dual messages were delivered Wednesday to the National Assembly committee examining Bill 14.
Thursday will be the last day of hearings for the bill, which has been sliced and diced by dozens of groups and individuals over the last five weeks.
Diane De Courcy, minister responsible for the Charter of the French Language, is to wrap up this part of the process with an afternoon news conference Thursday.
The two opposition parties do not appear to have changed their views whatsoever on the bill. The Liberals are opposed, the Coalition Avenir Québec wants major changes.
De Courcy herself has not pitched a single amendment to her initial bill despite the generally negative reviews it has drawn.
On Wednesday, another key agency, the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, waded into the debate, picking apart key clauses of the bill — some of them rooted in the Parti Québécois hardliner’s psyche.
“Our job is to look at the impact of the changes (proposed),” commission president Gaétan Cousineau told The Gazette on his way into hearings.
Among the commission’s conclusions:
Affirming that French is the official language of Quebec in the preamble of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not necessary because it does not constitute an inherent human value in the generally recognized definition. Its real place is in the Charter of the French Language only.
The same goes for the clause the “right to live and work in French.” It’s a French-language matter.
The right of new arrivals to learn French, however, could fit in the charter of rights but not the preamble.
The commission questions the need to create a new complaint mechanism for people who feel discriminated against or harassed because they don’t know English. Adding a new layer as Bill 14 proposes risks “creating more pitfalls” than anything else because of conflicting jurisdictions. And the rights commission sug- ests amending Article 43 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms so it says “people belonging to ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities have the right to have their own cultural life, practise their own religion or use their own language with other members of their group.”