Trudeau concerned about decline of French in Quebec, but still has issues with Bill 96

While “very preoccupied” by this week's Statistics Canada report indicating a decline of French in Quebec, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday that he still has reservations about Bill 96.

“Quebec takes its responsibility to protect French in the province very seriously, but it's not only in Quebec that people speak French,” he said at a news conference in the Îles-de-la-madeleine.

“We should ensure that the protection of the French language in Quebec does not hamper the protection of the French language in minority situations across the country.”

Trudeau said there are direct parallels between the protection of francophone minorities in the rest of Canada and the situation of anglophones in Quebec, and that he will always stand for the protection of languages.

The prime minister did not specify whether his government plans to get involved in contesting Bill 96.

Asked to react to the data published Wednesday by Statistics Canada confirming that the demographic power of francophones continued to decline from 2016 to 2021, Trudeau said he shares the concerns of many Quebecers and Canadians about the reduction.

“Although it was a shock to see the numbers, it wasn't really a surprise,” he said, noting the trend has been observed for years.

Trudeau took the opportunity to remind people that his government was the first to recognize the responsibility of the federal government to protect French in Quebec and not just in the rest of Canada.

“We understand that it takes more concerted and (targeted) measures and actions in that regard,” he said.

Statistics Canada published new data from the 2021 census on Wednesday concerning the use of French, English and other languages.

The proportion of Quebecers who speak mainly French at home declined from 79 per cent in 2016 to 77.5 per cent in 2021, the agency said.

The share of Quebecers who have only French as the primary official language spoken also dropped by 1.5 percentage points, from 83.7 to 82.2 per cent, between 2016 and 2021.

During this time, the number of people for whom English is the primary official language spoken continued to rise in the province, from 12 to 13 per cent. That represents more than one million English speakers in Quebec, a first since such data began being compiled by Statistics Canada.