44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 9, 2022 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, today I am speaking to Bill C-238, an act respecting the French language, which was introduced by the member for Salaberry—Suroît. I thank her for her work on this important piece of legislation.
Bill C‑238 does several things. It amends the Canada Labour Code and certain provisions of the Official Languages Act and the Citizenship Act. It also makes a change to the Canada Business Corporations Act.
As I said in a recent speech in this place, the experts tell us that French is becoming increasingly precarious, even across government and this very government's ministerial offices. Action must be taken immediately and judiciously to achieve the desired effects. In deciding which legislative measures to adopt to protect French, we need to build on existing rights and official language modernization statutes and listen to what official language minority community leaders tell us.
As we know, recognizing official languages tops the list of our most fundamental rights in this country. According to subsection 16(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, “English and French are the official languages of Canada and have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the Parliament and government of Canada”. The charter guarantees that members of the public can communicate with and receive services from the federal government in the official language of their choice. There is no obligation to become bilingual under the charter.
We also need to bear in mind that Quebec has decided to modernize its own legislation to better protect the French language. We must salute the hard work of the members of the Quebec National Assembly who are about vote on and pass Bill 96, an act respecting French, the official and common language of Quebec.
Bill C‑238 has been introduced in a context that has not occurred in Canada for decades. Right now, provincial and federal language laws are being reviewed from top to bottom, including in Canada's only bilingual province, New Brunswick.
As I was saying earlier, Bill C‑238 amends the Citizenship Act in order to ensure, among other things, that permanent residents who ordinarily reside in Quebec must have an adequate knowledge of French in order to obtain citizenship. I would remind the House that these changes to the Citizenship Act are the same as the ones proposed in another bill, Bill C‑223, which the Conservatives supported at second reading before the last election.
In addition to the citizenship aspect, Bill C‑238 also proposes amending the Canada Business Corporations Act so that “the name of a corporation that carries on business in the Province of Quebec shall meet the requirements of the Charter of the French Language”. This proposal needs to be analyzed in relation to what the Charter of the French Language already does in Quebec and especially in relation to the scope it will have once Bill 96 is passed.
Bill C‑238 also proposes amending the Canada Labour Code by adding a new provision just after section 4, which stipulates that “any federal work, undertaking or business operating in Quebec is subject to the requirements of the Charter of the French Language”.
If this amendment is applied, will it be consistent with the rest of the federal legislation, including the new Charter of the French Language? That is the question. It is clear to me that federally regulated businesses in Quebec should not aim for the lowest common denominator. We do not want more of what is happening with Air Canada, CN and so on.
Bill C-238 also proposes amendments to the Official Languages Act to add an undertaking that the Official Languages Act will not obstruct the Charter of the French Language. Is the term “obstruct” sufficiently clear and precise? We certainly must ask ourselves how the new version of the Official Languages Act, which could be passed in a few weeks, will work with the Charter of the French Language in Quebec.
I also note that the measures in section 43 must be implemented in a manner that is consistent with the objectives of the Charter of the French Language. How will the courts rule if this provision is adopted?
I agree with several of the underlying principles of this bill, in particular the vital importance of preserving the French language and stopping its decline. I believe that we all share legitimate and common concerns about making the Official Languages Act a modern, effective act that will achieve its objective of ensuring respect for French and English as the official languages of Canada.
Setting aside the objectives themselves, I believe it is important to point out that, as legislators, we must ascertain the optimal way of implementing these objectives to protect the French language and ensure respect for the official languages. I believe that it is important to keep in mind the progress of the work of the House. Bill C‑238 is being introduced while Bill C-13, which seeks to amend many provisions of the Official Languages Act, is in the process of being passed.
Before I vote on this bill that was introduced not long ago, I plan to carefully go through all of the underlying details regarding the proposed measures. There are a number of angles to consider and I encourage all of my colleagues to do the same. Nicolas Poussin, a 17th-century French painter, once said that anything worth doing is worth doing well. As legislators, we must determine the best way to achieve our objectives. To better protect the French language, we need the best bills and therefore the best possible amendments, all working together as one to create an effective body of law that addresses the problems.
After studying Bill C‑238, we will have to determine whether this bill provides all of the tools required to achieve the objectives that I described. I want my colleagues to have enough time to study this bill in depth. I will keep repeating that if we want our country's bilingualism to remain a unique and appealing feature, with English and French as our two official languages, we must act now to stop the decline of French. We must protect and promote French so that it can continue to develop.
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Madam Speaker, Bill C-238, which was introduced by a member of the Bloc Québécois, includes two proposals on which there is broad consensus in Quebec.
The first part of the bill seeks to amend the Citizenship Act to ensure that permanent residents who reside in Quebec have an adequate knowledge of French in order to obtain citizenship. Under the current legislation, Canada requires knowledge of English or French. Accordingly, a person can get their citizenship and settle in Quebec without knowing how to speak French. Quebec thinks it is only reasonable for people to have a knowledge of its only official language before being granted citizenship.
What my colleague fails to grasp is that people who arrive under the family reunification program will be here for several years before they apply for citizenship. I therefore do not see why we would not encourage them to learn French. That is what the current Quebec government wanted to do in another way by requiring people to pass a French test in order obtain permanent resident status.
A survey showed that three-quarters of Quebeckers believe that the francization of immigrants is vital to the future of Quebec and that a basic knowledge of French should be mandatory in order to live in Quebec.
The first time the Bloc introduced a bill to this effect, it was simply rejected. It was deemed unconstitutional and therefore non-votable, even though the parliamentary law clerks disagreed. We were more or less told that taking measures to integrate immigrants into francophone Quebec was unconstitutional.
We introduced the bill a second time in 2021. This time, it was not declared unconstitutional, but it was defeated because it did not receive the support of the Liberals or the NDP. The only NDP member from Quebec told us that it was a divisive measure that excluded new immigrants. The odd thing is that no one ever says that requiring English is a divisive measure that excludes new immigrants. Our measure is actually the opposite of divisive. The best way to include new immigrants and form a cohesive society is to make sure that they know Quebec's official and common language.
The second part of our bill seeks to apply the Charter of the French Language to federally regulated businesses. This measure has widespread support in Quebec, having been endorsed by all the former premiers, the big city mayors and the major unions. It was the subject of a unanimous motion in Quebec's National Assembly.
The Bloc Québécois has introduced multiple bills to this effect since 2009. The most recent attempt was my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou's bill during the last Parliament. That is the time we came closest to success. The bill passed second reading after receiving the support of all parties except the Liberals. It then died on the Order Paper, because the Liberal Prime Minister called an election. There is still a legal vacuum, meaning federally regulated private businesses are not subject to any regulations.
Through its reform of Bill 101, the Quebec government intends to apply the Charter of the French Language to all companies in Quebec, including federally regulated businesses. However, the Liberal government wants to stop it by making Bill 101 optional, so that companies get to choose between Bill 101 and the federal Official Languages Act.
The Quebec minister responsible for Canadian relations and the Canadian francophonie, who is usually very discreet, even told the federal government to keep its hands off when it comes to Quebec.
When Air Canada representatives appeared before the Standing Committee on Official Languages, they were asked this question and were quick to say that they prefer to be subject to the Official Languages Act.
The Liberals tell us that their new bill modernizing the federal law uses Bill 101 as a model for the Official Languages Act in terms of federally regulated businesses. This is not true. Canada's language law and Bill 101 are based on very different and contrary approaches. Canada's language law, the Official Languages Act, is based on an approach that does not aim to strengthen French in Quebec, but rather to strengthen English-language services and the anglophone community in Quebec.
It is based on what language planning experts around the world call the personality principle, that is, a policy of institutional bilingualism based on individual rights, on the right to choose one official language or the other, that is, English in Quebec.
Throughout the world, it has been noted that this model of language policy allows the stronger language to develop to the detriment of the more vulnerable one. This can be seen in the assimilation rates of francophones outside Quebec, which increase with each census.
The other major approach to language planning is based on collective and territorial rights. It aims to establish an official and common language in a given territory. This is the approach of territorial bilingualism or multilingualism used in Belgium or Switzerland, for example. These are the models that André Laurendeau, who first suggested the Laurendeau-Dunton commission, referred to. Guillaume Rousseau, a lawyer from Quebec who specializes in language law, said that “virtually all language policy experts around the world believe that only a territoriality-based approach can guarantee the survival and development of a minority language”.
The Charter of the French Language is based mainly on this approach, although it has been considerably weakened by legal challenges funded by the federal government and decisions handed down by the federal courts under the Constitution Act, 1982, which imposed the principles of the federal law despite the fact that no Quebec government has ever ratified them.
Bill 101 sought to make French the common language in the workplace, whereas the Official Languages Act gives people the right to work in French or in English. It strengthens bilingualism rather than the French language. For example, Bill 101 protects Quebec workers from reprisals or sanctions if they speak only French. The new federal law includes similar measures with fewer remedies and less effectiveness, but it also protects anglophones who wish to continue working in English in Quebec at federally regulated businesses.
Bill 101 imposes the predominance of French in signage. It seeks to generalize the use of French at every level of the business. There is nothing of the sort in the new Official Languages Act proposed by the Liberals. Their bill does not give French predominance as the language of work, the language of communication with consumers, or the language of signage.
The decline of French in Canada and Quebec is increasingly worrisome. For example, language transfers for allophones are typically toward English. For years, my NDP colleague has been advancing the wrong-headed argument that indicators such as mother tongue and language used at home are unimportant, when every demographer agrees that they are in fact extremely important. They do not exclude anyone; they are linguistic indicators. When used properly, the linguistic indicators, even those relating to language of work and the common language, all point in the same direction. It is a false argument.
As I said, the decline of French in Canada and Quebec is increasingly worrisome. According to Statistics Canada, by 2036, the relative weight of Quebec's French-mother-tongue population could have dropped to 69%, and the weight of Quebeckers who speak French most often at home could have dropped to 73.6%. This means that there will also be a decline in French as the language of work. Quebec has its back to the wall. We cannot go back any farther. What happens to our bill will say a lot about the future of French in Quebec and Canada.
For 52 years, or since always, actually, the biggest adversary of French as the common and official language of Quebec has been the Canadian government. For the first time, the federal government has admitted the obvious: that French is in decline and that the government has a responsibility to promote French across Canada, including in Quebec. Is this just more smoke and mirrors from the Liberals to try to win a few more francophone votes in Quebec?
That seems to be the explanation, because, as we saw, they are not changing their position. They are still against applying Bill 101 to federally regulated businesses. The two measures in our bill will certainly not solve everything, but they will respond to what Quebec is looking for.
In conclusion, if no changes are made to the Official Languages Act, Quebeckers will have to once again ask themselves a critical question that is becoming more and more real: Is the choice between assimilation and an independent Quebec?
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Mr. Speaker, Camille Laurin, father of the Charter of the French Language, would have turned 100 last Friday. To mark the occasion, every minister responsible for the French language over the past 30 years, across party lines, indicated how important it is to be constantly taking action to promote French. That proves that French is in danger.
Bill C-13 will reinforce institutional bilingualism and enable federally regulated businesses to use English instead of French. That is not what Quebeckers want.
Why is Ottawa continuing to undermine Quebec and the protection of French?
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Mr. Speaker, it is French that is in decline in Quebec, not English. It is French that must be protected, not bilingualism.
Bill C-13 prevents Quebec from imposing the Charter of the French Language and instead lets federally regulated businesses choose between French and the Canada-wide bilingual model. That is the very model followed by Air Canada and CN, two federal businesses located in Quebec that are required to provide services in French, but that, despite everything, could not care less about francophones.
Is this really the model that must apply throughout Quebec? If it is, that is unacceptable.
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Mr. Speaker, if they want to work with us, then they need to listen to us a little.
With their new Bill C-13, the Liberals are denying French's uniqueness in a sea of hundreds of millions of anglophones. They are preventing Quebec from applying the Charter of the French Language to all federally regulated businesses. They are not protecting French. They are protecting bilingualism, which is not at all at risk in Quebec, any more than English is. Bilingualism is doing so well that it is undermining French as the common language.
Does the minister realize that her bill does not protect French but instead encourages anglicization?
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