44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 12, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, French is the language of love.
I want my message to anglophones in Quebec to be very clear. Bill C-13 in no way removes any rights from English-speaking Quebeckers.
With this legislation, the modernization of the Official Languages Act, we want to make sure that we do all we can to protect and to promote both our official languages. That Canada has two official languages is a comparative advantage to other countries. However, with this piece of robust legislation, we want to protect our communities and address the decline of French.
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- May/12/23 11:24:56 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is hard to follow the Liberals when it comes to the Century Initiative and their goal of increasing the Canadian population to 100 million people. They say they reject the initiative, and yet they refuse to support our motion to reject the initiative. They say they deny the initiative's target of 500,000 people per year, and yet their own target for 2025 is 500,000 people. The Liberals say they are shutting the door on the Century Initiative, but in reality they are keeping it wide open and doing exactly as it says.
Do they take Quebeckers for fools?
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- May/12/23 11:25:31 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let me be perfectly clear. The Century Initiative is not a government policy. The government does not endorse the findings of this independent group. The government does not have a goal of increasing Canada's population to 100 million people. We have announced our immigration thresholds for the next three years. These thresholds were set according to the needs of Canadians and Quebeckers.
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- May/12/23 11:26:02 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to believe the Liberals when they say that they did not take a page from the Century Initiative, because their immigration targets are identical. However, we will give them the benefit of the doubt. We do not yet know the Liberal targets starting in 2026. Perhaps they will not copy the Century Initiative targets after 2025.
Can they promise Quebeckers that their target starting in 2026 will be lower than the Century Initiative target of 500,000 per year, or, on the contrary, will their silence be confirmation that they are indeed copying the Century Initiative?
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- May/12/23 12:42:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. We did indeed work well with him. I think we have done everything possible in the circumstances. We could have gone farther, by naming the Treasury Board as the central agency in charge of implementation, for instance. Many of the amendments sought by the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne, the FCFA, fell by the wayside.
The Liberal-NDP coalition seems to have been fairly effective, although I concede that the NDP supported the amendments we managed to table, because it took the combined efforts of all the opposition parties. However, we could gone a lot farther. The NDP's Sherbrooke declaration and support for Quebeckers' self-determination did not seem to count for much during the committee debates.
To get back to Minister Roberge, I think the people of Quebec made their own calculations. It was not what they had asked for. They wanted control of language planning and wanted the Charter of the French Language to take precedence. They even suggested excluding the concept of an anglophone minority altogether. Although they did not get these things, they still secured significant changes in the Official Languages Act in relation to federally regulated businesses.
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- May/12/23 12:47:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I could not have put it better myself. The Bloc Québécois certainly supports francophone and Acadian communities. We think what has been happening for the past few years is totally unacceptable. There was a strategy that led to the presentation of action plans on official languages that promoted that. Again, it is the same thing.
A journalist asked a question and a senior official answered on condition of anonymity. That is how we were able to find out that $800 million was going to be allocated to English in Quebec. I found out because I combed through the public accounts. I think that Quebeckers do not agree with this. Francophones from Quebec do not agree, and we are going to make it known. If we get enough people to rally behind the Government of Quebec and the Bloc Québécois, the federal government is going to have to change this. Otherwise, as I said, we will soon have to resume marching toward Quebec's independence.
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