Quebec’s new language law has dozens of the province’s municipalities upholding their bilingual status, with few considering giving up the right to serve their citizens in both English and French.
Almost 90 cities, towns or boroughs in Quebec are considered officially bilingual, a designation that allows them to offer services, signs and postal messages in the country’s two official languages. Jurisdictions without this status must communicate only in French, with few exceptions.
Bill 96, the new language law that went into effect on June 1, proposes to repeal the municipality’s bilingual status in places where fewer than 50 percent of citizens have English as their first language. However, a bilingual city or town can avoid losing its status by passing a resolution within 120 days of receiving notification from the province.
Scott Pierce, mayor of the town of Gore, north of Montreal, said choosing to remain bilingual was an easy decision for his town of just over 1,700 people.
“We were founded here by the Irish in the 1800s, so that’s part of our history – speaking English and English culture,” he said in a recent interview.
Although the percentage of Gore residents who speak English as a first language has dropped from more than 50 percent to about 20 percent, he said maintaining bilingualism is popular among French- and English-speaking citizens alike.
Language, he said, “has never been an issue here.”
Pearce, who represents the bilingual municipalities in the province’s federation of cities – the Federation Quebecoise des municipalites – said most of the mayors he spoke with plan to pass such resolutions or have already done so.
“I’ve talked to mayors across the province and they’re really proud of the bilingual status and the way their communities — English and French — get along,” he said.
While Bill 96 has been criticized by groups representing English speakers, Pierce, who is married to a sitting member of the Legislature, says he believes in this case the governing party has done the towns a favor by giving them an easy way to formalize their status .
The Canadian Press reached out to all bilingual municipalities and neighborhoods to ask if they had passed or planned to pass a resolution to preserve their status. Of the more than two dozen respondents, all but three said they intended to remain bilingual. The others said they were still studying the law or declined to comment. No one said they planned to give up being considered officially bilingual.
A spokesman for the province’s language office, Office quebecois de la langue francaise, said in an email that notices will be sent “soon” to cities that no longer meet the 50 percent threshold.
Although they can offer services in English, “a municipality recognized as bilingual must nevertheless ensure that its services to the public are available in Quebec’s official language, French,” Nicolas Trudel wrote in an email.
The official purpose of Bill 96 is to confirm that French is the sole official language of Quebec and “the common language of the nation of Quebec.” But four mayors who spoke to The Canadian Press by phone, as well as many who responded by email, all said the decision to operate in two languages was unanimous among city council and has sparked little to no debate among citizens.
“I believe that the French language is now protected, and well protected,” said Richard Burcombe, mayor of Broome Lakes, in Quebec’s eastern municipalities. “They should not cut services for the English population to protect the French language.
He said his city, which falls below the 50 percent threshold, has not yet passed a resolution but will do so once it receives notice.
Kirkland, a city in the Montreal area, described bilingualism as “a core value in all aspects of municipal life,” while Ayers Cliff, Que., in the Eastern Townships, said it was “essential to the character of the municipality and as a testament to the historical presence of both communities, Anglophone and Francophone.”
Otterburn Park, a city 40 kilometers east of Montreal, said it wants to maintain its bilingual status, even though only 5.7 percent of its population reported English as their first language in the last census.
“The English-speaking population is largely made up of seniors,” Mayor Melanie Villeneuve wrote in an email.
“In order to provide quality services, particularly to more vulnerable groups of people, we believe it is important to be able to communicate with English-speaking citizens in the language that works for them.”
Several of the mayors expressed hope that the choice to remain bilingual would be made permanent and that they would not have to make new decisions every time there was a census.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 14, 2022.
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