STEPHEN RICCIO
MUNICIPALITY OF PONTIAC May 13, 2021
With Quebec’s governing CAQ party unveiling Bill 96 and its comprehensive reforms to the Charter of the French Language, on May 13, municipalities such as the Municipality of Pontiac (MoP) could face questions around their bilingual status.
One of the key components of the tabled legislation is a proposal to take away . . .
bilingual status from municipalities that no longer have a population makeup with at least 50 per cent English speakers. An exception that was included in the bill was that municipalities that wish to preserve their bilingual status can do so by adopting a resolution within 120 days of the bill’s passing.
In an interview with THE EQUITY, MoP Mayor Joanne Labadie said that if the government makes this determination by using the 2016 census as reference, then the municipality would have its bilingual status stripped, which she said would significantly hamstring the municipality’s resources.
According to the MoP’s 2016 census information, just under 42 per cent of the population spoke English as their first language.
“At first glance, what it means is that the municipality will no longer be allowed to provide services in English,” she said. “… So that’s going to put a huge burden on our municipal staff to have to translate all of that [tax invoices, permits, etc.] or guide people through that process via telephone and emails.
“So first, I see that as a huge problem, it means that we will no longer be able to post our [meeting] agendas and our resolutions and our minutes in both official languages, they will be in French only if the bill passes,” she added.
Labadie said that should this version of the bill be passed, she sees there being two communities within the MoP that are most significantly impacted by the loss of bilingual status.
“One is our senior community, whom many are disproportionately disadvantaged here because many of them do not have the tech savvy to be able to navigate through different technologies to help them with translation of documents, so that would be a challenge for them,” she explained.
“And our business community, we have businesses that do offer [service] solely in English because their clientele are all outside of Quebec,” she continued. “We have small businesses that do not have a shingle outside of their shop, but they [could] be consultants … Already the Anglophone business community are struggling because they need to navigate through all the paperwork through various ministries in French only, they have to pay the additional burden of having those translated and trying to understand these documents, whether they’re working with Revenu Quebec or MAPAQ or whomever, so it’s going to add a huge burden to these companies.”
Labadie said that the municipality would of course comply with whatever changes go into law, but she’s hopeful that there is an appeals process, although she acknowledged that the CAQ government has stated their intention to apply the notwithstanding clause to the bill.
Labadie said that she understood why the CAQ were introducing legislation around the issue of the French language as the party approaches re-election in 2022, but she maintained that the current atmosphere was an unusually poor time to introduce this type of legislation.
“What I’m asking is that we, ‘Let’s get through our crisis first because we are in a crisis, we are in a global pandemic, is this really a time to provoke and bring this forward?’”
While the bill has now been tabled, it will be debated and reviewed in the National Assembly in the coming months.
