We live in fractious times. We need leadership and policies that will bring us together. Bill 96 promises to do the exact opposite.
We appreciate and support the intent to protect the French language and culture of Quebec. But just as the francophone minority within Canada has the right to exist, so does Quebec’s anglophone minority.
We are concerned with the many ways in which Bill 96 undercuts our ability to live and work in our language, in other words, to exist. And we are alarmed by the premise underscoring the entire Bill that it is now somehow acceptable in our society to discriminate against a minority, in this case, on the basis of language.
We currently have the right to communicate with our local governments in English but stand to lose it under Bill 96 whenever the anglophone population within a given municipality dips below 50 per cent. While this provision might not have immediate implications for many of our local municipalities, it puts in place a mechanism that, over time, seems sure to foreclose our right to communicate with our local governments in our own language, ever-ready to convert the trend of declining anglophone populations into an official elimination of the English fact in Quebec altogether.
While some may find solace in the provision that would allow municipal councils to reinstate bilingual status, that will depend on the election of councillors who are so-inclined. This will make language a political issue in municipal elections which will become high-stakes affairs due to their existential implications for the English community. And it risks creating tension and division along linguistic lines within families and among communities while doing nothing to help anglophones feel at home in Quebec.
Respecting the rights of minorities is an internationally-accepted principle of human rights and a basic tenet of democracy. In a civilized society, equal rights to education and health care are extended to all. People are allowed to worship in the faith of their choice. Access to public institutions is provided to all citizens, including those who rely on walkers and wheelchairs. In none of these cases are rights lost when the portion of the population exercising them falls below 50 per cent.
It is difficult to see how the elimination of the linguistic rights of Quebec’s anglophone population the moment our numbers fall to minority status would not offend this principle. And it raises the question as to when it became acceptable in our society to revoke the rights of minorities, linguistic or otherwise.
If one person’s rights end at the point they infringe on another’s, then Bill 96 is poised to cross a treacherous threshold. It seeks to institutionalize two classes of citizen, one that retains the right to live and work in its own language and another that loses it. It will be difficult for many in Quebec’s anglophone minority to get behind a project that effectively sees us as unequal to, and less worthy than, other citizens of this province.
Taken together, the Bill’s provisions seem intent on either forcing our assimilation into the French language and culture or making life for us in Quebec so uncomfortable, impractical and economically unfeasible that it will drive more of us out.
This cannot be the vision for a civilized state in a modern democratic society. In light of the many examples of the misery that the suppression of minority rights has wrought on humanity throughout the past century and in our own time, we implore the premier to reconsider his plan.
Protecting the French language is laudable, but doing so by discriminating against another linguistic minority lacks moral authority and is not a foundation on which to build a peaceful and prosperous society.
Charles Dickson
