Longtime resident of Luskville, Tom Murdock was more than a little disappointed and confused when he received voting information for the current municipal election solely in French.

Officially, the MRC des Collines and the Municipality of Pontiac are only required to provide voting information in French. The full text is written by the Quebec government and then given to each municipality to print and distribute as they see fit.

In an interview with THE EQUITY, municipality of Pontiac returning officer, Pierre Said, said English version of the information card was produced by the municipality. This along with a French version was sent to the printer. The English version, however, was never printed or sent to residents. By the time the municipality realized what happened it was already too late. The printer requires one month notice, so there was no possibility of doing a second run of the English language version in time for the election.

Veronique Vallée, assistant to the MRC des Collines returning officer Claude Chenier confirmed the MRC did not print an English language version of the document and nor were they required to.

Native English speakers make up a large portion of the MRC des Collines at about 20 per cent of the population. In Pontiac it is as much as 35 per cent.

While Quebec does not require multilingual election communication for its electors, it is in stark contrast to communities across Canada which will often provide multilingual versions of voter information cards in Punjabi, Mandarin or any large language group that makes up their community.

Elections Canada provided hundreds of voter cards in different languages during the last election, including many in Indigenous languages.

Murdock finds it hard not to find parallels between Bill 96 and Bill 101 when it came to pass. At the time he had a sign for his business which was bilingual, however the English and French were of equal size. That was unacceptable, so he reverted to only displaying images of a broken door and broken window coupled with his name.

“My mother was French and my father was Irish. I enrolled both my girls in Onslow school because it had a better French immersion class.” They are both bilingual. He feels that this is just one sign of what to expect in the future if Bill 96 passes.

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