Brett Thoms
Pontiac May 18 2022
Pontiac MNA André Fortin expects Bill 96 to become law during this week’s sitting of the National Assembly, despite concerns of Quebec’s English-speaking communities.
“When parliament resumes next week, it’s likely going to pass because it has support from every party except for ours, it has been studied for the last year and . . .
there isn’t any mechanism to halt the progress from a parliamentary standpoint,” said Fortin at last week’s MRC Council of Mayors.
As a part of his remarks about the bill, Fortin said that he felt it was his duty to try to explain how the bill is going to impact his English-speaking constituents, especially concerning the most controversial aspects of the bill to the anglophone community, which include how it will affect their access to healthcare, government services and their protection from warrantless search and seizure.
“It is a tricky bill to explain. It has 240 different articles, so it’s not necessarily easy to understand,” said Fortin.
On healthcare, Premier Legault emphasized at a press conference that Bill 96 will not affect anglophone’s access to healthcare in any way and said that critics of the bill are spreading disinformation.
“I want to be very clear, there is no change at all in the actual situation of services given to anglophones and immigrants in English in our health-care system,” said Legault in Laval on May 17.
However, Fortin said that anglophone access to healthcare will be negatively affected by Bill 96 in two ways.
“First they’re putting a cap on the number of students that can go to Heritage College,” said Fortin. “You will be preventing people who want to go into the nursing program at Heritage College from attending it. Those people might turn to Algonquin College, or they might turn to other places to get their education and if they don’t get trained in Heritage College, if they get trained in Ontario, they are not going to work in the healthcare system in Quebec. So, to me, that’s a way in which we are going to lose health care professionals in this region. It may not be the case in Montreal or in other places. But in this region, it’s going to have a direct effect on the number of nurses that we train, recruit and keep in our region.”
Another concern Fortin has about what Bill 96 means in terms of access to healthcare was the requirement in the bill that employers must be able to explain to the Quebec government why they need to hire bilingual employees.
“If any employer in Bill 96 is forced to explain why they need a bilingual position, every time they post a job opportunity, the healthcare system may decide not to post bilingual positions and at that point in time it can become harder for an anglophone to have access to service in their language in hospitals or in CLSCs,” said Fortin.
Fortin stressed that receiving healthcare in a language you understand is very important.
“You want to understand everything that’s going on. You want to know exactly what the healthcare professional is telling you,” he said. “You want to know exactly what prescription they’re recommending to you, the treatment options, what’s happening to your body. And unfortunately, there may be people who will not understand what’s being told to them in the healthcare services.”
Bill 96 also requires that Quebec residents prove they are a so-called historic anglophone in order to be eligible to receive services from the province.
“Well, the government’s explanation as to who is a historic anglo is those who have the right for an English education in Quebec,” said Fortin. “So there is already a definition based on who has access to education in English in Quebec. If your parents had an English education in the province or in the country, you can be educated in the province in English. But the problem is now you’re going to be asking 60-year-olds to go back and get the documents that they need in order to prove every time they want to talk to somebody in the government. So, if an anglophone wants to talk to Revenue Quebec, Hydro Quebec or Parks Quebec, or whatever it might be, they’ll have to go to their old school board to get that documentation. It’s asking a lot for very simple services. People may be willing to do it for their child to be educated in English in the province, but if you have to do that to report an outage in your area with Hydro Quebec, it’s excessive.”
Fortin explained that this applies to service recived at the provincial level. Municipalities with over a 50 per cent anglophone population will still be allowed to offer municipal services in English without any requirement.
However, municipalities with under 50 per cent anglo population, like the Municipality of Pontiac, will be required to pass a resolution in their council every three years to affirm they want to continue to offer their population services in English. Fortin went on to say that if that resolution is not repeatedly renewed on a three-year basis for whatever reason, then they lose the right to provide their citizens services in English permanently.
Another concern discussed by Fortin was the powers given to Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) to investigate businesses that aren’t conducting operations in French.
“They are giving more powers to the OQLF inspectors than to police officers, ‘’ said Fortin. “Police officers who are investigating people for all sorts of crimes do not have powers to search and seize without judges mandates.”
“OQLF inspectors will have those powers,” said Fortin. “Will they use them? We’ll see but they will have those powers according to Bill 96. I get why people are worried. Once you give someone the power, you know that some will use it to the letter of the law.”
The final concern outlined by Fortin was the CAQ’s invocation of the notwithstanding clause in the bill.
The notwithstanding clause, or section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms allows the House of Commons or provincial legislatures to override charter protections and prevent bills from facing legal challenges. Once the notwithstanding clause is invoked, it must be renewed every five years.
“The government blanketed the bill in the notwithstanding clause which is an unprecedented way of doing things in this country,” said Fortin. “It’s never happened that a bill is fully blanketed in the notwithstanding clause in order to prevent court challenges. It’s a way of protecting its bill making sure that the French language bill basically trumps the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And there simply is no reason to do that other than the government knowing that they are taking rights and freedoms away.”
Fortin encourages people concerned over exactly what their rights will be after the bill passes to contact his office. He says he hopes to clarify some information so people know what their rights still are.
“There’s a lot of information about the bill,” said Fortin. “Some of it is true, some of it is iffy and some it is still up for debate because we don’t know where the regulations are going to land.”
Warden of the MRC Pontiac Jane Toller said she is concerned about the impending passage of Bill 96, specifically over the impact it will have on people coming to live and invest money in the area.
“I’m going to tell the premier who I hope to see soon that I’m concerned about this,” said Toller. “I think it could be proven to be harmful to the province of Quebec, because I do believe it will limit the investment from other countries in this province. However, as long as we can remain bilingual, we can keep the sign out saying everyone is welcome in the Pontiac and we encourage immigration here and we encourage the use of both languages.”
For his part, Premier Legault said that despite the consequences it may have for anglophones, the bill is necessary to protect the French language in Quebec.
“In Quebec we need to protect French,” said Legault. “There will always be an attraction to English in North America, and we have to be careful if we want our children and grandchildren to speak French.”
