Tristin Hopper - Wednesday
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Quebec Premier Francois Legault, whose government is soon expected to pass a massive expansion of French-language mandates in the province. Bill 96 expands considerably on the Charter of the French Language first introduced in 1977 under the much-contested Bill 101.
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TOP STORY
The Quebec National Assembly is entering the final stretch of passing Bill 96 , a controversial law set to dramatically expand the province’s ability to mandate the use of French both in public and private life.
Proponents of the bill have called it a critical tool to preserve Quebec as North America’s last majority French-speaking jurisdiction. Nevertheless, Indigenous leaders have denounced the bill as “ cultural genocide ” for imposing French on the province’s predominantly English-speaking First Nations communities. Physicians’ groups have warned it “could endanger people’s lives or have negative impacts on mental health if applied.” And last week, Quebec college students staged a mass walkout to protest the bill’s curbs on English-language education.
First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent direct to your inbox every Monday to Thursday at 6 p.m. ET (and 9 a.m. on Saturdays), sign up here.
TOP STORY
The Quebec National Assembly is entering the final stretch of passing Bill 96 , a controversial law set to dramatically expand the province’s ability to mandate the use of French both in public and private life.
Proponents of the bill have called it a critical tool to preserve Quebec as North America’s last majority French-speaking jurisdiction. Nevertheless, Indigenous leaders have denounced the bill as “ cultural genocide ” for imposing French on the province’s predominantly English-speaking First Nations communities. Physicians’ groups have warned it “could endanger people’s lives or have negative impacts on mental health if applied.” And last week, Quebec college students staged a mass walkout to protest the bill’s curbs on English-language education.
Below, some of the more contested aspects of Bill 96.
Doctors would be forced to address patients in French
With limited exceptions, Bill 96 requires doctors to address their patients in French, e ven in situations where both doctor and patient would better understand each other in another language. Certain bilingual institutions, such as the Jewish General Hospital, are exempt . As are patients who can prove that they’ve attended an English-language school in Canada, or immigrants who have arrived in Quebec within the last six months. But for everyone else, everything from cancer diagnoses to Alzheimer’s treatment must be performed in French.
If a doctor violates the tenets of Bill 96, all it takes is an anonymous complaint to the Office québécois de la langue française for investigators to enter their office and start seizing records without a warrant , including confidential medical documents. And in this, doctors are not alone: Many of the provisions outlined below are similarly backed by expanded powers of search and seizure by the Office québécois de la langue française.
Whole categories of legal contracts will become mandatory to draft in French
The bill mandates “ francisation ” of any company with more than 25 employees, which means that the companies will need to obtain government certification that they predominantly function in French. An estimated 20,000 businesses will be captured by the new regulations, according to the provincial government’s own figures.
Quebec’s current laws aren’t tremendously enthused about job notices that request proficiency in a non-French language, but they allow it in situations where “the nature of the duties requires such knowledge.” Bill 96 takes that a step farther, and requires employers to take “reasonable measures” to ensure that non-French languages are spoken in the workplace as little as humanly possible.
Under Bill 96, any “contracts of adhesion” must also be drafted in French, with violators subject to penalties of up to $30,000 per day (which makes the liability for noncompliance “nearly indefinite” according to one legal analysis ). Any employment or service contract must exist in French form, even if both parties would prefer another language. This also holds true for court proceedings.
First Nations leaders are saying the bill demolishes “any hope of reconciliation”
Indigenous communities in Quebec generally don’t speak French as a first language. The Kahnawake Mohawk Territory outside Montreal is part of a wider Mohawk Council that includes many members in the English-speaking United States. Inuit and Cree communities in the province’s Arctic regions weren’t even part of Quebec until 1912, and the Inuit in particular still retain widespread household use of Inuktitut, with English as the usual second language. For this reason, First Nations leaders have particular issue with Bill 96’s mandates on CEGEPs, the publicly funded colleges offered to Quebecers between high school and university.
Students at English-language CEGEPs will henceforth need to complete at least five classes in French to graduate, which First Nations leaders have said will push down already-low Indigenous graduation rates. “We declare that this bill, should it pass, will never apply … and that our people will not accept its application over them anywhere within their ancestral lands,” reads a recent statement by the Haudenosaunee Longhouse, the traditional Mohawk government in Kahnawake.
Doctors would be forced to address patients in French
With limited exceptions, Bill 96 requires doctors to address their patients in French, e ven in situations where both doctor and patient would better understand each other in another language. Certain bilingual institutions, such as the Jewish General Hospital, are exempt . As are patients who can prove that they’ve attended an English-language school in Canada, or immigrants who have arrived in Quebec within the last six months. But for everyone else, everything from cancer diagnoses to Alzheimer’s treatment must be performed in French.
If a doctor violates the tenets of Bill 96, all it takes is an anonymous complaint to the Office québécois de la langue française for investigators to enter their office and start seizing records without a warrant , including confidential medical documents. And in this, doctors are not alone: Many of the provisions outlined below are similarly backed by expanded powers of search and seizure by the Office québécois de la langue française.
Whole categories of legal contracts will become mandatory to draft in French
The bill mandates “ francisation ” of any company with more than 25 employees, which means that the companies will need to obtain government certification that they predominantly function in French. An estimated 20,000 businesses will be captured by the new regulations, according to the provincial government’s own figures.
Quebec’s current laws aren’t tremendously enthused about job notices that request proficiency in a non-French language, but they allow it in situations where “the nature of the duties requires such knowledge.” Bill 96 takes that a step farther, and requires employers to take “reasonable measures” to ensure that non-French languages are spoken in the workplace as little as humanly possible.
Under Bill 96, any “contracts of adhesion” must also be drafted in French, with violators subject to penalties of up to $30,000 per day (which makes the liability for noncompliance “nearly indefinite” according to one legal analysis ). Any employment or service contract must exist in French form, even if both parties would prefer another language. This also holds true for court proceedings.
First Nations leaders are saying the bill demolishes “any hope of reconciliation”
Indigenous communities in Quebec generally don’t speak French as a first language. The Kahnawake Mohawk Territory outside Montreal is part of a wider Mohawk Council that includes many members in the English-speaking United States. Inuit and Cree communities in the province’s Arctic regions weren’t even part of Quebec until 1912, and the Inuit in particular still retain widespread household use of Inuktitut, with English as the usual second language. For this reason, First Nations leaders have particular issue with Bill 96’s mandates on CEGEPs, the publicly funded colleges offered to Quebecers between high school and university.
Students at English-language CEGEPs will henceforth need to complete at least five classes in French to graduate, which First Nations leaders have said will push down already-low Indigenous graduation rates. “We declare that this bill, should it pass, will never apply … and that our people will not accept its application over them anywhere within their ancestral lands,” reads a recent statement by the Haudenosaunee Longhouse, the traditional Mohawk government in Kahnawake.
English-language schools will now have a hard cap on how many students they can accept
Another education-related provision of Bill 96 is that English-language CEGEPs will have top-down quotas on how many students they can take in. English-language elementary and secondary school is currently offered in Quebec to a select subset of what has been called “historic Anglophones”; English speakers with established roots in the province. New immigrants to Quebec, for instance, are already required to do their schooling in French regardless of their mother tongue.
But CEGEP students still have free rein to pick either an English or French school. Bill 96 brings that regime to an end; henceforth English-language CEGEP student will only be allowed to represent 17.5 per cent of total CEGEP admissions – a measure that has been denounced by Francophone students looking to brush up on their English before studying at a university in English Canada or the United States.
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