Mount Royal MP Anthony Housefather stood against the tide by voting “No” to Bill C-13 yesterday – the only MP in the House of Commons to do so. “It’s difficult to go against your own party, but he stuck with his principles and that’s admirable,” says QCGN President Eva Ludvig.
Today, the House of Commons adopted C-13 at third reading, having adopted amendments to the legislation last week that are deeply troubling to the English-speaking community of Quebec. The bill now proceeds to the Senate, where our community hopes the Upper Chamber will closely study the inclusion of Quebec’s Charter of the French Language within the purpose clause of the Official Languages Act.
Quebec French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge says that government workers will rely on the honesty of citizens who say that they are entitled to receive services in English. According to the Quebec Community Groups Network, there were some 600,000 mother-tongue English speakers identified in the 2016 census in the province, but 1.1 million Quebecers whose first official spoken language is English.
Sherbrooke MP Élisabeth Brière and Compton-Stanstead MP Marie-Claude Bibeau both intend to vote in favour of Bill C-13, the drastically overhauled Official Languages Act. The reference to Quebec’s Bill 96 embedded in the pending federal legislation “has been our major issue with C-13,” says Eva Ludvig, president of the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN).
Columnist Allison Hanes minces no words, in an analysis and recap of positions taken by the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN), several outspoken federal Liberal MPS, and others on the new Official Languages Act: “English-speaking Quebecers shouldn’t be fooled” by Ottawa’s public packaging of Bill C-13, she writes.
In an editorial taking a broad view of the federal Action Plan for Official Languages announced last week, Robert Dutrisac of Le Devoir takes note of the response of the Quebec Community Groups Network with regard to federal funding levels.
Measures specific to English-speaking Quebecers include $6.5 million over five years to support the training and integration of bilingual health personnel. However, says Eva Ludvig, president of the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN), “our major concern (remains) Bill C-13, which will incorporate the [Quebec] Charter of the French Language into the [federal] Official Languages Act.”
With their newly announced official languages policy, the federal Liberals are “speaking to different constituencies” both inside and outside of Quebec, and trying to balance political pressures on a file where they are “damned if they do, and damned if they don’t,” say observers. Meanwhile Eva Ludvig, president of the Quebec Community Groups Network, which has been critical of C-13, said her organization “welcomed” the funding announcements in the new action plan, but had concerns about whether the money allocated for Quebec’s anglophone communities would actually reach them.
The Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) expresses disappointment that Jean-François Roberge, Quebec’s minister for the French language, does not see any need to use funding for the province’s Anglophones – newly earmarked under Ottawa’s fresh Action Plan for Official Languages – to support English-language community organizations in Quebec.
A thriving and vibrant English-speaking community benefits the provincial government and all Quebecers, emphasizes Eva Ludvig, QCGN president, after an array of National Assembly figures blast new federal funding for anglophone groups and initiatives.
The QCGN is funded by the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage.
