'A small gesture': PQ tables motion to add Quebec flag emoji

Parti Quebecois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon responds to reporters questions as he attends his first caucus meeting, Wednesday, October 14, 2020 at the legislature in Quebec City. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

Montreal — There’s an emoji for just about everything these days, and now the leader of the Parti Québécois is asking for a new one that represents la belle province.

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon announced on Twitter Wednesday that his party planned to table a motion in the National Assembly to request the Unicode Consortium, which governs computer language, to add a Quebec flag emoji.

"I will also send a letter to Facebook Headquarters asking them to add this emoticon," the leader wrote on Twitter. "A small gesture, a great symbolism: that it's our right to express our pride."

The motion was adopted Wednesday morning in the legislature with no debate.

However, as one person on Twitter pointed out, the motion is "useless" since there is already a request to have the emoji added.

A request from September 12, 2019 to add the Quebec flag emoji is listed as "under consideration" by the Unicode Consortium.

Plamondon said in a statement Wednesday that it was "very abnormal that Scotland and other nations that are not a country have their flag in a digital platform, but not Quebec" and wants the digital symbol to let Quebecers express their pride.

The conversation surrounding Quebec’s language and identity has heated up in recent weeks, following the introduction of the Coalition Avenir Québec's (CAQ) Bill 96, which proposes revamping laws in the province to reverse the decline of the French language.

Reaction to the emoji motion was mixed on social media, with some saying the party has its priorities wrong.