Making Quebec bilingual: 'What a lack of respect,' says Jolin-Barrette of the idea

Quebec Government House Leader and Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette responds to the Opposition during question period, at the Legislature in Quebec City, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press)

Ottawa — Quebec Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette added his voice to the Bloc Québécois and Conservatives in Ottawa who are outraged by comments made by Liberal MP Angelo Iacono, who said Quebec would benefit from becoming an officially bilingual province rather than having only French as its official language.

"What a lack of respect," said Barrette, who steered the reform of the Charter of the French Language, also known as Bill 96, on X on Friday.

"No. Quebec is and will remain a French-speaking state. That's what sets it apart. The federal government is always there to defend diversity, but when it comes to defending Quebec's uniqueness, it's nowhere to be found."

Iacono made the controversial remarks Thursday evening at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Official Languages in Ottawa.

"I believe that Quebec, and I believe that Canada, should be a bilingual country, to be stronger and not just a unilingual French-speaking province, because then you're going to shut out the others who want to learn French," he said.

The MP, who represents the riding of Alfred-Pellan, was one of several Liberals who took turns in an apparent attempt at parliamentary filibustering to prevent a vote to have the committee call for the expulsion of their colleague Francis Drouin for calling language protection witnesses "full of crap" earlier this month.

The subject soon came up in the House of Commons.

"According to him [Iacono], French reduces us," said the Bloc Québécois MP for Manicouagan, Marilène Gill, during question period.

Gill, who considers such a comment to be "indicative of a cultural problem in the Liberal Party" where linguistic faux pas are multiplying, asked whether the Liberals share this view and whether they intend to call their MP to order.

The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Steven MacKinnon, did not respond directly, but reiterated that his party recognizes the decline of French and is "committed" to "our two official languages in this country."

As the Bloc returned to the charge, he went on the attack.

"The Bloc, on the other hand, is here to do what? To do one thing: set [Quebec] neighbors against [Quebec] neighbors, create a squabble and divide people. That's not why we're here. We're for linguistic unity," he said.

'I'm flabbergasted'

But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's team wasn't out of trouble as the Conservatives got in on the act.

"I'm flabbergasted," said Luc Berthold, the MP for Mégantic-L'Érable. "This is unacceptable! And not a single Liberal MP from Quebec in this caucus stood up to denounce these remarks, not even the MP for Papineau."

It was the MNA for Orléans, Franco-Ontarian Marie-France Lalonde, who went to the front.

"This will give me an opportunity to talk about the Conservatives' nine years of inaction on priorities for modernizing official languages, in terms of the action plan," she said.

There is only one officially bilingual province in the country: New Brunswick. Quebec's only official language is French. Conversely, English is the only official language in the eight other provinces of the Canadian federation: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Although Canada has two official languages, the Constitution provides that both levels of government — federal and provincial — have the power to legislate in matters of language within their respective areas of jurisdiction.

In support of his argument, Iacono recounted how he began his school career in English "because the Francophones, ... the Québécois, the French-born, didn't want to have the Italians because they felt threatened," even though he "was due to go to a French school."

At university, after studying political science at McGill University, he chose to pursue his law studies at "the most Francophone, the most Québécois, we'll say the most French of universities: UQAM."

"And I integrated well," Iacono said. "And I was well respected. And look: I speak French today. Sometimes there are words I don't understand, sometimes there are words I say with a bit of an Italian accent, but I'm a product of Quebec, I was born in Quebec, and I learned French."

In fact, Statistics Canada data show that the rate of bilingualism (English-French) is increasing in Quebec and decreasing outside the province, so that it is stagnant in the country as a whole.

In fact, Quebec is by far the province where the proportion of the population able to carry on a conversation in French and English is the highest. It rose from 40.8 per cent in the 2001 census to 46.4 per cent in the 2021 census.

At the same time, the latest census once again confirms the decline of French in Quebec across all indicators.

From 2016 to 2021, Statistics Canada observed a decline in the proportion of Quebecers who had French as their mother tongue (from 77.1 per cent to 74.8 per cent), as the language spoken predominantly at home (from 79.0 per cent to 77.5 per cent), as their first official language spoken (from 83.7 per cent to 82.2 per cent) and those able to conduct a conversation in French (from 94.5 per cent to 93.7 per cent).

As for the language most often used in the workplace, French went from 79.9 per cent to 79.7 per cent.

Both the Bloc and the Conservative Party pointed out that Iacono's comments were the latest in a series of instances in which the Liberals have put their foot in their mouth when it comes to defending French in Quebec.

For example, Saint-Laurent MP Emmanuella Lambropoulos denied the decline of the French language, falsely stated that Bill 96 prevents English-speaking people from receiving health care, and Franco-Ontarian MP Francis Drouin made vulgar remarks.

- With the collaboration of Émilie Bergeron in Ottawa and Caroline Plante in Quebec City

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on May 31, 2024.