People take part in a demonstration against Bill 96 in Montreal, May 14, 2022. Graham Hughes / The Canadian Press
Protesters marched through downtown Montreal to protest the controversial Quebec language bill on Saturday, demanding it be repealed to preserve the rights of Anglophones, allophones and local communities.
Protesters, who gathered at Dawson College before marching more than two kilometers to Prime Minister Francois Lego’s office, made an 11-hour appeal against legislation aimed at strengthening the province’s French-language charter.
Bill 96, expected to be passed this month, will impose stricter language requirements on jobs and municipalities.
It also seeks to limit the use of English in courts and public services, to provide search and seizure powers without an order to the Quebec language regulator and to limit enrollment in English junior colleges called CÉGEP, where students will have to take more French courses.
Several thousand demonstrators returned home with the bilingual element of Quebec society on Saturday morning, shouting the chanted “Mon CÉGEP, mon choix” and billboards reading: “I am not a second-class citizen.”
Marlene Jennings, a former Liberal lawmaker in Montreal, said Bill 96 “violates the social contract” with Quebeckers, while Robert Lekey, dean of McGill University’s law school, said he would be “rude” because of constitutional restrictions.
“Everyone can use English and French in the courts of this province. This is enshrined in the constitution. And the use of English in the Quebec court involves a judge who understands the language, “he said, addressing the protesters in English and French, as most speakers did.
Leki refers to the provisions in the bill that state judges should no longer be bilingual and that the company’s pleadings in court must be in French or translated into it.
Bill 96 also preventively invokes the independence clause, leaving aside the fundamental rights to equality enshrined in both the Canadian and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of Quebec.
“You know you’re in trouble when you hear ‘Regardless of the Clause,'” sang Bowser and Blue, a musical comedy duo whose first concert was at Dawson College in 1975.
Russell Copman, executive director of the Association of English School Councils in Quebec, said he supported efforts to protect the French language, but described Bill 96 as “discriminatory”.
“I think what you see is a depth of anxiety and frustration, which is quite remarkable in the English community,” he said in a telephone interview.
Local communities also have concerns about the future law.
“We are colonized again under Bill 96,” said Kenneth Deere, an indigenous rights activist from the Mohawk nation of Canaweik. “We do not force you to learn our language; don’t force us to learn yours. “
The great leader Kahsennenhawe Sky-Deer of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake said that requiring young people to master a third language, French, has a colonial connotation and will hamper their success.
“Trying to encourage young people to learn our local language is a challenge in itself,” she said by telephone.
“We always want to encourage our young people to reach for the stars. But if they want to be doctors, lawyers, nurses – each of these professional orders will now require a very strict command of the French language. “
Demonstrators flocked mainly to Sainte-Catherine Street, where many retail outlets are concerned about the impact of stricter language rules in the workplace.
The changes will subject companies with 25 or more employees to “franchising” – a government certificate that the use of French is widespread in the workplace. The current threshold is 50 employees.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business estimates that a company with approximately 50 employees will eventually pay between $ 9.5 million and $ 23.5 million in bills. Costs range from translation fees and legal services to administrative burdens, such as creating a job evaluation to ensure that French penetrates all corners of the company.
More than a dozen provincial and federal liberal lawmakers were available on Saturday, including Quebec Liberal leader Dominic Anglad.
A group of students supporting Bill 96 were waiting for protesters in front of the prime minister’s office. They had guitars and tambourines and greeted the demonstrators with a wave of classic Quebec songs by Jean Lelloup and Gilles Vigno.
They shouted “Vive le Quebec” and “Vive le francais” between the texts. Protesters on both sides were wrapped in Quebec flags and several quarrels erupted amid the 30-degree Celsius heat, but the overall atmosphere remained optimistic.
Steban Carrillo, 21, a student at Saint-Laurent CEGEP and one of about 15 counter-protesters, said the Frenchman was under threat.
“As we know, the language of work in Quebec is French, so higher education should be done in French, at least until university,” he said.
The bill’s requirement that CEGEP students take either three core French courses or three additional French courses worries others, as well as concerns about a two-tier education system in which allophones and francophones in English junior colleges will have to take exams for proficiency in French while English speakers accept English.
“The bill attacks our fundamental rights to justice, health care, education,” said Celeste Trianon, a law student at the University of Montreal.
Eric Maldof, a lawyer from Montreal and chairman of the Coalition for Quality Health and Social Services, stressed that without clear communication, proper health care is at stake.
“People will be hurt. Literally, “he said, noting that Bill 96 would allow health services in English only on” historic Anglophones “and six months after the arrival of immigrants. “There will be errors in the diagnosis, there will be a problem with informed consent.”
The law also raises questions about patient privacy, given the expanded powers given to the Office Quebecois de la langue francaise to search and seize files without a warrant based on anonymous advice, Maldoff said.
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