The Charter of the French Language (L101) and L96 have the ambition to make French the only official language of Quebec. To speak of French as an official language in Quebec should in my opinion be synonymous with French as a common public language. There are several other public languages in Quebec: English language, which is spoken by people of different origins, and the languages of Indigenous peoples. Recognizing their public character implies recognizing them as collective goods for those groups, as opposed to a policy of confining them to private space. It implies recognizing the collective rights of these groups and the obligation of the State to fund institutions in which these languages are primarily spoken. It also means choosing to incorporate the histories of these institutions into the history of Quebec.

To admit that French is the common public language of Quebec is to admit that French is a collective asset of the Quebec people understood as bringing together all of Quebec’s citizens and permanent residents. This requires more than the mere ability of citizens and permanent residents to express themselves in French. It means recognizing that French is the language in which two people of different languages should communicate when they are on the territory of Quebec unless they both agree to speak another language. This in turn implies the right of Francophones to be served in French in all institutions, including English-language ones, but it should also mean that anglophones and indigenous populations should also enjoy similar rights to be served in their language, even in French institutions such as hospitals and the courts. Making

French as a common public language should first and foremost have implications for allophones only.  We should seek to establish the predominance of French as the language that allophones use in public. It should also mean accepting the collective right of the Quebec people as a whole to establish common public institutions in which the common public language is primarily spoken. It is also to admit the existence of a common public history which is that of common public institutions.

These principles should also be advanced by looking forward, not backward, and thus should not retroactively impose binding rules on those who are already citizens and permanent residents if they do not speak French. There should be a « grandfather clause » (« clause grand-père ») removing actual citizens and permanent residents from any obligations. Anglophone and indigenous students should not be required to take three French courses or three French language courses at the college level. Nor should we ask old immigrants to learn the language. L101 should not be extended to the college level. The new rules would apply only to newcomers, not because they are to blame, but rather as a matter of respect for those who have been admitted as permanent residents under the old rules. Immigrants want to integrate and want to know what are the rules of the game. However, we should not require them to address government authorities in French six months after their arrival. They should be given at least two years, as recommended by Québec Solidaire.

Since immigrants are increasingly allophones, there is an increase in the number of people speaking third languages at home. The main indicator may therefore not be mother tongue, or language spoken at home, but first official language spoken (FOLS). People who have French as their FOLS are not only those whose mother tongue or home language is French, but also those who have French as their primary language in the public space and not English.

What is the situation of French and what can we expect in the near future? The situation may perhaps be far from catastrophic, but it is still a matter of concern. But if understand one of the main features of L96, it is not intended as a means to prevent French Quebec from assimilation. It is a quasi-constitutional law. When the French state stipulates in its own constitution that French is the language of the state, this is not meant as a principle that must be adopted in order to prevent France from assimilation. It just provides a rule to live together (« une règle du vivre ensemble »), as we would say. L96 is not a law that is meant to be abrogated when everything is under control and assimilation is prevented. It is a rule of the game for any future immigrant.

For the sake of argument, I am going to use the concept of FOLS introduced by René Houle and Jean-Pierre Corbeil, two researchers that have been working at Stats Can for decades now. Still, they notice that all is not bright for the future of French in Quebec. They write: « In addition to the ability to sustain a conversation in French, which is expected to change fairly little by 2036, the decline in the demographic weight of the population with French as a FOLS would be between 2 and 5 percentage points. »

In Quebec as a whole, it would drop from 85% to 81%. This drop is expected to be felt mostly in Montreal. It could go from about 75% to 71%. Now, to admit that French is the common public language of Quebec should be to admit that French must be the first official language spoken (FOLS) by allophone immigrants in the public space. Actually, it would not really matter if 278,000 allophone immigrants used both official languages without hierarchy. The important thing is that they would use French and not English as their primary language in the public space.

The authors’ projections for 2036 were calculated on the basis of 2016 and do not include the new immigration targets aimed at by Minister of immigration Sean Fraser. These new targets will certainly reduce the proportion of the Quebec population within Canada. Indeed, far from the traditional number of 250,000 people acquiring permanent resident status each year in Canada, Fraser is targeting 425000 for 2022 and more than 450000 for 2024.

The authors’ projections also do not take into account immigrants holding temporary (study or work) permits. The rapid increase in temporary immigrants is relatively recent. Anne-Michèle has shown that between 2010 and 2019, temporary immigration more than doubled in Quebec, from 75000 people to 158000. Between 2006 and 2019, it has more than tripled. A year later, in 2020, according to the Devoir Editorialist Robert Dutrisac, it has reached 177000. Since it is concentrated in Montreal, the first official language spoken of this group will also weigh heavily and could contribute to a considerable downward shift in the proportion of Montrealers with French as their FOLS.

We are therefore in the presence in Montreal of 360000 unilingual Anglophones (4% of the population), approximately 425000 immigrants who have become permanent residents and who have English as their FOLS (5% of the Quebec population) and of 258000 permanent resident immigrants who give the same importance to French and to English. Added to this could be the 177000 temporary immigrants that could be absorbed into English.

Of this last group, approximately half of them are composed of students holding temporary visas. However, the Chinook software of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) systematically refused requests for study permits coming from Maghreb and West Africa, while it massively welcomed requests for temporary visas from Indian students who were applying in colleges.

Fraser suggested that systemic racism may explain what happened. Indeed, it appears to have been systemic racism against Africans, but since the vast majority of Africans applying for temporary visas are francophones, does the minister not also see systemic racism against Quebec? One need not postulate a conspiracy theory here, since the federal government is in responsible for the unfavorable consequences that its policies create for Quebec.  Discrimination against Francophones may be indirect, but it is still discrimination. Several factors weaken French. Not just French as a mother tongue or French spoken at home, but also French as the first official language spoken.

Under Canadian citizenship law, a Quebec non permanent resident must, ​​to become a Canadian citizen demonstrate  as elsewhere in Canada the ability to speak one of the two official languages. He can therefore in principle become a Canadian citizen in Quebec even if his first official language spoken is English. This rule is fundamentally unfair. We often protest against policies that offer similar treatment to the English-speaking minority in Quebec and to French-speaking minorities outside Quebec, but when it comes to citizenship law, we must conclude that the Canadian state does not even make a difference between English and French in Quebec. Ottawa does not seem to make a difference between the rights of the Quebec English minority and the rights of the Quebec nation to establish French as the official language.

To counter the possible reduction in the number of citizens whose first official language spoken is French, L96 extends French as the language in the work place for all companies of 25 employees and more. It does not however extend L101 at the college level. Instead, it puts a halt on the number of students that can be entitled to attend English speaking colleges (no more than 17.5% of the entire college population). It also allows them only 8.5% of the increase in the student college population. It does not allow for more that 2% of English teaching in French colleges. It forces non permanent residents to send their children at French schools after three years of stay.  It stipulates that the government will not provide financial support to English colleges for those students that go beyond the quota imposed by the government. The government also stipulates that English colleges must give priority to English students that go beyond these quotas.

Are these measures justified? According to the Fédération nationale des enseignants et enseignantes du Québec (FNEEQ) (the most important workers union of teachers at the college level), in 2019-2020, English-language colleges exceeded by 2873 people the maximum number of students that these institutions were entitled to accept, while French-language cegeps across Quebec were in deficit of 20932 students to complete the mandates related to the governmental estimates. This imbalances was in part created by the systematic admission of English foreign students and the systematic rejection of french speaking foreign students, but this is not the only cause.

A second problem concerns the rule on the basis of which a Secondary 5 student from a French-language school in Montreal can make a second application for admission in another college. French students are entitled to make a second admission if that college is an English speaking one. In the current context, the rules of the Montreal Regional Admissions Service (SRAM) specify that a Francophone or allophone student in Secondary 5 can only apply for admission to one CEGEP. But since English-language colleges are not part of SRAM, these same students can apply for a second English-language cegep. This operating rule, on its own, perhaps explains in large part the massive applications of Francophone and allophone students in the Anglophone sector. Freedom of choice is one thing. Imposing an operating rule that encourages students to make a second application for admission, provided that it is in an English-language college, amounts to an encouragement to apply for admission in an English-language CEGEP.

In addition to the measures adopted in L96 and to a modification made concerning the rules for application at the college level, another element of solution would be to amend the Canadian citizenship law and require non permanent residents of Quebec to demonstrate an ability to speak French in order to acquire permanent residency. Such a change in the Canadian law of citizenship would reveal that Canada accepts the idea of French as the official language of Quebec. A failure to make the change amounts to a rejection of that principle. Would such a change create a two-tier citizenship? My answer to that is that Canada is a multinational state. The “one size fits all” method is not appropriate in a multination state.