Quebec’s new language law has dozens of municipalities in the province strengthening their bilingual status, with a few considering giving up the right to serve their citizens in both English and French. Nearly 90 cities, towns or municipalities in Quebec are officially considered bilingual, a designation that allows them to offer services, postal signage and postal communication in the country’s two official languages. Jurisdictions without this status must communicate only in French, with few exceptions. Bill 96, the new languages law that came into effect on June 1, proposes to revoke a municipality’s bilingual status in places where less than 50 percent of citizens have English as their first language. However, a bilingual city or town can avoid losing its status by passing a resolution within 120 days of receiving notification from the province. Scott Pearce, mayor of the borough of Gore, north of Montreal, said choosing to remain bilingual was an easy decision for his town of just over 1,700 residents. “We were established here by the Irish in the 1800s, so it’s part of our history – to speak English and English,” he said in a recent interview. While the percentage of residents in Gore who speak English as a first language has dropped from over 50 percent to about 20 percent, he said maintaining bilingualism is popular with both French- and English-speaking citizens. Language, he said, “has never been an issue here.” Pearce, who represents the bilingual municipalities in the province’s federation of towns – Fédération Québécoise des communités – said most of the mayors he has spoken with plan to pass similar resolutions or have already done so. “I’ve spoken to mayors from across the province and they’re really proud of the bilingual situation and how their communities – English and French – are doing well,” he said. While Bill 96 has been criticized by groups representing English speakers, Pearce, who is married to a sitting member of the legislature, says he believes that in this case, the governing party did cities a favor by giving them an easy way to formalize the situation. The Canadian Press reached out to all bilingual municipalities and municipalities to ask if they have passed or plan to pass a resolution to maintain their status. Of more than two dozen respondents, all but three said they intended to remain bilingual. The others said they were still studying the law or declined to comment. None said they planned to stop being officially bilingual. A spokesman for the province’s language office, the Office Québécois de la langue française, said in an e-mail that notices will be sent “soon” to cities that no longer meet the 50 percent threshold. While they can offer services in English, “a municipality recognized as bilingual must nevertheless ensure that its services to the public are available in Quebec’s official language, French,” Nicolas Trudel wrote in an e-mail. The official purpose of Bill 96 is to affirm that French is the only official language of Quebec and “the common language of the nation of Quebec.” But four mayors who spoke to The Canadian Press by phone, as well as several who responded by e-mail, all said the decision to operate in two languages was unanimous among city council and caused little to no debate among citizens. “I think the French language is already protected and well protected,” said Richard Burcombe, mayor of the city of Brome Lake, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. “They don’t need to cut services to the English population to protect the French language.” He said his city, which falls below the 50 percent threshold, has yet to pass a resolution but will do so once it receives notification. Kirkland, a city in the Montreal area, described bilingualism as a “core value in all aspects of municipal life,” while Ayer’s Cliff, Que., in the Eastern Townships, said it was “essential to the character of the municipality and as testimony to the historical presence of the two communities, English-speaking and French-speaking”. Otterburn Park, a town 40 kilometers east of Montreal, said it wanted to maintain its bilingual status despite the fact that only 5.7 percent of its population reported English as a mother tongue in the last census. “The English-speaking population is largely made up of seniors,” Mayor Mélanie Villeneuve wrote in an e-mail. “In order to provide quality services, particularly to more vulnerable groups of people, we believe it is important to be able to communicate with English-speaking citizens in the language that serves them.” Several of the mayors expressed the hope that the choice to remain bilingual would be accepted as permanent and that they would not have to pass new resolutions every time a census is taken. The Morning Update and Afternoon Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.
