QUEBEC – The Parti Québécois presented Bill 591 on Tuesday to confirm that Bill 101, Quebec’s Charter of the French Language, applies to the subsidiaries of the province’s publicly-owned companies, such as Hydro-Québec and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.
Yves-François Blanchet, the PQ MNA for Drummond and his party’s language critic, said his bill was of “childish simplicity,” calling on the government to adopt it quickly, but adding that he believes the Charest government “doesn’t have the will to do so.”
Blanchet said he proposed the measure after it came to light that two executives of Ivanhoé Cambridge, a Caisse real estate subsidiary, were unilingual anglophones.
Montreal employees of Ivanhoé Cambridge, which operates shopping centres across Canada, complained that their right to speak French on the job was breached, because the two could not work in French, forcing francophones to speak English.
Premier Jean Charest called the situation was “unacceptable,” and Language Minister Christine St-Pierre said the language charter, which states that French is Quebec’s official language, does apply to Caisse subsidiaries.
Blanchet conceded that the subsidiaries may already be subject to the language charter, but added, “clarity is never a fault.”
“We want to resolve this problem,” Blanchet said, predicting the government would not move on Bill 591, but that “the public will understand very well” such a refusal.
A reporter, who last week complained that Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier was giving “bilingual news conferences,” because Fournier would give a brief summary in English of his remarks for English television and radio, asked Blanchet to comment on Fournier’s decision to end this practice.
Blanchet described this as “a step in the right direction,” and said there was an “anglophile culture” in the Charest government.
When a member of the Quebec government speaks English he “sends a message of bilingualism,” Blanchet said.
Charest should not speak English outside Quebec, the PQ language critic added.
Hugo D’Amours, Charest’s press secretary, said the premier “always speaks in French” outside the province, but if he is in New York or China and no translation service is available, he will continue in English.
“It’s just common sense,” D’Amours said, adding that when the premier travels, he wants to get his message across about Quebec.
In 1977, shortly after the first PQ government came to power, then-premier René Lévesque flew to New York to address the Economic Club, in English.
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