QUEBEC–Critics of the Liberal government’s new language legislation, Bill 103, were front and centre Thursday as the National Assembly’s committee on culture and education resumed hearings on the proposed law, calling it either misguided or insufficient.
Both the province’s largest union central, the Fédération des Travailleurs du Québec and the Laurentian chapter of the nationalist Societé Nationale des Québécois flatly rejected the government’s proposal, while a union group representing university teaching assistants advised that the bill’s provisions should be toughened.
The government bill would increase from one to three years the time a child not otherwise eligible for English public school would have to spend in an unsubsidized school in order to switch to a publicly funded English school, and adds the requirement of a case-by-case evaluation by education department officials before the transfer can be made.
The PQ position, as advanced by the party’s language critic Pierre Curzi is that the bill should be scrapped and replaced by a measure that would apply the basic Bill 101 criteria for English school admission to all schools in the province, both subsidized and unsubsidized by public funds. This would, however, require the invocation of the constitutional notwithstanding clause, something the government wants to avoid.
Bill 103 is intended as a replacement for Bill 104, passed in 2002 by the former PQ government to close a loophole in Quebec’s language law that allowed children not eligible for English public school under the basic rule of having a parent educated in English in Canada to switch to English public school after spending a year at an unsubsidized private school.
Bill 104 was struck down by the Supreme Court last fall, but the judgment was suspended for a year and the government has until Oct. 22 to get the new law in place. The new bill also requires CEGEPS, municipalities and public sector agencies to establish language policies and provides for stiffer fines for language law violators.
The FTQ brief, delivered by secretary-general René Roy, came out in favour of the PQ approach to subject all schools to basic Bill 101 admission rules rules, saying the government proposal would institutionalize two-tier access rules to English schools, one for the rich and one for the rest.
It suggested that the government should not shy away from invoking the notwithstanding clause, saying that it is a legitimate means for Quebec to ensure respect for its laws, including language laws.
The SNQ brief concurred, saying it is imperative for the province to adopt the clearest, most elementary formula possible for school access. It added that its proposals would in no way be an infringement of the rights of Quebec’s “historic anglophone minority” which would continue to have free access to English schools, public or otherwise.
The university staff union’s brief did not address the school admission aspect of the bill, but advised stronger measures for ensuring the prevalence of French at Quebec’s French-language universities which the group says is being subverted by lax adherence to language policies and a steady increase in the number of courses given in English and professors of English mother tongue whose French is spotty.
“We are sounding a cry of alarm,” said the group’s president Carole Neill. “We are confronted daily with situations where the demands of English threaten our members’ right to work in French.”
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