Legault calls Miller a 'disgrace to all Quebecers' for his comments on French language
CBC
A day after being named federal culture minister, Marc Miller is drawing ire from several Quebec officials, including the premier of his home province.
Miller, who replaced Steven Guilbeault in cabinet on Monday, said Tuesday that the French language is precarious throughout North America, rather than saying it is declining in Quebec specifically, as the provincial government would characterize it.
“As a Quebecer, I’m pretty fed up with this debate that is generally identity-based,” Miller said in French during a scrum.
Describing the language issue in Quebec as “very complex,” Miller noted that saying French is declining sometimes diminishes the achievements of legislation, such as Bill 101 — the province’s landmark Charter of the French language — and the Canada-Quebec Accord.
In 2023, the Montreal MP, who was immigration minister at the time, repeatedly refused to acknowledge the decline of French in Quebec, preferring to refer to it as a language “under threat.”
On the way to question period at the National Assembly, Quebec Premier François Legault fired back, calling the Montreal MP a "disgrace to all Quebecers.”
“I don’t know how he’ll be able to show up at a cultural activity in Quebec after saying nonsense like that,” Legault told reporters on Tuesday.
Earlier that day, Legault refused to comment on Miller’s appointment, saying only that naming Miller to cabinet was Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision.
The use of different indicators to measure the health of French in Quebec has contributed to the ongoing language debate.
In 2016, 87.1 per cent of Quebecers reported speaking French at home at least regularly, according to Statistics Canada.
By 2021, that share had fallen to 85.5 per cent. Statistics Canada notes, however, that it revised the wording of its home-language question for the 2021 census, which limits direct comparisons with 2016.
In raw numbers, the number of people who spoke French at home rose slightly over the same period — from 6.4 million in 2016 to 6.5 million in 2021 — but they made up a smaller share of Quebecers overall, dropping 1.5 percentage points.
The proportion of Quebecers who reported speaking French equally with another language at home also ticked up slightly, from 3.3 per cent in 2016 to 3.5 per cent in 2021.
At the House of Commons in Ottawa, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre questioned Carney’s decision to appoint Miller.
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