Quebec will invest in protecting French. Critics say the province is policing the private sphere
Global News
Critics say the province is relying on data that reflects the private sphere versus the public, and intends on using coercive measures to bolster and protect the French language.
As Quebec says it will “go on the offensive” to protect French, announcing a whopping $600 million over five years on Sunday, some critics say the data the government is using lacks some nuance and that the province is “policing the private sphere.”
At a press conference, Quebec French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge said the government’s mission is to bolster the vitality of the French language with the help of several measures, some of which have already been announced and some already in place, with a price tag of $603 million.
Roberge said the province’s “action plan” is to counter what the government is calling a decline of the use of the language. “It’s important to mention that we are no longer defending the French language,” the minister said. “We’re going on the offensive, not against anyone, but to regain lost ground and reverse the decline.”
But some critics like constitutional rights lawyer Julius Grey told Global News on Monday that French is actually not on the decline.
Grey says he, like most Quebecers, doesn’t have a problem with the provincial government wanting to protect it. But what he does take issue with, he says, is the reason, or lack thereof, behind the move.
Sylvia Martin Laforge from the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) agrees, telling Global the organization believes the protection and promotion of French in the province are both important, but that the government isn’t using the right statistics to argue the decline.
She told Global News that the stats the government relies on and that are presented to the public should be interpreted with more nuance, and different data tell different stories.
“According to the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF)’s report from this past April, the proportion of Quebecers using French in the public sphere has been stable for over a decade, since 2007, at about 80 per cent,” Martin Laforge said.
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