Towns shoring up bilingual status after Quebec's new language law
CBC
Quebec's new language law has dozens of municipalities in the province shoring up their bilingual status, with few considering giving up the right to serve their citizens in both English and French.
Almost 90 cities, towns or boroughs in Quebec are considered officially bilingual, a designation allowing them to offer services, post signage and mail communications in the country's two official languages. Jurisdictions without this status must communicate only in French, with few exceptions.
Bill 96, the new language law that came into effect June 1, proposes that a municipality's bilingual status be revoked in places where fewer than 50 per cent of citizens have English as a mother tongue. However, a bilingual town or city can avoid losing its status by passing a resolution within 120 days of receiving notice from the province.
Scott Pearce, the mayor of the township of Gore, north of Montreal, said choosing to remain bilingual was an easy decision for his town of just over 1,700 people.
"We were founded here by the Irish in the 1800s, so it's part of our history — speaking English and English culture,'' he said in a recent interview.
While the percentage of residents in Gore who speak English as a mother tongue has dropped from over 50 per cent to around 20 per cent, he said maintaining bilingualism is popular among French-speaking and English-speaking citizens alike.
Language, he said, "has never been an issue here.''
Pearce, who represents bilingual municipalities at the province's federation of towns and cities — Fédération Québécoise des municipalités — said most of the mayors he's spoken with plan on passing similar resolutions, or have already done so.
"I talked to mayors from all over the province, and they're really proud of the bilingual status and how their communities — English and French — get along,'' he said.
While Bill 96 has been criticized by groups representing English-speakers, Pearce, who is married to a sitting legislature member, says he believes that in this instance, the governing party has done the towns a favour by giving them an easy way to formalize their status.
The Canadian Press reached out to all the bilingual municipalities and boroughs to ask them whether they have passed, or plan to pass, a resolution to keep their status. Of more than two dozen that responded, 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 give up being considered officially bilingual.
A spokesperson for the province's language office, the Office québécois de la langue française, said in an email that notices would be sent "shortly" to towns that no longer meet the 50-per-cent 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 the official language of Quebec, French," Nicolas Trudel wrote in an email.
The official purpose of Bill 96 is to affirm that French is Quebec's only official language and "the common language of the Quebec nation.'' But four mayors who spoke to The Canadian Press by phone, as well as many of those who responded by email, all said the decision to operate in two languages was unanimous among city council and raised little to no debate among citizens.
For the first time in 111 years, items once belonging to the late Albert Mullins were back in the hands of his family members thanks to the detective work of one Montreal historian.
The year that saw the remains of two First Nations women brought home from a Manitoba landfill and a search get underway for the remains of a third showed how far reconciliation efforts have come — and how far they still need to go, the families say
The RCMP has just released a warning stating there are dangerous, armed individuals on Big Island Cree Nation, near Meadow Lake.
A new land-use plan that Alberta’s government has for the province’s Upper Smoky region is drawing criticism from environmentalists who say they believe it lacks sufficient environmental safeguards, which poses a significant threat to the endangered southern woodland caribou.
Canadian officials made pains to show they were cracking down on illicit drug production in the country in 2025.
A year after the City of Hamilton cancelled its overnight warming bus, it is funding a new all-night warming centre for men at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church on James Street S.
This year has, without a doubt, been a turbulent one for the Canadian auto industry. Uncertainty dominated the sector — both for auto workers hit with job changes and companies trying to manage a mix of tariffs and changing market conditions.
A woman died at a ski resort in the Canadian Rockies over the weekend, after falling into deep snow.
Two pregnant women who would otherwise be living in a cold tent. A man whose leg wound was so bad it required intravenous medication. Two young people who no longer need to couch surf to get by.
The province has added 12 kilometres of designated trails for all-terrain vehicles in western Prince Edward Island that will connect existing routes in O’Leary and Tignish.
Every year, CBC North publishes hundreds of stories online — breaking news, investigative reporting, political coverage, community features, longform storytelling, and much more.
After a wild year in Canadian politics that began with Justin Trudeau's resignation and ended with Conservative MPs crossing the floor to join Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberal government, 2026 is shaping up to be just as action-packed.
It became a rallying cry, a cultural touchstone, a marketing strategy and — our favourite — often described in international media as "a hockey term" or "a Canadian phrase."