{"id":322254,"date":"2025-12-03T07:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T07:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/322254\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T07:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T07:49:10","slug":"legault-calls-miller-a-disgrace-to-all-quebecers-for-his-comments-on-french-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/322254\/","title":{"rendered":"Legault calls Miller a ‘disgrace to all Quebecers’ for his comments on French language"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A day after being named federal culture minister, Marc Miller is drawing ire from several Quebec officials, including the premier of his home province.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Miller, who replaced Steven Guilbeault<\/a> 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a Quebecer, I\u2019m pretty fed up with this debate that is generally identity-based,\u201d Miller said in French during a scrum.<\/p>\n

Describing the language issue in Quebec as \u201cvery complex,\u201d Miller noted that saying French is declining sometimes diminishes the achievements of legislation, such as Bill 101 \u2014 the province\u2019s landmark Charter of the French language \u2014 and the Canada-Quebec Accord. <\/p>\n

In 2023, the Montreal MP, who was immigration minister at the time, repeatedly refused to acknowledge the decline of French in Quebec<\/a>, preferring to refer to it as a language \u201cunder threat.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the way to question period at the National Assembly, Quebec Premier Fran\u00e7ois Legault fired back, calling the Montreal MP a “disgrace to all Quebecers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how he\u2019ll be able to show up at a cultural activity in Quebec after saying nonsense like that,\u201d Legault told reporters on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Quebec Premier Fran\u00e7ois Legault said federal Culture Minister Marc Miller is a ‘disgrace to all Quebecers.’ (Ivanoh Demers\/Radio-Canada)<\/p>\n

Earlier that day, Legault refused to comment on Miller\u2019s appointment, saying only that naming Miller to cabinet was Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The use of different indicators to measure the health of French in Quebec has contributed to the ongoing language debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2016, 87.1 per cent of Quebecers reported speaking French at home at least regularly, according to Statistics Canada. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

In raw numbers, the number of people who spoke French at home rose slightly over the same period \u2014 from 6.4 million in 2016 to 6.5 million in 2021 \u2014 but they made up a smaller share of Quebecers overall, dropping 1.5 percentage points. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Carney on the defensive<\/p>\n

At the House of Commons in Ottawa, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre questioned Carney\u2019s decision to appoint Miller.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOf all the Liberal MPs, why did [Carney] choose to appoint an MP that is so fed up with French?\u201d Poilievre said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe, Conservatives, we aren\u2019t fed up,\u201d he said, promising to \u201cdefend the French language and Quebec culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to Poilievre, Carney said he supports Miller but did not address the Montreal MP\u2019s comments on French.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI support my new minister. I am against the leader of the Opposition who opposes the $4-billion action plan for the French language,\u201d Carney said. \u201cHe opposes investments in Quebec’s cultural sector,\u201d the prime minister said, alluding to elements of the 2025 budget.<\/p>\n

A few minutes earlier, Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois Leader Yves-Fran\u00e7ois Blanchet argued that there was no better evidence than Miller’s appointment to demonstrate how Carney\u2019s government has \u201cabsolutely no grasp of Quebec’s reality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-322254","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}