{"id":340446,"date":"2025-12-12T12:55:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T12:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/340446\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T12:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T12:55:07","slug":"sorry-marc-miller-quebecs-language-debate-will-not-be-ending-any-time-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/340446\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorry, Marc Miller, Quebec\u2019s language debate will not be ending any time soon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Marc Miller, Federal Minister responsible for Official Languages, received fierce criticism from Quebec politicians after saying he is ‘fed up’ with the province’s language debate.Spencer Colby\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Freshly appointed federal Culture Minister Marc Miller was roundly condemned by Quebec\u2019s political class for expressing his frustration<\/a> toward the never-ending debate about the survival of the French language in Canada\u2019s only majority-francophone province.<\/p>\n

Most francophone Quebeckers are probably just as \u201cfed up\u201d as him with a debate that has been going on since the 1759 Conquest. But unlike Mr. Miller, who made the mistake of appearing indifferent to the fate of French in the province, they still think of it as an existential, and hence necessary, debate to have.<\/p>\n

To be clear, Mr. Miller, a lifelong anglophone Quebecker, expressed particular dismay with a certain instrumentalization of the linguistic debate by nationalist politicians who sound alarm bells about the risk of cultural annihilation to rile up francophone voters. <\/p>\n

Coalition Avenir Qu\u00e9bec Premier Fran\u00e7ois Legault is a master at this game. Running for re-election in 2022, Mr. Legault warned about the Louisianisation<\/a> of his province unless Ottawa ceded full control over immigration and insisted that accepting more than 50,000 new permanent residents a year would be \u201csuicidal<\/a>\u201d for Quebec.<\/p>\n

On hearing Mr. Miller\u2019s \u201cfed-up\u201d comments, the Premier nearly blew a gasket, calling the Montreal MP a \u201cdisgrace\u201d and daring him to show up at a cultural event in Quebec after having uttered such \u201cnonsense\u201d (polite translation) about the state of the French language. <\/p>\n

Quebec\u2019s language watchdog now says it\u2019s okay to use \u2018go\u2019 to support sports teams<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. Miller is not the first federal politician to challenge the political orthodoxy, according to which French is in decline in Quebec. But his most recent predecessors in his portfolio, which includes responsibility for overseeing the Official Languages Act, have known better than to provoke nationalist politicians in what has long been a losing battle.<\/p>\n

No matter what the statistics say \u2013 and they are a mixed bag \u2013 you are not going to persuade francophone Quebeckers that their language is not threatened, especially in the digital age. Add immigration into the mix, and the fragility of French in Quebec becomes an inescapable preoccupation for politicians and average folks alike.<\/p>\n

The most recent census confirmed a steady regression of French within Canada over the past five decades<\/a>. In 1971, fully 27.2 per cent of Canadians claimed French as their first official language spoken. By 2021, that proportion had declined to 21.4 per cent, reflecting much faster population growth in the rest of Canada compared to Quebec. <\/p>\n

The proportion of Quebeckers who had French as their mother tongue fell to 74.8 per cent in 2021 from 77.1 per cent five years earlier. The share who spoke predominantly French at home dropped to 77.5 per cent from 79 per cent.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A person walks in Old Montreal on Thursday. Quebec’s largest city is the main destination for most immigrants to the province.Christinne Muschi\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Still, when Quebec politicians talk about the decline of French in the province, they are mostly talking about Montreal. The province\u2019s largest city is not only the destination for most immigrants, but the Island of Montreal (which includes Montreal and 15 smaller municipalities) is also home to most of Quebec\u2019s one million anglophones and the bulk of its head offices and cultural industries. As Montreal goes, so goes (eventually) the province.<\/p>\n

The Institut de la statistique du Qu\u00e9bec, the provincial equivalent to Statistics Canada, prompted plenty of consternation with a recent study showing that just 43 per cent of Island of Montreal residents speak only French at home<\/a>. When the proportion of those who speak French and English or French and a third language at home are added in, the share of Montreal Island residents who use French at least some of time at home rises to 60.4 per cent. The numbers nevertheless suggest a declining French prevalence in the province\u2019s most important population centre, as immigration alters the linguistic make up of Montreal.<\/p>\n

In the past two decades, Montreal has seen a sharp increase in immigration from African countries where French is mostly spoken as a second language. These immigrants speak their mother tongue at home, but French in the public sphere. Their children switch back and forth from French at school, to their parents\u2019 mother tongue at home, or to English in their extracurricular and online lives.<\/p>\n

The current situation differs from earlier waves of immigrants who mostly integrated into Montreal\u2019s English-speaking community. That \u201cproblem\u201d was solved with the 1977 Charter of the French Language, which required the children of immigrants to attend French public schools.<\/p>\n

Even so, the personal attachment to French of newer cohorts of immigrants who have been educated in the language remains a question mark. Whereas some language purists see Montreal\u2019s new multilingual reality as a threat to the survival of French, some experts contend the opposite. Using French in the public sphere should eventually lead many newcomers to integrate French more often into their private lives and, in subsequent generations, all the time.<\/p>\n

Montreal\u2019s latest experiment in multilingualism will take years to yield definitive results. Which is why, Mr. Miller, Quebec\u2019s language debate will not be ending any time soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Marc Miller, Federal Minister responsible for Official Languages, received fierce criticism from Quebec…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,66,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-340446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-science","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340446","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=340446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}