The CAQ’s Cultural Agenda: Preserving French or Threatening English?

Image By: CTV News

Over the last year, the Quebec government has intensified its struggle against the Anglicization of the province, pushing for a series of legal measures dedicated towards preserving French cultural and linguistic dominance. The movement is nearly a half-century old, but in response to a growing number of immigrants and the rising presence of English in the past decade, the current conservative government is taking legal action with renewed fervor. Thus far, this agenda has included raising tuition at English-speaking universities, requiring social services to be provided in French, and restricting the use of English in governmental interactions. While the government’s effort to protect the declining French language and preserve the province’s unique cultural legacy is understandable, its efforts to eradicate English verge on hostile and discriminatory and could have serious repercussions for Quebec’s financial health and the well-being of immigrants. 

bill 96

The current government is headed by the Coalition Avenir Quebecois (CAQ), a conservative political party that took charge of the province in 2018. Since coming to power, premier François Legault and his CAQ majority in the National Assembly have firmly defended their goal of protecting the usage of French language and culture. Bill 96, which the CAQ passed in May 2022, requires civil servants to speak and write exclusively in French, mandates that small businesses inform the government how many of their employees do not speak French, limits the use of English in legal matters, and caps enrollment at English language schools. Legault has framed the bill as an attempt to “protect our common language,” while promising that access to bilingual healthcare and social services will remain available. Legault maintains that the measures are necessary, yet critics have asserted that the bill’s dramatic agenda infringes upon the rights of English speakers and Indigenous populations and is in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Bill 96 invokes Section 33 of the Canadian Charter, which prevents courts from declaring the bill unconstitutional because of its potential violation of certain Charter-given rights. This preemptive decision allows the bill to be protected from challenges by the federal government, despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressing “concerns'' about the content of the bill. 

bill 15

Another challenge to Anglophone rights has come more recently in the form of an amendment to Bill 15, a sweeping legislative measure which passed in December 2023 designed to make Quebec’s healthcare system more efficient. The bill allowed for the creation of Santé Quebec, a new Crown corporation to manage the province’s healthcare. The amendment to Bill 15 grants the corporation permission to revoke the bilingual status of healthcare agencies at their discretion. The measure has been critiqued by liberals as hypocritical, given the government’s previous promise to protect access to healthcare services in English. Eva Ludvig, president of the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN), referred to the bill as “very top down” and asserted that the measure “creates bureaucracy that controls the health institutions in the whole health-care system, and removes much of the autonomy of the institutions.” Bill 15 serves as a critical example of the intentions of the CAQ— imposing legislation claiming to protect and conserve French, but, in actuality, primarily functioning to erode the basic linguistic rights of Anglophones and Indigenous groups. 

tuition hikes

One of the pivotal items on the CAQ’s agenda to protect the French language has been tuition hikes, which have been the subject of some of the most intense debates and criticisms of the government in recent months. Again citing a desire to fortify protections of the French language, the CAQ announced in October that beginning in 2024, tuition rates for out-of-province and international students at public English speaking universities in Quebec will rise significantly, with the additional mandate that 80% of non-Quebec students achieve Level 5 oral proficiency in French by university graduation. The government intends to collect the money received from this increase and use it to fund French-speaking universities. The measure has invoked outrage from McGill, Concordia, and Bishop’s, Quebec’s most prominent English-speaking universities. The schools have urged the government to revoke the tuition increase, warning that the hikes will decrease their out-of-province and international student populations and thus damage their financial health, resources, and prestige. Additionally, considering the presence of out-of-province and international students in Montréal contributes nearly $520 million to the city’s economy, the measure promises to cause long-term damage to Quebec itself financially. It is another instance of the CAQ touting their supposed dedication to safeguarding the French language while in reality implementing isolationist policies that damage the reputation of the province and erode the rights of English speakers.

cultural sentiments

The question at the heart of the recent legislation debate is whether the CAQ’s drastic measures can be justified. Indeed, Quebec’s English-speaking population has experienced unprecedented growth, and the percentage of the provincial population with French as their mother tongue has declined (the number was about 77% in 2021). However, an increased number of people are using French in addition to their native language, a likely consequence of immigration. Despite French’s decreasing popularity as a first language, a growing number of Quebec residents are bilingual, indicating French's sustained prevalence as a language of public and civil interactions. The CAQ, however, has almost exclusively focused on the usage of French in the private sphere, allowing them to spin and misrepresent data to align with their anti-Anglophone rhetoric. 

conclusion

Ultimately, the CAQ’s recent legislative actions are likely reflective of growing dissatisfaction with Legault’s government, which has lost support over the course of his duration in office and is seeking to hold on to power by appealing to the party’s most radical members. However, the anti-Anglophone crusade is an approach that will likely only hurt Quebec in the long term. If the province cannot find a way to preserve its cultural legacy without erasing English or repelling immigrants, it will likely suffer the long-term economic consequences of its isolationism.