These municipalities are opposed to certain provisions of the law on the official language of Quebec. (File photo)
Three Gaspé municipalities, Hope Town, New Carlisle and Shigawake, are among the 23 Quebec municipalities with status bilingual who filed, at the beginning of the month, an appeal in Superior Court against the Act respecting the official and common language of Quebec, French.
These municipalities oppose certain provisions of Law 96, presented by the Legault government as a modernization of Law 101.
This law, adopted in May 2022 and coming into force the following July 1, now requires municipalities in Quebec whose population does not include at least 50% English speakers to pass a resolution to maintain their bilingual status.
Forty-eight municipalities eventually adopted such resolutions. However, some of them want the courts to invalidate this provision.
The alliance of 23 municipalities includes following cities, towns, villages and townships :
Baie d’Urfé, Beaconsfield, Blanc-Sablon, Bonne-Espérance, Chichester, Côte-Saint-Luc, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Dorval, Havelock, Hope Town, Kazabazua, Kirkland, L’Isle-aux-Allumettes, Montreal- West, Mulgrave-et-Derry, New Carlisle, Pointe-Claire, Senneville, Sheenboro, Shigawake, Stanbridge East, Wentworth and Westmount.
Excerpt : press release from the City of Côte-Saint-Luc
The recourse also covers other aspects of the law which notably affect contracts and communications, including postings, the obligation to sanction employees who do not use French as a language of work or even the possibility that the government can withdraw its subsidies to certain cities.
For the mayor of New Carlisle, David Thibault, the new law will be the source of several problems for municipalities like his. In our operation, with our employees or with our writings, specifies Mr. Thibault.
The mayor gives the example of employment contracts with his employees, eight of whom are English-speaking. He sees himself badly, he says, writing or discussing in French with an English-speaking employee on the particularities of his employment contract. He [the employee] will not understand, so it creates unease between employers and employees, believes Mr. Thibault.
David Thibault believes that the new law will prevent him from advertise a bilingual position even if he himself believes that such an employee is likely to be more effective than a unilingual Francophone.
He also fears that Anglophones in the Gaspé no longer have the same access to services. Already that we are far away in Gaspésie, the aging English-speaking community, which is not necessarily full technological, will not have access to services as it had before.
Mr. Thibault would have liked the 48 municipalities to participate in the legal action. Other municipalities in the region, such as Cascapédia–Saint-Jules or Grosse-Île, could have joined the movement, he points out.
About 1,400 people live in New Carlisle, about 60% of whom are English speakers.
On the other hand, for the mayor, both English and French speakers are predominantly bilingual. We have coexisted, he says, for decades and decades together in a bilingual way. I think it’s even very beautiful, the cooperation between Anglophones and Francophones.
Bill 96: an attack on social ties in bilingual communities according to the mayor of New Carlisle
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