Quebec’s Anglophones are trapped in an impossible contradiction between their status as a minority and the power of English. So are policymakers.
by Mario Polèse. Originally published on Policy Options
February 5, 2025
(Version française disponible ici)
I doubt that this article will make me many friends among fellow English-speaking Quebecers. To immediately deflect accusations that I’m biased against English, please allow me a word about my background.
I grew up in New York. All my schooling was in English. I began to learn French at the age of 16 in high school and have since perfected it, and am now about equally fluent in both languages, although I am marginally more at ease in English. Besides the INRS, my (francophone) home institution, I’ve taught and supervised students at McGill for some thirty years.
I like that I can also live in English in Montreal. But I have always felt uneasy about fully exercising that “right.” I generally use French as my language for public use. I want to do my part to ensure that French remains the dominant language in la métropole.
When is a minority a minority?
Here we come to the heart of Quebec’s language conundrum : the language of the minority is English, which is anything but a declining language. The percentage of Quebecers who speak English continues to grow (it is now close to half the population), as does the use of English in the workplace, notably in Montreal, for reasons easy to comprehend.
Yet, anglophones are unquestionably a “minority,” comprising between 7.5 per cent and 15 per cent of the Quebec population, depending on the measure used. But, the notion of “minority” as an official designation is recent. The term “linguistic minority communities” first appeared in federal legislation in the 1988 revision of the Official Languages Act, containing provisions for funding minority language community organizations. The QCGN (Quebec Community Groups Network), funded under the Official Language Communities Program, was created in 1995 and has since acted as the principal advocacy group to promote and defend, in its words, “the rights of our English-language minority.”
I doubt that many English Quebecers perceived themselves as a minority before the 1960s. Defending English rights was not an issue. The right to English education was implicitly reaffirmed at Confederation in 1867 (Article 93 of the British North America Act), enshrining the right to Protestant schools boards, at the time synonymous with the English language. The “right” to public services in English was a matter of tradition, not necessarily requiring legislation, not to mention the unobstructed use of English in public spaces (i.e. advertising, commerce, among others).
The end of language liberalism
This liberal regime worked for over a century as guarantor of social peace but broke down in the 1960s as francophone births plummeted. Without going into the long saga of Quebec’s language battles, this eventually culminate in the Charter of the French Language (Bill 101) in 1977, which restricted access to English schools and the use of English in business and public space.
At the federal level, the 1969 Official Languages Act sought to repair to the wrongs of the past. Francophone minorities outside Quebec were plainly the primary audience. Their right to (federal) services and to education in French was formally recognized, the latter constitutionalized in the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. English and French language minority populations were to be treated equally. In Quebec, to quote the QCGN, “English-speaking Canadians living in Quebec represent one of the two official language minority communities in Canada with equality of status, rights, and privileges.”
Equality of treatment is an ideal that is difficult to argue against. But its application to Canada’s two language minorities has not produced equal outcomes, as figure 1 shows.
How do we treat two unequals equitably?
As Aristotle said, “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” Canada is a textbook example of equal status producing unequal outcomes. Quebec’s anglophone minority is growing while the francophone minority outside Quebec is shrinking.
More Quebecers speak English at home (10.4 per cent) than declare it as their mother tongue (7.6 per cent), meaning that English continues to attract outsiders. It is the opposite outside Quebec, where 40 per cent of francophones (by mother tongue) have abandoned their language. Even taking the best-case scenario, New Brunswick, where French and English have equal status at both senior government levels, the percentage of francophones (by language spoken at home) has fallen from 30 per cent in 2001 to 26.4 per cent in 2021. To paraphrase another aphorism, this one by George Orwell, “some minorities are more minor than others.”
The problem is translating Aristotle’s admonition it into public policy. Article 23 of the Canadian Charter, which defines minority language educational rights, implicitly recognizes the inequality between Canada’s two minorities, although this is not always well understood. Admissibility criteria for English schooling in Quebec are stricter than for French schooling outside Quebec.
Access to English education in Quebec, consistent with Bill 101, is guaranteed only for children of parents who received their early schooling in English in Canada, while access to French schools outside Quebec is open to all who declare French as their mother tongue. Indeed, admissibility to French schooling outside Quebec is often liberally interpreted, overlooking citizenship requirements. In Quebec, governments continue to rigorously enforce restrictions to English schooling.
In a cruel historical twist, the English community is paying the price for Quebec’s past generosity and the past (linguistic) miserliness of other provinces. It is unthinkable that an anglophone Quebecer would not have access to early education in English, making this criteria a “just” marker for identifying rights-holders. No similar historical assurance exists for francophones outside Quebec, as French schooling was not universally available; thus the need for more generous admissibility criteria.
The 2023 amended Official Languages Act (Bill C-13), which the QCGN unsuccessfully lobbied against, took another more publicized step towards acknowledging the inequality, explicitly incorporating Quebec’s Charter of the French Language.
It’s easy to understand the QCGN’s displeasure. The amended act states that its purpose is to “advance the existence of a majority-French society in a Quebec where the future of French is assured” and “advance the equality of status and use of the English and French languages (…) taking into account the fact that French is in a minority situation in Canada and North America due to the predominant use of English (…). ”
The second statement nicely captures the dilemma of promoting equality for unequals, but also sends the message to the courts that legislation limiting English should be judged leniently, not good news for Quebec’s anglophone minority.
Pity the minister
The growing power of English will continue to put pressure on Quebec governments to further strengthen language legislation. Bill 84 on “national integration”, tabled while these lines were written (January 2025), already opens the door to new measures. The percentage of francophone Quebecers who feel that their language is threatened has consistently risen since the turn of the century.
This is no accident. The brave new world of the internet has made English the universal port of entry not only for knowledge and fun, but also for belonging. Young Québécois are no exception. I witness it everyday in my Montreal neighbourhood. Kids, often second-generation immigrants, exiting French schools – Bill 101 oblige –, are glued to their iPhones, chattering away in a mishmash of French and (mainly) English, totally immersed in cyberspace, where of course the language is English.
What then is the minister to do to make French la langue commune, especially in Montreal, where English is omnipresent? The effects of the legislation have not always been happy, Bill 96 being the last example. Some parts of the bill, such as lowering the threshold for firms requiring francisation certificates from 50 to 25 employees, are fairly straightforward. However, other parts betray improvisation, notably the botched attempt at defining who has a right to services in English. A section of the bill stipulates that health services can be provided in English “to a person declared eligible to receive instruction in English,” which led to the humiliating spectacle of the minister first publishing directives to hospitals on who has the right to health services in English, only to be forced to backpedal after the predictable outcry.
The idea of nurses being obliged to ask for ID before addressing patients in English is so absurd as to be farcical. Why then did the minister dig himself into this hole, which only serves to make the government look incompetent, if not meanspirited? Put simply, it is because no rules exist for managing minority language rights where the minority language is stronger. English will continue its unstoppable ascension, and Quebec is no exception. Pity the minister, but also the defenders of Quebec’s language minority. If only their language was not English.
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This article first appeared on Policy Options and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.