Charter of the French Language

The preamble of the Charter states that the National Assembly resolved "to make French the language of Government and the Law, as well as the normal and everyday language of work, instruction, communication, commerce and business". It also states that the National Assembly is to pursue this objective "in a spirit of fairness and open-mindedness", recognizes "the right of the First Nations and the Inuit in Quebec, the first inhabitants of this land, to preserve and develop their original language and culture".[6]

The Charter consists of six titles and two schedules.

The nine chapters of Title I, pertaining to the status of the French language, declare French the sole official language (chapter I), define the fundamental language rights of persons (chapter II), and define the status of French in the parliament and the courts (chapter III), the civil administration (chapter IV), the semipublic agencies (chapter V), labour relations (VI), commerce and business (VII), and language of instruction (VIII).[7]

The five chapters of Title II, pertain to linguistic officialization, toponymy, and the francization of the civil service and enterprises.[8]

Title III establishes the Office québécois de la langue française (Quebec Office of the French language), defines its mission, powers, and organization.[9]

Title IV establishes the Conseil supérieur de la langue française (Superior Council of the French language).[10]

Title V and VI define penal provisions and sanctions and transitional and miscellaneous provisions.[11][12]

To achieve the goal of making French the "normal and everyday language of work, instruction, communication, commerce and business" and ensure the respect of French Quebecers' language rights, the Charter contains a number of key provisions and various regulations.

The Office québécois de la langue française, informally known by some Anglophones as the "language police",[27] is the commission responsible for conducting the policy pertaining to linguistic officialization, toponymy and francization of civil administration and enterprises. It also has the mission of "monitoring the linguistic situation in Québec", promoting the official language, and conducting research. In 2016–17, the budget of the OQLF was CA$24.1 million.[28] The office is frequently accused of abusing its powers, such as occurred in 2013 during the "pastagate" affair when an Italian restaurant was cited for having pasta, antipasti, calamari, and the like on its menu, instead of using French equivalents. The office also objects to the sale of "grilled cheese sandwiches", insisting that they be called sandwich de fromage fondue, which literally translates to "melted cheese sandwich".[27] Likewise, the Quebec language office objects to "on/off" switches and to the sale of "steaks", insisting that they be called bifteck, "despite the fact that steak is the far more common term among Francophones."[27]

The Conseil supérieur de la langue française (Superior Council of the French language) is an advisory council whose mission is "to advise the minister responsible for the application of the Charter of the French language on any question relative to the French language in Quebec".[29] It works in close collaboration with equivalent bodies in France, Belgium and Switzerland.

Language in Canada is defined federally by the Official Languages Act since 1969 and is part of the Constitution of Canada since 1982. Parts of the Charter have been amended in response to rulings by Quebec Courts which were upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Before 1982, the only part of the Charter of the French Language that could be challenged constitutionally was that of the language of legislation and the courts. It was challenged in 1979 by Peter Blaikie, Roland Durand and Yoine Goldstein (Attorney General of Quebec v. Blaikie).

In 1982, the patriation of the Canadian Constitution occurred as the British Parliament passed the Canada Act 1982. This act enacted the Constitution Act, 1982 for Canada (including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms); section 23 introduced the notion of "minority-language education rights". This opened another door to a constitutional dispute of the Charter.

Alliance Quebec, an anglophone rights lobby group, was founded in May 1982 and operated until 2005. It was mainly through this civil association that a number of lawyers have challenged the constitutionality of Quebec's territorial language policy.

A judge temporarily suspended two articles of Bill 96. The articles mandated companies to pay for the translation into French of legal documentation. Quebec Superior Court Justice Chantal Corriveau decided that requiring companies to pay for certified translation might delay some anglophone bodies from the right to access justice.[30]

The Charter was criticised by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who called Bourassa's Bill 22 as a "slap in the face", in his memoirs, as he saw it as contrary to the federal government's initiative to mandate bilingualism. Except for New Brunswick, most other provinces that accepted Trudeau's bilingualism initiative never fully implemented it. The most notable case was Ontario, where Premier Bill Davis did not grant full official status to the French language, despite the fact that the infrastructure was already in place.[49][50]

Political opposition to the Charter and earlier such language legislation has had limited success, given the support of the laws by the Parti Québécois and Quebec Liberal Party. Legislative initiatives prior to Bill 101 such as An Act to promote the French language in Quebec (Bill 63) were often perceived by francophones as insufficient. After Bourassa passed the Official Language Act, opponents turned their support to the Union Nationale in the 1976 election, but despite that short resurgence of support, the party collapsed in the subsequent election. Court challenges have been more successful: Many of the key provisions of the initial language legislation having been rewritten to comply with rulings. Despite compliance since 1993 of the Charter with the Canadian Constitution, opposition to the Charter and the government body enforcing it has continued.

According to Statistics Canada, up to 244,000 English-speaking people have emigrated from Quebec to other provinces since the 1970s; those in Quebec whose sole native language was English dropped from 789,000 in 1971 to 575,555 in 2006 when they accounted for 7.6% of the population. Altogether, in 2006, 744,430 (10%) used mostly English as their home language, and 918,955 (12.2%) comprised the Official Language Minority, having English as their First Official language spoken.[51] When many anglophones relocated outside of Quebec after the introduction of the Charter in the 1970s, several English-language schools in Montreal closed their doors. These school closures may also have been brought about by restrictions on who can attend English schools, which has been another ongoing drain on the English school system. Of the Anglophones between 25 and 44 years old who left the province between 1981 and 1986, 15,000 individuals, which was half of this group, had university degrees. The province's unemployment rate rose from 8.7 per cent in 1976 to 10.4 per cent in 1977, remaining above 10 per cent for 19 of the last 23 years of the 20th century.[52] The language barrier has also been regarded as a "soft cap" for population growth; for instance from 2013 to 2014 while Montreal gained around 43,000 immigrants from other parts of the world it lost 10,000 residents to other provinces.[53][54]

Many companies, most notably Sun Life, Royal Bank and Bank of Montreal (which even considered removing "Montreal" from its name), moved their major operations to Toronto as a consequence of the adoption of the Charter.[55] This concerted fleeing of business and subsequent loss of thousands of jobs is believed to have hindered Quebec's economy and allowed Toronto to overtake Montreal as Canada's business centre. On the other hand, Toronto's advantage had been growing since the 1930s and had become apparent in the 1950s, and is also related to the greater importance of the United States, rather than Britain, in Canada's economy. This action may have simply accelerated, rather than allowed, this change of status between the two cities.

Levying fines of up to CA$7,000 per offence, Charter enforcers were widely labelled in the English media as the "language police" or "tongue troopers". While the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) provides several warnings before resorting to legal sanctions, allegations that it has abused its powers has led to charges of racism and harassment.[56] The OQLF took action against stores retailing imported kosher goods that did not meet its labelling requirements, an action perceived in the Jewish community as an unfair targeting that coincided with a high-profile case against the well-known Schwartz's delicatessen, the owner of which was subjected to failed legal action by the OQLF due to the apostrophe in his sign, which remains.[57] In the mid-1980s, another delicatessen Dunn's got in trouble for having the English word, "Smoked Meat" on the sign out front. The manager at the time stated that Parti Québécois MNA Gérald Godin himself ordered the sandwich by its name.[58] Dunn's also fought a ruling to change the name of "Smoked Meat" to "Boeuf Mariné" in order to conform to Quebec Language Law.[59] They won the ruling by appeal by proving that if they didn't advertise "Smoked Meat" they would confuse and anger customers.[60] Due to the work of Myer Dunn, under the new ruling, enacted in 1987, Smoked meat became a word in both Official languages of Canada.[61] In 2002, there were reported cases of harassment of allophone merchants who refused to speak French.[62]

The 2004 annual report of the OQLF was criticized by a columnist of The Gazette who alleged that there was a "totalitarian mindset in the bureaucracy".[63] The columnist complained of sections of the report which described the continued prevalence of languages other than French in two-thirds of Montreal's households as an "alarming" trend that would present a formidable challenge to francophones in Montreal.[64] In reality, the report judged alarming the fact that adoption of English as a home language by allophones grew faster than the adoption of French as a home language.[65]

The use of the notwithstanding clause in the 1990s to circumvent the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms with regards to signage also resulted in reactions from other Canadian provinces; the syndrome de Sault Ste. Marie was a series of symbolic but divisive resolutions by some municipalities outside Quebec declaring their towns unilingually English in protest of what they saw as an infringement on the rights embodied in the charter. It is often believed that the controversy over the Charter was what influenced the Meech Lake Accord and Charlottetown Accord to fail. The Supreme Court in their ruling regarding the signs case which led to the use of the notwithstanding clause, ruled that in fact any sign law was a violation of the freedom of expression right.

Aside from the civil rights infringement, the Charter has faced legal challenges because the restricted education opportunities have hindered not only unilingual but bilingual anglophones' employment. Although the Charter made French the official language of government and civil administration, the same cannot be said of the private sector. Despite over 40 years of the Charter, it has never been applied as rigorously as intended because to do so would violate civil liberties. English is still often made a requirement by employers in Montreal, including many French-Canadian owned ones, and, to a lesser extent, in Gatineau and Quebec City, with the workforce in Montreal remaining largely bilingual.

On November 14, 1988, the political and human rights watchdog organization Freedom House published "The Doctrine of 'Preponderance of Blood' in South Africa, the Soviet Union and Quebec"[66] in its journal Exchange. Introduced by Zbigniew Brzezinski (an anglophone who had once lived in Montreal) former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's National Security adviser, the essay compared the language of instruction provisions of the charter with South African apartheid statutes and jurisprudence. However, the Supreme Court of Canada disagreed with the discrimination-based-on-ancestry argument under the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms in Gosselin (Tutor of) v. Quebec (Attorney General), believing that it conflicted with section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The criteria used by Quebec to determine if parents are entitled to have their children instructed in English are the same as those found under section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.[67]

The 2001 report of the Estates-General on the Situation and Future of the French Language in Quebec identified the negative perception of Quebec's language policy in the rest of Canada and the United States as a problem to solve. It stated:

In Canada and abroad, the linguistic policy of Quebec is too often negatively perceived. The business community and the media, in particular, know it very little. For their part, the Americans remain opposed to legislation that appears to them to reduce individual liberties and limit the use of English. For them, language and culture are two separate elements, they do not see how the protection of Quebec culture also includes the protection of the French language, even though 35 American States have adopted declarations proclaiming English the official language. Thus, must be developed the perception that Quebec culture is a part of the North-American heritage and that it is necessary to preserve it. It is also important to correct the erroneous perceptions regarding the Quebec language policy and its application.[68]

Recommendation 147 of the report suggested the creation of an institutional television and radio campaign targeting both Quebec citizens and certain groups abroad to inform on the state of French in North America and the language policy of Quebec. Recommendation 148 suggested the creation of a watchdog to correct errors made "both in good faith and bad faith" in the media.[69]

As part of the effort to improve how its policies are perceived, the OQLF conducted an inquiry on the influence of Quebec's language policy abroad in countries where the fragility of certain languages prompted the use of legislative measures. It requested and published the opinions of various experts from Spain, Israel, the United States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Wales, Australia and Flanders in a special issue of the OQLF's Revue d'aménagement linguistique celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Charter in 2002.

Jonas Žilinskas, a lecturer at University of Šiauliai in Lithuania described the state of the Lithuanian language after a prolonged Russian rule over his country:

One proclaimed a policy of bilingualism which was expressed only by the obligation made to Lithuanians to learn Russian while Russians did not bother to learn Lithuanian. If the written Lithuanian language were more or less protected by writers through newspapers and publishers, the spoken Lithuanian language was degraded. Often, in the institutions, it was only a language of oral communication, the greatest part of technical documentation and correspondence being written in Russian.[70]

This "false bilingualism" was followed by the Sąjūdis movement, during which the government of Lithuania declared their language the sole official language and began working on a language policy modelled on the experience of Quebec.[70]

Mart Rannut, vice-dean of research at the Department of Philology of the University of Tallinn, in Estonia, recalled the influence of Quebec's expertise in the field of linguistic human rights and language planning which helped countries that have gained independence from the Soviet Union and concluded that "Bill 101 indirectly touched one-sixth of the planet".[71]

Ina Druviete, at the time dean of the department of sociolinguistics at the Linguistic Institute of Latvia, noted the similarities between the language policies in all three Baltic states (which have large, if often officially unrecognized, Russophone minorities) and that of Quebec. All policies aiming "to prevent language shifts and to modify the hierarchy of languages in the public life. The principal sectors of intervention were the language used in the government agencies and the administration, in meetings and office spaces in particular, in corporate names, information and education. The principle of territorial linguistic rights was instituted."[72]

In Wales, the language policy of Quebec had a great influence, but a similar policy could not be implemented as it was in the Baltic States, because Welsh speakers do not form a majority in this constituent country of the United Kingdom. According to Colin H. Williams, professor and researcher at the Welsh Department of Cardiff University particular lessons followed in Wales which stem from the experience of Quebec are:

• The acquisition of detailed census data and explanatory facts aiming at clarifying the public discussion
• The linguistic legislation (official language status, right to speak Welsh before the court, Welsh Language Board responsible to administer the law)
• The iconography of the linguistic landscape
• The progress in the teaching of the Welsh language[73]

In Israel, while the "penetration of English in the sociolinguistic organization of the country" is perceived, according to Bernard Spolsky, professor emeritus of English at the Bar-Ilan University, as a threat to Hebrew, the language policy has thus far only influenced linguists and some politicians. He writes:

Periodically, Israeli politicians present bills to proclaim Hebrew the sole official language of the country. Presently, Hebrew shares this title with Arabic only, because a measure was taken soon after the foundation of the State, in 1948, to modify the British policy, which imposed three languages, and gave up English. The last attempt at giving a judicial protection to Hebrew goes back to December 2000: two bills were then rejected.[74]

In Catalonia, according to Miquel Reniu i Tresserras, president of the Comissió de Lectorats and former chief executive officer of the Catalan language policy, Quebec's legislation constituted a "reference model" and the OQLF and the equivalent body in Catalonia were in close collaboration.[75]

• Language demographics of Quebec
• Language policy
• Minority language
• French language
• English-speaking Quebecers
• Children of Bill 101
• Official bilingualism in Canada
• Toubon Law
• Ford v. Quebec
• Devine v. Quebec

• Website of the Office québécois de la langue française (English section)
• Educaloi – La Loi vos droits – Citizens – Charter of the French Language