Good morning, Chair Simms and members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. My name is Eva Ludvig, and I am a member of the executive committee of the Quebec Community Groups Network, QCGN. I am accompanied by Kenneth Hirsch, co-chair of the Quebec English-language Production Council, QEPC, and our counsel, Darius Bossé from Power Law. We represent Quebec’s English-speaking community, more than one million people, half of all Canadians living in French or English official-language minority communities, OLMC.
Like everyone, we need to know who we are. That means seeing ourselves when we look in our cultural mirrors, not seeing someone else. Like everyone, our language is a key part of our identity, our history, and, we hope, our future. The English-speaking minority in Quebec is a unique community, not simply an extension of the English majority in the rest of Canada. We are not Americans, anymore than the Swiss, Belgians or Québécois are French.