I thank my colleague.
My name is Houston Rifai. I am active both in social movements and as a student and worker in Quebec. I'm here to share my concerns and the concerns of many young English-speaking Quebeckers about Bill C-13. I do so while fully supporting the elements of the legislation aimed at bolstering minority language communities across Canada but seemingly not here in Quebec.
Everyone here agrees that there is a need to protect and promote the French language in Canada as a whole, particularly where it is in decline. However, French can be promoted and protected in a positive way, without having to suppress the use of other minority languages to achieve this objective.
Quebec’s English-speaking community is not a threat to French in Quebec. More people speak French inside Quebec than ever before, and more young anglophones are bilingual than any community other than francophones outside of Quebec. As English-speaking Quebeckers, we have put in the work to live and learn in French, and our language communities therefore constitute a population that is distinct from the rest of Canada, just as francophones do in Ontario and New Brunswick.
The notion that French is threatened in Quebec often relies on mother tongue indicators and the languages that people speak in the privacy of their own homes and with their families. This exclusionary framing is part of a wider fear-based narrative, which has been reflected in the legislation and in rhetoric from our political leadership.
In just these past few weeks, we've heard from members of our government in Quebec words of contempt towards minority communities and fearmongering against minorities as if they are a threat to the majority. The sentiments of exclusion were echoed by a member of the House of Commons, who stated that the idea of protecting English in Quebec obviously makes absolutely no sense, which the current version of Bill C-13 appears to take to heart.
We propose that protecting the rights of minority languages and minority communities is always good sense, and we ask that you consider protecting the rights of English-speaking Quebeckers as a minority within their own context, just as we ask that the rights of Franco-Ontarians and Acadians be respected and upheld in this legislation. We ask that our government take an active stance against the reduction of rights as seen in anti-charter legislation such as Bill 96 and Bill 21. We implore that you do not make reference to the Charter of the French Language in the Official Languages Act, as we feel that this will allow for more exclusionary and pernicious elements within our political culture to hold sway over federal language policy.
Thank you. We look forward to your questions.