Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about this amendment today. It will allow me to tell you why it's important for my own community, in the riding of Saint‑Laurent, and for the entire linguistic minority in Quebec.
I'll start by mentioning that everybody knows and is proud of the fact that Quebec is a French-speaking province and that the common language in Quebec is French. We all accept that. It's a known fact. Whether or not we include lines 5 and 6 as they are currently written in the bill, that is something that is just common knowledge in Quebec.
I think the way that Mr. Garneau suggested we do it is great, and I think it still mentions the fact that French is the official and common language in Quebec.
Now, I understand that when this bill was originally drafted, Bill 96 was not yet implemented, was not yet law in Quebec, so it made sense originally to say the Charter of the French Language, but ever since Bill 96 has been implemented and included in the Charter of the French Language, it is no longer acceptable for us to use that language in this bill, and that is because Bill 96 uses the notwithstanding clause. It's a bill that literally goes against or ignores the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
How can the federal government include in its bill on language something that includes a notwithstanding clause? For me, that in itself makes it unacceptable to include the language in lines 5 and 6.
I would like to further say that Bill 96, since its implementation, has had a very negative impact on the English-speaking or linguistic minority community in Quebec. Already people have called me at my office to complain, people who don't necessarily know jurisdiction and whom they should be calling for certain things. My hairdresser gave me a call and said, “Emmanuella, I live in your riding. I recently had to go to the doctor's office with my grandmother, because the last time she went to her appointment, they refused to serve her in English.” This was somebody who was speaking to her in English before Bill 96 was implemented, but she no longer speaks to her in English, because now she's afraid that a complaint may be filed against her if she speaks any language other than French at her workplace.
This senior was lucky to have a granddaughter who understands French and can attend this doctor's appointments with her, but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of seniors living in my riding who may not be so lucky and who may not have access to the very basic health services that one would think one should have access to.
This has a really profound impact. Bill 96 has negatively impacted Canadians living in Quebec ever since its implementation. It's very real. It's only been implemented for several months, but already we see these negative impacts. If the federal government supports or includes this type of language in its bill, I don't see how I'd be able to support it.
Let me go back a little bit, because there are some new members on this committee, I believe, who were not here in the past when I was a member on this committee. Let me just explain a little bit further.
I come from the Greek community in Montreal. One of the major waves of immigration came in in the fifties and sixties. Back then, before the nineties, school boards were not based on language; they were religious. If you were not Catholic, you were automatically sent to an English school if you lived in certain parts of Montreal. When my grandmother arrived from Greece, her daughter was also from Greece, but her son, my father, was born here. He tried to enrol at the school closest to him, around the corner from his house, and it was a French school. He wasn't allowed to attend. They told him, “You're not Catholic. You're Orthodox. You have to go to an English school.” They gave him the address and told him to go and register at the English school.
The seniors who are anglophone, English-speaking, in Montreal came around that time, in the fifties and sixties or even earlier. A lot of them, at least in the Jewish and Greek communities, didn't have access to sending their kids to a French school. They had to send them to an English school. When you're not working alongside your child learning the language with them at school, it's very difficult for you yourself to learn the language, so a lot of our seniors did not ever have the opportunity to learn French in Quebec. Even though they've been here for many years, they didn't have that opportunity.
The people who did go to English school, such as my father, were then denied learning French in the workplace.
It's because francization courses were not offered to immigrants. Some people born in Quebec were not entitled to them.
There were constant barriers to learning French for certain members of the Greek community. The seniors who never had any opportunities or the right to go to a French school are the ones who don't have any access to English services. They are at a stage in their lives when they need these services more than anybody, and more than they've ever needed them in their entire lives.
I feel it's unconscionable to include, in this bill, the fact that Quebec's Charter of the French Language provides that French is the official language. Absolutely, French is the official language in Quebec. We should say that in this bill, but we should not refer to the Charter of the French Language now that Bill 96 is part of the Charter of the French Language. It attacks way too many of the rights of the English-speaking minority community in Quebec.
Thank you.