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Bill 101: The Fight for
Language Rights
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By Michael
Suddard
The Parti Québecois
came to power after winning the election of 1976 promising the Francophone
population that the French language would become the dominant language within
the province of Quebec. French speaking Quebeckers voted for the Parti
Québecois giving them forty-one percent of the
popular vote and increased the party’s seats from seven to seventy-one. The Liberals only kept twenty-eight
seats. Many blamed the Liberals, under
the leadership of Robert Bourassa, for failing to protect and preserve the
French language within Quebec. Many criticized the
Bourassa government’s Bill 22 as having too many exceptions and loopholes to
make a difference. René Lévesque, the leader of the Parti
Québecois, had promised during the election of 1976
to implement a new language law that would guarantee the protection and
promotion of the French language within Quebec as well as
“a referendum on Quebec sovereignty before the end of his term.”
The newly
formed government quickly got to work on the promised language
legislation. A white paper on language
in the province of Quebec was presented in March 1977.
It justified the creation of language legislation on the basis of the
government’s vision of the future of the province. The forward of the paper can best describe
the government’s vision of the future when it states:
The Quebec we wish to
build will be essentially French. The
fact that the majority of the population is French will be clearly visible – at
work, in communications and in the countryside.
It will also be a country in which the traditional balance of power will
be altered, especially in regard to the economy; the use of French…will
accompany, symbolize and support reconquest by the
French-speaking majority in Quebec of all that
control over the economy which it ought to have. To sum up, the Quebec whose features
are sketched in the Charter is a French-language society.
The
Parti Québecois government
wanted to ensure that the French-speaking people of the province of Quebec were able to seize control
from their Anglophone counterparts and eventually lead the province into
nationhood itself via the promised future referendum.
The white
paper led to the creation of Bill 1 which was introduced on the 26th of April 1977. After the first reading of the bill, the legislation was sent to
the Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Education, Cultural Affairs and
Communications for public hearings and submissions. As William D. Coleman writes, Bill 1 was saw
extensive research and revision. “The
Committee began the hearings on 7 June 1977, and held
its final session one month later. In
its 21 sessions spanning 114 hours and 24 minutes, it heard 62 briefs out of a
total of 270 submitted.” The Committee study of Bill
1 was unlikely to be completed before September and the beginning of the new
school year. This timeline went against
the government’s intentions of the legislation because Premier Lévesque wanted
the legislation implemented before the coming school year. Therefore, Bill 1 was withdrawn and
re-introduced as Bill 101 in the Quebec National Assembly.
On the 26th of August of 1977 the National Assembly of the Province of Quebec
passed the ‘Charte de la langue francaise,’ otherwise known as Bill 101, by a vote of
fifty-four to thirty-two. Bill 101 protected and
preserved the French language for Quebecers while antagonizing Quebec
Anglophones. The legislation stated that
only French would be the official language of the province of Quebec and
did this by defining the roles of both public and private institutions in the
areas of governance, business and education.
Reaction for
and against the law came quickly.
Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau “denounced Bill 101 as a
‘bad law’.” The bill’s author, Quebec’s Minister
of Cultural Development Dr. Camille Laurin, “argued
that it was necessary to protect the French language.” Reaction to Bill 101 came from across the
country from academics, former and current politicians, and editorialists. However, in order to understand the reasoning
behind Bill 101 and why it caused conflicting reactions amongst Canadians, an
investigation of the legislation needs to be undertaken.
The areas of governance were bound by the government’s vision of
creating a fully functional French-language society and were dealt with in
Chapter four of Bill 101. To this end
the Parti Québecois
government attempted to make sure that all administrative functions at the
municipal and provincial levels of government would be delivered in a
Francophone atmosphere. Laws regarding
civil administrations also applied to the administration and delivery of
services in the fields of health, social services, the judiciary and
education. The Francophone atmosphere,
according to the legislation, could best be encouraged and enhanced through the
planning and implementation of a ‘francization’
program. In other words, each government
department at both the provincial and municipal level “were to undertake a
systematic analysis of all communication taking place within their organization
and then formulate a program for francizing all the
operations involved.” The programs had to ensure
that: both internal and external communications were in French and that
“promotions, hirings and transfers could only be done
if the employee had an ‘appropriate’ knowledge of French.” Thus, French could only be
used, for example, to advertise programs, in the names of government
departments, in departmental messages, published documents, in court rulings
and on traffic signs.
The ‘francization’ programs would have to be approved by the
newly created ‘Office de la langue francaise.’
The Office was created in order to implement and regulate the provisions of
Bill 101 throughout the province of Quebec. Article 100 of Bill 101 gives the best description
of the intentions of this office. The
article states that the:
Office de la
langue francaise is established to define and conduct
Québec policy on linguistics research and terminology and to see that the
French language becomes, as soon as possible, the language of communication,
work, commerce and business in the civil administration and business firms.
The Office completes this work by
issuing ‘francization’ certificates to both
government departments and commercial institutions that have completed their francization programs in accordance with Bill 101. If a government department or commercial
institution fails to meet the terms of the language legislation, the Office
de la langue francaise must approve a new ‘francization plan’ or assist in instituting one of the
Office’s own design.
Reaction to this section of Bill 101 came even before the
legislation had been passed. Article
nine of Bill 101 stated that only the French version of all court cases would
be legal. This caused two opposition
Liberal members John Ciaccia and Fernand
Lalonde to point out these clauses would “place to
much responsibility in the hands of translators.” Ciaccia backed up his claim by using a court case from James Bay as an
example. Ciacca
said in this case the judge himself translated his English ruling into
French. However, Ciacca
noted, there remained differences between the French and English
interpretations. Therefore, Ciacca claimed, it was necessary to have the original judgements be the legal rulings no matter if they were in
English or French. Cultural Development
Minister, Camille Laurin, dismissed this argument
stating that their had been a significant number of “judicial appointments in
past years…so that the judges had sufficient knowledge of French” and that “Quebec has the right to be as massively French as other
provinces have the right to be massively, English.” The significant arguments made by the Liberal opposition members
would go unheeded as article nine would be passed unchanged.
The sections of Bill 101 in regards to governance were not that
controversial because of the simple fact that the vast majority of the civil
service were mainly francophone. The
civil service was already mainly francophone because of the fact that this was
where the majority of the newly graduated francophone social science students
originating from the Quebec universities of the Quiet Revolution were employed. During the Quiet Revolution the government of
Quebec chose to heavily expand the provincial civil service in order to
provide its citizens with services in French.
Thus, the civil service required thousands of French-speaking workers in
order to provide these services. Also,
previous French-language legislation from both the preceding Union Nationale and Liberal governments had virtually saw the ‘francization’ of the provincial and municipal civil
services. The only major change between
Bill 101 and previous language legislation was that the quota for Anglophones
to receive governmental services in English had been removed and replaced with
a term stating that another language can be used if both parties agree. Therefore, Bill 101 was mainly to entrench in
legislation a guarantee to French-speaking citizens the right for them to
receive governmental services in French and to reduce the amount of English
used within and outside of government to a minimum.
The
educational system within the province of Quebec would
undergo restructuring in order to try and slow the falling enrolment figures
for Francophone schools. The restructuring under Bill 101 began at the top and
worked its way down as the school boards themselves, like other government
departments, had to go through a ‘francization’
process. School boards had to draft all their official documents and written
communications in French. Also, the
boards had to “undertake a systematic analysis of all communication taking
place within their organization” to ensure that all operations adhered to the guidelines set out in
Bill 101. The only exception to the ‘francization program’ were the Anglophone school boards
who, according to the law, could use both French and English if the majority of
their clienteles were Anglophone.
The
existing English school system saw declining enrolment as a result of Bill
101. Under the language legislation, the
only children that could attend English language schools had to adhere to at
least one of the four guidelines. These
guidelines, as set out under Article 73, were: “Children whose mother or father
had received their primary schooling in Quebec in English”; “Children whose
father or mother lived in Quebec at the time of the promulgation of the law and
who had received their primary instruction in English outside Quebec”;
“Children who in the previous school year had legally received instruction in
English outside Quebec”; and “younger brothers and sisters of the latter.” The section dealing with education was drafted
so as to not upset the existing Quebec voting
population. The above terms of
legislation do not remove children from their existing English educational
setting in order to move them into the French language system. Also, the very last clause of the above list
allows the siblings of a child already enrolled in the English school system to
receive his or her education also in English.
There were
some stipulations that upset Anglophone Canadian parents. As Kenneth McRoberts
notes in his book, Quebec: Social Change and Political Crisis, the
legislation “used the boundaries of Quebec as a point
of reference, in effect denying access to children from other parts of Canada, even if English should be their mother tongue.” The fact this clause meant that if a parent had been educated in
the province of Ontario in English, their children would have to enrol
in the French school system. However, if
a parent had been educated in the English school system within Quebec, they could
send their children to an English school system. This stipulation angered employers’
associations and groups who represented new Canadians. Employers’ associations
argued that Anglophones moving into Quebec from
elsewhere in Canada should be able to educate their children in English. The groups representing new Canadians who
spoke neither English or French were upset that their were no clauses in Bill
101 for the instruction of second languages as their had been under the former
Liberal government’s Bill 22.
The
stipulation that allowed only Anglophone parents to enroll their children in
French schools was an easy way for the provincial government to reduce the
costs of providing Anglophone education.
The provincial government could make this promise because the Anglophone
population of the province was in a severe decline. As historians Robert Bothwell,
Ian Drummond and John English note in their book, Canada since 1945, “those with English as
their tongue declined from 14 per cent of the population in 1941 to 10 per cent
in 1986.” Thus, the provincial government
could easily afford to allow current Anglophone students, their siblings, and
other children whose parents were educated in English, to be educated in the
English school system.
The
reaction to this section of the bill can be seen in several ways. The legislation resulted in a sharp decline
in registrations in the Anglophone school system in Quebec when
“enrolment fell by 15.6 percentage points” in the first two years under Bill 101. Another reaction to the new language
legislation can be seen by the resignation of Sylvester White, an associate
deputy minister within the Quebec Education Department. White resigned from his position because, he
“simply found certain aspects of Bill 101 indigestible.” White pointed out that he
was against the article that “prevents English-speaking parents from other
parts of Canada from registering their children in English schools if they move to
Quebec.” Sylvester White’s resignation over Bill 101 is
most significant because, according to the Montreal Gazette, he held the
highest-ranking post by an English-speaking Quebecer. However, the biggest
reaction came from Anglophone and Francophone parents who sought to have their
children enrolled in English language schools illegally.
Thousands
of students were illegally enrolled in the in the English language schools
within the province of Quebec. Many school boards refused
to enforce the language situation and allowed the parents to choose which
language they felt their children should be educated in. Perhaps the largest of these boards to admit
illegal children was the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal (PSBGM)
who “decided to leave it up to parents themselves to decide whether their
children qualify for English-language education and not demand proof.” The PSBGM would admit as many as 800 illegals of the estimated total of 2,100 children in the Montreal area
alone by the Quebec Education Department. The Premier of Quebec, Rene
Levesque, responded to the admission of the illegal enrolments by saying the
offending school boards had participated in “administrative civil
disobedience…[which] cannot be tolerated.” The situation only got worse for the school
boards as Quebec Education Minister Jacques-Yvan
Morin threatened school boards that the provincial government would not provide
the $1,200 grants for students to school boards. Morin also stated that his department
would not grant credits or diplomas to students who were registered illegally.
Both
parents and students from a variety of backgrounds disliked the reasoning
behind the need for the educational stipulations within Bill 101. They even went as far as to illegally enrol their children in English-language schools despite
threats by the provincial government to not grant them credits or
diplomas. However, Bill 101 easily
accomplished its goals of increasing enrolment in the French educational system
considering that the English language system, despite the illegal enrolments,
saw its enrolments drop by over fifteen percent within the first two years
alone.
The
areas of business and commerce were also expected to ‘francize’. Several studies had found that
French-Canadians living within the province of Quebec were
earning less their Anglophone counterparts.
Also, the provincial government found that the main language of business
was English and they believed this needed to be changed. Therefore, Bill 101 layed
out several clauses that business francization
programs would have to adhere to by 31 December 1983 in order to receive a certificate from the ‘Office de la langue
francaise’ and not face fines. The clauses that affected signage were the most detailed. Commercial signs displayed externally had to
be in French, while, interior signs could contain English, but the English had
to be less prominent than the French. Workers also had the right,
under Bill 101, to not be fired, layed off, or
displaced because they only spoke French.
Also, all contracts had to be drawn up in French unless the two parties
agreed the contracts could be drawn up in another language, not necessarily
English. Under articles 57 and 58 of
Bill 101, businesses are required to have applications for employment, order
forms, invoices, receipts, signs, posters and commercial advertising solely in
the French language. Also, every firm name had
to be in ‘francized’ by the 31st of
December of 1980. However, an exception
was made for businesses that were registered under the incorporation laws that
do not allow a company name to be changed.
The clauses affecting businesses and commercial institutions were
estimated to have cost Quebec firms $107,150,000. There is little doubt as to why the Anglophone
business community protested Bill 101 right from the bill’s drafting.
Under
pressure from the business sector, the Parti
Quebecois was forced to make changes to Bill 101. As historian Richard Jones points out, the Parti Quebecois exempted “head offices and research centres…from the laws provisions. [Also,] professionals who had no contact with
the public would not have to pass a test of French proficiency.” However, the Parti Quebecois did not want the head offices to be
dominated by anglophone businessmen alone. Thus, head offices and research centres that were to be exempted from Bill 101 were to negotiate
with the Office de la langue francaise on
which clauses they could be exempted from. However, the clauses of Bill 101
affecting internal communications, advertising and terminology amongst
employees would not be exempted. Even these exemptions created
by amendments to Bill 101 did not satisfy many in the Anglophone business
community as a number of businesses and head offices chose to leave Quebec because of
the language laws.
Bill 101 did
accomplish the Parti Quebecois’ goals of increasing
the earnings of French-Canadians workers.
The main idea of Bill 101 was to increase the demand for French language
skills in the workplace and reduce the demand for English language skills. With the increase in demand for French
language skills, the Parti Quebecois hoped that the Quebec economy
would increase it’s demand for francophones in
managerial and other occupations.
Economists Daniel M. Shapiro and Morton Stelcner
completed a study in 1997 that showed the earnings differential between Francophones and Anglophones between 1970 and 1990 had
indeed closed. The earnings gap between
unilingual francophone men and unilingual anglophone
men in 1970, according Shapiro and Stelcner’s study,
saw an earnings gap of between 17 to 20 percent. While in 1980 “the earnings gap between
unilingual francophone men and anglophone men declined
to between 5 to 7 percent. In 1990 the
results for the same groups showed an increase in the income earnings to
between 8 and 9 percent. These numbers
are in sharp contrast to the income disparities between bilingual francophone
and anglophone men who, according to the study, saw
their income disparities during this same time period vanish. Therefore, despite Bill
101, the demand for the English language still remained high enough to maintain
and eventually increase the income disparities between unilingual Anglophones
and Francophones. However, the new language law,
according to their study, did increase the demand for French-language services
within the Quebec economy.
Anglophone
businessmen were deservedly upset with the passing of Bill 101. The language legislation that the Parti Quebecois instituted cost the Anglophone businesses
millions of dollars to implement.
However, some Anglophone businesses, even today, refuse to adhere to the
language stipulations of Bill 101. These
businesses, for example, quite often post illegal English only signs on the
exteriors or interiors of their establishments.
This causes the ‘Office de la langue francaise’
to enforce the law, under article 205 of Bill 101, to hand out fines of between
$250 to $7,000 depending on the infraction.
Bill 101, however, was successful in increasing the number of positions
that required a knowledge of the French language and, thus, reducing the income
disparities between Anglophone and Francophone Quebecers.
Bill
101 antagonized Anglophones from across Canada including both former and current politicians, academics, and even
Anglophones Quebeckers themselves.
Within the political field, responses were mainly the same from
politicians outside of Quebec over Bill 101. Former Prime
Minister John Diefenbaker characterized Bill 101 as “a stroke against the Canadianism I’ve spent a lifetime trying to bring about”
and called it “a complete denial of the rights of individual Canadians.” However, others were more
diplomatic in their opposition to Bill 101.
For example, Ontario Conservative Leader and Premier of Ontario, William
Davis reacted to Bill 101 with optimism.
Davis hoped that the Parti Quebecois would
“re-think…Bill 101, particularly in light of initiatives being taken in
French-language education across Canada.”
Anglophone
academics were opposed to Bill 101.
Historians Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond and
John English in their book, Canada since 1945, claim that “in
protecting the language of the majority against the imagined terrors, the Parti Québécois saw fit to negate the rights of a minority
of close to one million persons, to treat them as non-citizens, and their
language as a non-entity. In doing so it
violated the basic individual rights and appealed for the first time to the
power of the state to coerce private citizens with respect to language they
speak in their private and business lives.” These views were quite typical of Anglophone academics and not
just in the historical field. Associate
Professor of Education at the University of Montreal, Alison d’Anglejan, denounced Bill 101
in her article in the Journal of Communication stating that Bill 101
attempted to diminish the status and prevent the growth of the historically
important English-speaking community of Quebec by placing
it on the same footing as “Italian, Greek, or Portuguese.” Anglophone academics were heavily against the
passing of Bill 101 and the bill’s intentions of protecting and promoting the
French-language.
The
biggest indicator that Bill 101 antagonized Anglophone Quebecers was the
migration patterns that followed the implementation of the language
legislation. Following the passage of Bill 101, some 50,000 people left Quebec. In comparison, 28,000 and 33,000 people left
during the same time period of both 1975 and 1976 respectively. The migration may have been
due in part to the departure of several hundred of businesses from Quebec because of
the language laws. Bill 101 caused
severe antagonism and, thus, caused a severe outward migration of both people
and commerce to other provinces.
The
reaction to Bill 101 by Anglophones is what should be expected. However, some sacrifices by the Anglophone
population of Quebec were needed in order to protect, preserve and promote the French
language within the province. The
changes under Bill 101 have stabilized and improved the usage of the French
language within the sectors of governance, education, and business. Within the
area of governance, Bill 101 ensured Francophones
could receive governmental services at both the provincial and municipal levels
as well as from the crown corporations associated with these levels of
government. Also, the provincial level
of government created the ‘Office de la langue francaise’
that would oversee the implementation and enforcement of Bill 101. The Office is also responsible for studying and
making recommendations on what changes need to be made to Bill 101. In the area of governance, Bill 101 has
successfully enshrined the rights of Francophones to
receive services from government and, thus, preserve the French language.
In
the area of education, Bill 101 has successfully preserved the French language,
as well as allow Anglophones within the province to receive education in
English. However, in order to encourage
the development of French-language skills and the promotion of the French
language within the province, the government required that new immigrants study
the French language. The new immigrants
were required to learn the French language in the province because that is what
the language of business, under Bill 101, was.
The Parti Quebecois had promised to the
Francophone people that French would be the language of Quebec society,
therefore, it was not unreasonable for the majority of the population to learn
and study in French.
The areas of business and commerce required a balancing of
Anglophone and Francophone interests.
The government wanted to make French the language of business within an
Anglophone dominated continent. The
majority of the corporate head offices that were located in Quebec were owned
by Anglophone firms and worked in by Anglophone workers. This created the need for legislation that
would see the local economy use French as the main language of communication
while allowing the head offices of the corporations to use English. Bill 101
was changed to allow the English provisions in order to keep needed corporate
investment within Quebec. The Parti
Québecois successfully balanced these linguistic
interests by allowing the head offices to communicate using the English
language while legislating the use of the French language within the Quebec
economy. The successful balancing
allowed the government of Quebec to keep the investment of the large corporations within the
province and ensure the French language would become the language of business
and commerce within the province.
The Parti Québecois’
new language laws were so successful that the French-speaking majority of the
province became uninterested in separating from Canadian Confederation. Therefore, when the results were returned
from the 1980 referendum showing that a majority of Quebecers wanted to remain
Canadian, Bill 101 was partly to blame.
Francophone Quebecers voting in the referendum were not worried about
Anglo domination because the English language had virtually disappeared and the
jobs of leaving Anglophones were now available for Francophone workers. Bill 101 was so successful
that the legislation cost René Lévesque the goal of separation that he had
promised Quebecers in the election campaign of 1976.
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