Impact of Language Policies on Anglicization in Quebec and Canada
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Impact of Language Policies on Anglicization in Quebec and Canada Charles Castonguay Associate Professor Departament of Mathematics University of Ottawa The context The winds of decolonization which followed the Second World War were felt even in the more boreal part of North America. Some two centuries after the British conquest of New France, the descendants of Canada's original European settlers decided the time had come to share an equal place in the sun, on a par with Canadians of British and assimilated stocks. By the late 60s, territorially-based nationalist movements, which led eventually to the creation of political parties bent on sovereignty, had sprung up in Quebec and New Brunswick, the heartland provinces of the French-Canadian and Acadian nations. The Canadian government attempted at first to manage the crisis by instituting a Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (RCBB). The central element of its mandate was to recommend what steps should be taken to develop the Canadian Confederation [sic] on the basis of an equal partnership between the two founding races [peuples in the French version]... in particular... to make recommendations designed to insure the bilingual and basically bicultural character of the federal administration... and to improve the role of public and private organizations... in promoting bilingualism... and a more widespread appreciation of the basically bicultural character of our country... (RCBB 1965:151) The Commission quickly found the situation so alarming as to warrant an early warning that "Canada... is passing through the greatest crisis in its history. The source of the crisis lies in the Province of Quebec... and has set off a series of chain reactions elsewhere" (Ibid.: 13). Its preliminary report also recognized the link between Quebec separatism and the threat of Anglicization of French Canada. The final report of the B&B Commission, as it came to be called, contained telling observa¬ tions on linguistic assimilation. In particular, it documented substantial Anglicization of Canadians of French origin outside the province of Quebec, and noted that even within Quebec, English was the principal language of assimilation of immigrants, except for those of Italian origin. The report added that assimilation rates based on ethnic origin and mother tongue data from the Canadian census were not up to date: "the mother tongue of the individual does not tell us which language he most commonly uses. The information is a generation behind the facts" (RCBB 1967:18). As a result, the Commission suggested that future censuses include a question on "the main language of each Canadian... which language he speaks most often at home and at work". The B&B recommendations concerning language policy were inspired by both the personality and territoriality principles. Patterned on the bilingual districts policy in Finland, the territorial approach aimed at bolstering French where it was most viable, starting with the provinces of New Brunswick and Ontario, next door to Quebec: "We consider the bilingual district the cornerstone of our proposed system... a balance will be achieved - the French-language minority will know that it can obtain, in a given area of Ontario or New Brunswick, the same services accorded to the English-language minority in Quebec" (Afc>/'c/.:117). 313 CHARLES CASTONGDAY However, in 1968 the guiding lights of the B&B approach went out. André Laurendeau, the Commission's original instigator and initial French-Canadian co-chairman, died prematurely, and Lester B. Pearson, former diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner who had lent an encouraging ear to French Canada's grievances, retired as Prime Minister, to be replaced by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. By 1969, the Canadian Official Languages Act, giving French equal status to English, including the provision of bilingual districts, was passed. New Brunswick also adopted a policy of official bilingualism. But in Montreal, bombs were going off, and the development of Canada "on the basis of an equal partnership between the two founding nations" was to go no farther: the federal government was abandoning the "basically bicultural character" of Canada in favour of multiculturalism. In October 1970, the War Measures Act was revived to douse separatist agitation in Quebec. Alarmed at reports that even Montreal's Italian community was sending its children to English schools, the Quebec government established in 1969 the Gendron Commission to inquire into the position of the French language in Quebec. Demographers called attention to a new and formidable challenge: traditionally high French-Canadian birth rates which had, until then, more than compensated for the assimilating power of English, was a thing of the past. Insufficient fertility was making the majority status of French increasingly vulnerable, especially in the Montreal area, where nine out of ten immigrants to Quebec choose to live (Charbonneau, Henripin, and Légaré 1970). It was recommended that to secure the position of French as the province's majority language required among other measures a vigorous language policy favouring the use of French in Quebec society (Charbonneau and Maheu 1973). The 1971 census provided data on the language spoken most often by each Canadian at home. Actual assimilation rates could now be calculated, based on mother tongue and current home language. They confirmed entirely the B&B and Gendron commissions' findings regarding the dominance of English, including among the younger generation of Italians in Montreal (Castonguay 1974). Following considerable public debate and social turmoil,1 the Quebec government passed Bill 22 making French the official language of the province. This was reinforced by Bill 101, adopted in 1977 by Quebec's first sovereignist government. Both laws sought to generalize the use of French as language of work, while Bill 101 made primary and secondary education in French schools more clearly compulsory for children of future immigrants to Quebec, as far as public schooling is concerned. Bill 101 in particular was decried as excessively coercitive, and has met with constant criticism, court challenges and federal interventions, including the 1982 reform of the Canadian Constitution. The foremost American sociolinguist has even stigmatized Quebec as an example of just how far one should not go in attempting to reverse the domination of an assimilating language: Francophones... fear that, if current trends continue, they will become a minority in their own province. Such fears may demonstrate the supremacy of emotions over reason... as many Anglophones claim. Pointing out that the census of Canada data pertaining to the early 80s indicate that... only 53.1% of English mother tongue residents of Quebec still spoke English at home, 46.6% of them having switched to French... doesn't seem to answer at all to French fears, suspicions and concerns for the future... Thus... it may very well be that 'the French enjoy making the English suffer' (Francophones would add: 'The way the French long suffered under English domination'). (Fishman 1991:318) Before condemning the French majority's attempt to reorient linguistic assimilation in Quebec as "invidious" and "punitive", one should get one's geography straight: Fishman's tale of massive Francization applies not to the province of Quebec as a whole, but to the tiny Anglophone minority in Quebec City! Disinformation about the situation of French in the rest of Canada is rampant as well. Though the 1971 census data shed a cruder light than ever on the plight of the French minorities, it is easy to construe why Ottawa considers a hard look at their current Anglicization rates to be potentially subversive: 1. For an overview of events in Quebec from 1960 through 1989, see Levine 1990. 314 IMPACT OF LANGUAGE POLICIES ON ANGLICIZATION IN QUEBEC AND CANADA If French groups outside Quebec are assimilated, then the Quebec government has a strong argument to the effect that a new political arrangement is necessary to reflect the evolving Canadian duality. (Beaujot and McQuillan 1982:179) As a result, following election in 1976 of a sovereignist government in Quebec, an important federal statement on language policy (Canada 1977) nowhere alludes to the 1971 Anglicization rates of the French minorities.2 On the contrary, the problems of the French language in Canada are treated as existing essentially in the minds of French Canadians, in the form of a rather paranoiac sense of vulnerability and insecurity: English-speaking Canadians... have difficulty in understanding the sentiments of a minority who believe they are faced with a very real threat to the continued use of their language... A deepening sense of insecurity led increasingly to irritation and impatience among French-speaking Canadians... There does exist... a sense of insecurity about the future of the language and culture of French- speaking Canadians... French-speaking Canadians feel particularly vulnerable by reason of their position as a small minority in the midst of a vast North American English speaking mass. The anxiety of the French-speaking community is that the pervasiveness of English... will overwhelm the language that is the very base of its cultural life. While the anxiety is real... (Ibid.:17,21,29,47) Ottawa's withholding of the fresh facts supporting the B&B recommendations did nothing to counter a growing anti-French backlash outside Quebec, which also led to the abandonment in 1977 of the concept of