Taylor Noakes: RIP French in Canada: 1534-2020. (But not really, at all.)

That federal parties would entertain such fiction is sadly more evidence of the complete withdrawal of leadership in Ottawa.

By: Taylor C. Noakes

It’s my favourite time of year.

The sun starts setting at 3:30 in the afternoon. Leafless trees, mud filled parks, a constantly howling wind, and you can never quite figure out the appropriate type of jacket or shoe to wear.

What better time to have our annual shit fit?

French is in decline, my friends. It’s knocking on death’s door.

Not according to linguists, StatCan, the official languages commissioner or the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) mind you, but what would they know?

The real experts on the perpetual decline of the French language in Quebec are the thousand or so people who form the sample groups who respond to surveys about the decline of the French language. These studies are often commissioned by militant separatist organizations and reported on — for weeks on end — primarily by the race-baiters and geriatric linguistic freedom fighters of the Quebecor media family.

Obviously the French language is losing ground in Quebec — home to more than seven and a half million or so French-speaking people — because someone said “hi” instead of “bonjour” at the Victoria’s Secret boutique on rue Saint-Catherine.

Though most Quebecois are accustomed to the annual French-language freakout, this year’s version is a bit different. A young Liberal Party backbencher named Emmanuella Lambropoulos had the gall to challenge the perpetual cultural paranoia about the Decline of French in Quebec, and did so — of all places — during a meeting discussing official languages. The nerve!

What happened next is exactly what you’d expect from a bunch of people who get to call themselves “leaders” without ever demonstrating leadership qualities. In a remarkable showing of bipartisan unity, members from all the major Canadian political parties dog-pilled on Lambropoulos. She had committed the gravest of parliamentary sins: asking for proof. You can hear the question and the response from official languages commissioner Raymond Théberge here.

What’s most remarkable of all is that the federal minister responsible for official languages —Mélanie Joly — has stated that it is abundantly clear that the French language is in decline, and that this decline has been documented by numerous researchers.

I reached out to minister Joly numerous times asking for links to those studies or the names of those researchers and, in keeping with the government’s tradition of and dedication to full transparency, haven’t had my calls or emails returned.

Call it the subtle racism of lowered expectations, but it would seem that the language loons would prefer policy be made based on feelings, opinion or perception rather than cold, hard facts. What makes this situation particularly vexing is that there are three different publicly-funded government agencies in Canada with a responsibility to study language issues — the Official Languages Commission, StatCan and the OQLF — and none of them has raised any alarm bells concerning a sudden depreciation in the quality or quantity of French spoken in Canada or Quebec.

According to census data, between 2011 and 2016 the number of people in Canada with a knowledge of French increased by 400,000 people, to more than 10 million. This growth was entirely among the group of people who listed knowledge of both English and French. Unilingual Francophones in Canada decreased by about 20,000 over that period of time. It should also be noted that there are over 2.7 million Canadians outside of Quebec with a knowledge of French.

It shouldn’t need to be spelled out here, but when numbers go up it typically doesn’t mean the numbers are going down.

The decline of unilingual Francophones both inside and out of Quebec is explained by population loss due to aging. In Quebec, unilingual francophones and anglophones both tend to be on the older edge of the age spectrum.

There has only been a decline of French in relative terms. Total numbers of French speakers are still increasing.

French is the language of business and education for the overwhelming majority of the population of Quebec, and no one’s is trying to change that. Yet the linguistic boogeyman is always insidious — something ethereal that exists because people say so, irrespective of inconvenient facts and statistics.

Now, is it possible that there are more Anglophones living and working in downtown Montreal without this necessarily indicating a decline of the French language?

Yes, absolutely. These are not mutually exclusive positions.

There are three major Anglophone post-secondary institutions within three kilometres of one another in the western half of downtown Montreal, supporting more than 100,000 students, the majority of whom live in close proximity of their schools. Downtown Montreal is home to international festivals and the head offices of major Canadian corporations. Montreal is the tourism mecca of Quebec and one of North America’s leading convention centres. It is immensely popular among American tourists — if there was anywhere in Quebec where English might be spoken or heard, it’s downtown Montreal. This doesn’t mean French is in any way, shape or form in decline or threatened.

As you likely guessed, this has nothing to do with language and everything to do with politics. The French language freakout actually started weeks before Lambropoulos asked the language commish for some statistical proof of the French language’s supposedly ongoing decline.

What kicked this all off was a kind of hidden-camera investigation conducted by the Journal de Montreal, something they do with a degree of frequency. The JdeM’s unscientific investigation confirmed what the governing Coalition Avenir Quebec has been arguing — without evidence — for years. Quebec is struggling with the second wave of the pandemic, and shouting about this, instead, must be appealing to some of its politicians. This isn’t surprising.

What is unusual and disappointing is that the federal heritage minister, smelling blood in the water, decided to jump in and throw her own colleague under the bus. It was a rare display both of non-partisan Canadian political unity, as Grits, Tories, Dippers and blockheads took turns tearing strips off a young person whose passion for politics and won her a nomination over the Liberal’s handpicked heavy-hitter.

Should we be surprised this is happening? No, not really. We haven’t had much of an evidenced-based response to the pandemic either. The facts of modern medicine and epidemiology have played second fiddle to our feelings, which is apparently all that’s necessary to set government policy these days.

Columnist Lise Ravary may have unwittingly hit the nail on the head when she argued the only way to secure the status of the French language in Quebec would be by separating from Canada. She’s likely right on at least one point — an independent Quebec founded by ethno-nationalists fearful of problems that don’t exist would likely not be first choice amongst new immigrants.

Meanwhile, that the non-separatist federal parties would entertain such fiction to appeal to the baser elements in Quebec society is sadly more evidence of the complete withdrawal of leadership in Ottawa. We had a nice country once that tried to bridge linguistic divides, but today the political class prefers to play the politics of division.

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