Fearing the erosion of the French language in the province of Quebec, the right-leaning government of François Legault passed Bill 96 on May 24, 2022, which was the culmination of months of public debate over the Bill’s reach and scope. The government claims that Bill 96 would protect the use of French in the public sphere, while opponents charge that it would infringe on the rights of linguistic minorities, such as anglophones and Indigenous communities. Regardless of the Bill’s impacts, it is broadly popular in Quebec: 62% of residents support the law, with 38% opposing. No doubt, François Legault’s ability to pass popular and far-reaching reforms like Bill 96 helps his electoral prospects; he appears to be heading to another safe majority government in elections scheduled for October.
The dispute over Bill 96 is more than a polite disagreement about policy, however. Moral values permeate the debate, most visible on the extremes. Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne called it a “hideous new language law” and claimed that the Bill challenges whether or not Canadians are “a genuine political community, with moral obligations to one another”. On the other end of the spectrum, the leader of the Parti Quebecois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, opposed the law because it didn’t go far enough in protecting the French language. He called the firm protection of the French language a “moral duty” and argued that the government of Quebec was too soft. Interestingly, both Andrew Coyne and Paul St-Pierre Plamondon believe their causes to be morally right, despite disagreeing about seemingly every aspect of this debate. This suggests a difference in underlying values rather than in policy preferences, and when emotions run hot, we should use values analysis to better understand the issue.
The Reforms of Bill 96
Before we dig into the moral arguments about the Bill, it’s important to be clear about what it does. The law amends Quebec’s Charter of the French Language to include the following provisions:
- The number of students who can enter English-language colleges, known as CEGEPs, will be capped, and all students will have to take at least three 45-hour courses in French.
- Judges will no longer need to have “a specific level of knowledge of a language other than the official language,” so it may prove difficult to receive court services in English.
- Businesses with 25 or more employees will be required to ensure that French is the language of the workplace. The Office québécois de la langue française will be empowered to dish out fines to non-complying businesses.
- Refugees and immigrants moving to Quebec will be allowed to access services in English or another language for only six months after their arrival. After that, services must be provided in French.
- English-language healthcare services may be restricted. This was a controversial point during the debate over the Bill, and it is not clear how the terms of the law will be implemented.
- The “historic anglophone communities” of Quebec (i.e. people who are eligible to attend English school) will be exempt from some measures in the Bill.
These are the facts, and they have been interpreted in at least three ways: a fair and moderate strengthening of the protections of French, a brutal crackdown on anglophone communities, or a limp-wristed half-measure that will do nothing to stop the erosion of French in Quebec. Moral values play a role in each of these interpretations, so let’s have a look at some of the values that guide our moral compasses and determine how they interact with Bill 96.
Values of Bill 96
The supporters of Bill 96 are driven primarily by one value: loyalty/betrayal (i.e. people have special moral responsibilities to those in their group). Language plays an extremely important role in building identity. Beyond its functional role as a method of communication, language is also a primary conduit for the dissemination of culture, beliefs, and national traditions; as Nelson Mandela is often (mis)quoted as saying, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.” Language is part of culture, and culture is part of identity.
The Quebecois, as a francophone group surrounded by English speakers, have a particularly strong attachment to French that is often underestimated by anglophones, the apex predators of the linguistic world. The Quebecois used to boast a wide number of identity factors that distinguished them their primarily English-speaking neighbours, such as Catholicism and civil law. However, over time, many of these elements, especially the role of the Catholic Church, have declined in importance, and the French language has become the central element of the Quebecois identity. Faced with a perceived decline in the use of French in Quebec, alarms began to ring in the minds of the nationalist party in power, the Coalition Avenir Québec, and Premier Legault decided to act.
In arguing in favour of Bill 96, the communications of the government seemed tailor-made to evoke the loyalty/betrayal value. The Minister of Justice and French Language, Simon Jolin-Barrette, argued that Quebec’s long history as the only francophone nation in North America grants it a special responsibility for protecting the French language. In his final round of remarks on Bill 96 in the National Assembly, he aimed right for the Quebecois’ moral intuitions:
“I don’t think I have ever felt such pride to rise in this house and express myself in my language, our common language, French. […] This law, Mr. Speaker, is a law about Quebec pride. Long live the French language and long live Quebec.”
Even non-French speakers can pick up on the moral force of these remarks, and judging by the popularity of the Bill, these ideas resonate throughout Quebec. Shades of the loyalty/betrayal value can also be found in this top-rated comment on the Quebec Reddit subforum:
I am always shocked by the people who live in Quebec their whole lives without learning a word of French. If you’re not happy with the official language of Quebec, the rest of Canada and the United States is there for you to live in English.
That just about sums it up, doesn’t it? Speaking French is part of living in Quebec, and it’s a central part of the Quebecois identity. If English speakers (or speakers of other languages) don’t want to put in the effort, they are free to leave. This is a natural moral reaction; most people are frustrated by those who refuse to learn local languages, in Quebec and elsewhere.
Making matters worse, an unwillingness to learn local languages is often interpreted as an insult. A recent example was the tremendous backlash from Quebecois when the Air Canada CEO, Michael Rousseau, noted with pleasure that he lived in Montreal for 14 years without learning any French (“a testament to the city”, he said idiotically). His comments were considered so offensive because they denigrated the importance of French and portrayed it as a language barely worth learning. No doubt, this event made Bill 96 much more appealing.
Yet, it’s easy to see why opponents of the Bill would not be seduced by these appeals to the French language. They may have a conception of the common identity of Quebec that is less rooted in language and more heavily reliant on other shared values. This conception of the loyalty/betrayal value is likely to resonate with the French-speaking majority, but the government appeared to make few efforts to appeal to linguistic minorities’ moral compasses. No wonder that 95% of anglophone residents of Quebec opposed the Bill.
Values of the Opposition
In contrast to the Bill’s boosters, opponents of Bill 96 draw primarily on the fairness/cheating value (i.e. outcomes should be equitable and/or proportional to contributions). In short, many of these people believe that Bill 96 is inequitable, because it disproportionately burdens linguistic minorities and creates two groups of anglophones: members of “historic anglophone communities” who will retain access to English services, and everyone else. Of course, plenty of English speakers in Quebec do not have status as members of this communities, and it is inequitable to provide them differing treatment. This is the argument pushed by the opposition Liberal house leader, André Fortin, in voting against the Bill.
Moreover, for many people, the Bill violates the care/harm value (i.e. it’s morally right to help people and wrong to hurt them), because some of the most vulnerable people in Quebec society would be most negatively affected. Indigenous students whose third language is French may struggle to meet the more stringent language requirements at school. New immigrants and refugees are only granted six months to familiarize themselves with French before all public services will be offered in la langue de Molière, which has prompted accusations of discrimination against newcomers. These groups are particularly vulnerable, so their struggles are most likely to elicit a strong negative reaction under the care/harm value. This testimony from a Russian immigrant makes both the care/harm and fairness/cheating cases persuasively:
The thing that scares me most about Bill 96 is that in the courts or in hospitals, it may be much more difficult to access services in English. That is a scary thought—not just for me, but for all non-French-speaking immigrants across the province. Those are the situations when you are most vulnerable, when you are most scared for your health or legal status. Not being able to express yourself or understand what people are saying is restrictive to my freedom. As a non-French-speaker in Quebec, I feel like I am a second-class citizen.
But, reading this passage, it’s easy to understand why many Quebecois would not feel the same emotional response: it reflects life for francophones in almost every other Canadian province. Simply change the details from the experience of a “non-French-speaker in Quebec” to a “non-English speaker in Alberta” and the impact is the same. Most Canadian provincial governments make no serious effort to provide public services in French. Even in Ontario, home to the second largest francophone population in Canada, access to French services remains unequal. Ironically, pro-Bill Quebecois could make an equity argument of their own: under Bill 96, English speakers in Quebec will receive at least the exact same treatment as French speakers in other parts of the country.
Perhaps a more convincing moral argument would be based in the liberty/oppression value, as the enforcement of the Bill’s provisions could amount to a significant curtailing of personal rights. With more businesses forced operate in French, Bill 96 grants investigators the power to conduct warrantless searches (and potentially seize phones and other electronic devices) to confirm a French working environment. This could infringe on the Charter right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. As columnist Andrew Coyne put it:
Bill 96 would intrude the state into the most intimate private conversations: written or oral, with members of the public or between co-workers, in virtually any workplace in the province.
This would almost certainly be thrown out by the courts, but the government of Quebec anticipated this threat and applied the notwithstanding clause for the entire Bill, which allows the government to ignore Charter rights. Although Quebec has never signed the Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, legal experts have argued that this measure unjustly infringes on personal rights and undermines the rule of law in Quebec more broadly. Ultimately, this violates the liberty/oppression value, which prizes personal freedom.
Again, however, the majority of Quebecois seem unconvinced, and there is a counter-argument available based in freedom and liberty. The liberty/oppression value doesn’t say that people can’t ever, under any circumstances, have any of their freedoms restricted. Rather, people must consent to certain restrictions on their freedoms. For example, someone who is extremely high in the liberty/oppression value would have no moral qualms about people willingly selling themselves into slavery, because consent was established in advance. If you agree to certain rules, you can do whatever you want within the bounds of those rules. That’s freedom.
Therefore, since Quebec never signed on to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, why should the Quebecois be bound by it? With no consent comes no moral responsibility to respect the law. In contrast, Bill 96 was passed by the National Assembly by an overwhelming margin, and it is supported by a significant majority of the population of Quebec. That’s what consent looks like in politics. When the federal government announced its intention to challenge the Bill in federal court, one highly rated comment on a Radio Canada article made just this point:
Nothing surprising: in Canada, when the elites don’t agree with policies, they use the courts. They decide on the basis of a constitution that has been imposed on Quebec, against its will.
Although Charter rights may be viewed as an expression of liberty in the English-speaking parts of Canada, it is often not viewed the same way in Quebec.
Conclusion
It’s no surprise that Bill 96 evoked such an acrimonious debate. Simply put, the two sides are not speaking the same language (moral language, that is). Proponents of the Bill are being driven primarily by a strong sense of patriotism, which the Bill’s opponents don’t feel or understand. Pushing these nationalist views is certainly a winning political strategy, but it failed to attract any support from non-francophone residents of Quebec, many of whom are sympathetic to the challenges of protecting French in North America. François Legault’s refusal to participate in the English-language debate for this fall’s provincial election, which led to the cancellation of the event, didn’t help either. A communications strategy that referenced a wider range of values could have led to more positive reaction (or at least a less negative reaction) from linguistic minorities.
On the other side of the debate, moral arguments against the Bill are not convincing to French-speaking residents of Quebec. Claims that learning French is too difficult for certain groups (especially economic immigrants) are not going to sway many pro-Bill Quebecois, as French represents more than a simple method of communication to the Quebecois identity. Learning French is an act of respect – and the refusal to learn it is often viewed as an insult. A more effective opposition to the Bill would seek to resonate with the loyalty/betrayal value by praising other elements of the Quebec identity, such as equity and egalitarianism, and show how Bill 96 can violate these values.
In addition, opponents need to pick their battles. To most Quebecois, expecting anglophone CEGEP students to complete three courses in French is not unreasonable, so fighting that requirement unlikely to be particularly fruitful. Instead, focusing on the 1984-esque workplace language rules would have been more advantageous area to focus their moral opposition.
Finally, anglophone groups in Quebec could do more to promote bilingualism in their own communities to prove their shared commitment to protecting French. A possible olive branch would be for anglophone organizations in the province to ensure their members are fully bilingual, perhaps by offering French-language training programs. This would show that anglophone communities are on the same team as the French-speaking majority. At the very least, such efforts would give anglophone groups more credibility in the debate.
Overall, however, this is not an issue where win-win compromises are easy to find. People in favour of Bill 96 and those opposed are being driven by significantly different values, and it is not always possible to resolve such differences. Expect this Bill to remain controversial.
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