Opinion: It's vital that English-speaking Quebecers' voices be heard

This is a crucial election for Quebec’s English-speaking community. It is vital that our voices be heard and that our votes be counted.

In the lead-up to the Oct. 3 general election, the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) has reached out to organizations representing English-speaking Quebecers across various regions and sectors to discuss their persistent issues and priorities for action. Our goal is to ensure that the critical concerns of Quebec’s English-speaking community are voiced and addressed during this campaign.

Our community’s concerns touch on every aspect of our lives as Quebecers. But while members of our community are concerned about broad issues — employment, the economy, taxes, the environment — there are vital issues specific to English-speaking Quebecers as members of a minority community.

We remain disappointed that no leaders’ debate was held in English during this campaign. We maintain it is important that English-speaking Quebecers hear directly from those courting our votes. To fill this void, the QCGN invited party leaders to discuss these issues and their platforms with our community in a series of successful virtual town halls attended by hundreds of English-speaking Quebecers and viewed by thousands on our YouTube channel. Four parties — the Liberals, the Conservatives, the Canadian Party of Quebec and Bloc Montréal — accepted our invitations. Unfortunately, the incumbent Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), which has a record to defend, refused to take part. The Parti Québécois and Québec solidaire proposed candidates, but since the other parties provided us with their leaders we turned down their offers. Discussion during our town halls revolved around access to justice; education; health and social services; and the vitality of Quebec’s English-speaking community. We also posed a series of thematic questions to the main political parties seeking our community’s support. Only the Liberal Party of Quebec took the time to reply.

To take the pulse of our community on issues that matter to English-speaking Quebecers, the QCGN has also been publishing a Question of the Week to members and community stakeholders. The results show our community is uneasy about the current direction of our province. Some 95 per cent of respondents believe the rights of English-speaking Quebecers have been negatively affected since Bill 96 was passed in June; 95 per cent said government interference puts Quebec’s English-language elementary, secondary and post-secondary institutions at risk; 90 per are not confident they will have access to the health-care services they need in the next five years; and 82 per cent believe that the new language law’s restrictions on businesses will hurt Quebec’s economic competitiveness. Meanwhile, 78 per cent believe the concerns of English-speaking Quebecers are not considered in government orientations and decisions by Quebec government ministries and bodies and 70 per cent of respondents said political parties were not focusing enough on issues that matter to English-speaking Quebecers during the campaign.

The past four years have proven challenging for our community as the National Assembly adopted laws that impose new limits to our access to education, to health and social services, to the courts and to government services and information in English. During our consultations, town halls and other electoral activities, we heard strong opposition to Bills 96 and 21, which pre-emptively override both the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, thus creating a charter-free zone in Quebec. We also heard serious concerns about Bill 40, which ignores our constitutional right to manage and control our schools. And we heard strong objections to the CAQ’s restrictive definition of who is a historic anglophone.

Anxieties over these new laws have united members of our linguistic minority community who often do not see eye to eye on many issues. It also brought us together with other minorities and members of the French-language majority who share many of our concerns about individual rights. These laws do not reflect a vision of an inclusive, modern Quebec. This should be a message to any and all leaders and parties who aspire to govern this province.

English-speaking Quebecers are full-fledged citizens and an integral part of our province’s past, present and future success. We are an asset to Quebec society. We have helped shape our province’s identity and contributed to its growth and success for more than two centuries.

According to the recent data release from the 2021 census, using the First Official Language Spoken (FOLS) variable, our community now numbers 1.25 million, 14.9 per cent of the Quebec population.

The government of Quebec has a duty to support the social, cultural and economic development of Quebec’s English-speaking community, to ensure that English-speaking Quebecers are equipped with the tools they need to succeed and continue contributing to Quebec’s development.

Our political leaders need to look beyond persistent myths that portray English-speaking Quebecers as a uniformly unilingual and affluent minority. The latest census demonstrates that more than two-thirds of Quebec’s English-speakers are bilingual. As for English-speakers being well heeled, the reality is that in 2016, our community’s unemployment rate was two percentage points higher than that of the province’s francophone majority. When measuring youth unemployment, the magnitude of this gap doubled to four percentage points. In 2016, the proportion of our community living below the Low-Income Cut Off (LICO) was 17.8 per cent. That is sharply higher than the 11.9 per cent for French-speaking Quebecers.

The Oct. 3 election matters. It provides an opportunity to speak to the Quebec we want to be part of. We encourage English-speaking Quebecers to assess the issues of importance to our community and to test them against the policies and programs being put forward by the different political parties. We urge them to get out and vote for the candidates who will stand up for our community in the National Assembly. We encourage English-speaking Quebecers to be better informed by consulting QCGN’s Elections page at qcgn.ca/2022-provincial-elections/.

As we head to the polls Monday, English-speaking Quebecers have the power to make a difference. We have a voice. Let’s use it.

Eva Ludvig is president of the Quebec Community Groups Network.

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