To view SAWCC’s official bilingual letter in PDF, please click here.
Montreal, December 3, 2021
The Honourable Francois Legault
Premier of Quebec
Dear Premier Legault,
The South Asian Women’s Community Centre is a service, support, and advocacy organization serving all women and their families in Montreal, with particular focus on the South Asian community. Founded forty years ago, inaugurated by Minister Gerald Godin, its establishment was based on serving women and their families, coming from many countries, speaking diverse maternal languages. Community workers provided services in the languages of origin and included French and English early on in our establishment. Should Bill 96 be enacted as the law, the impact on the people we serve will be devastating. We will not be allowed by law to serve in any language other than French.
Bill 96 plans to prohibit public sector employees from communicating with individuals to whom they provide services in a language other than French. Bill 96 provides an ineffective six month exemption for individuals who attended elementary school in English in Canada, First Nations and immigrants after arrival in Quebec. The assumption is that in six months French proficiency will be acquired by these individuals.
The community we serve is of adult women, the majority being of South Asian origin, and their families. In this group there are immigrants and refugees. Both groups are making their home in a new environment, without support systems that they have left behind by choice or because of threat. They come with children who need to be placed in schools. The adults need to find employment in order to survive. Requiring them to acquire a new language in six months is impossible. Their need is to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.
Further, if they are refugees, they are fleeing from life threatening regimes or economic devastation and are therefore survivors of trauma which has long term effects. To impose the acquisition of a new language on them through depriving them of essential services in any other language, is cruel and insensitive.
The community workers at our centre, multilingual at the beginning with the exclusion of French, are completely proficient now. Communication with government agencies, meetings that are attended, are all done in French and only French. Many of them continue to attend French courses, not to acquire, but to improve their skills. We are very aware that we live in a province where French is the primary language. It is to our benefit to be as fluent and proficient as possible.
That Quebec has committed and has a duty therefore to promote the use of French, to ensure that it is the common language of Quebec is treated by the government as its mandate. But an imposition of an ill- considered plan that ignores the impact that this law will impose on a population struggling to establish itself is discriminatory and inhumane. While we fully support the integration of South Asian families into Quebec society, we question such harsh terms of inclusion and the recognition of intercultural difference.
There are a number of safeguards in the system for the protection of the French language. All children of allophone parents must attend French schools. As a result, the children of immigrants and refugees are fluent in French. This is an effective safeguard because these children are the future of Quebec, and being educated in French, will automatically be comfortable and functioning in the French language.
When people need to access the social services network, the school network, the health care network, the judicial system, they are seeking essential services and at times under traumatic and stressful conditions. Bill 96 will not even allow for interpreters.
As a result of assessing the devastating impact that Bill 96 will have on a vulnerable population we recommend the following amendment to ensure that the law is just, humane and responds to the needs and lived realities of those it impacts and most important, that it respects the rights of all citizens of Quebec as guaranteed by the Quebec Charter including the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, ethnic or national origin, age and social condition. In conclusion we recommend:
– That Bill 96 remove the limit of the six month exemption period.
– That Bill 96, taking into consideration the reality that immigrants and refugees face, remove a mention of a time period for the acquisition of the French language.
Please accept, Mr. Premier of Quebec, the expression of our highest consideration.
Sincerely,
Vrinda Narain
President of the Executive Council
The South Asian Women’s Community Centre
Montreal, Québec