This article is also available to read in French.
In May, Liberal MP and Franco-Ontarian Francis Drouin appeared exasperated by two witnesses invited to a standing committee on Canada’s official languages. The witnesses, an author and a professor, were advocating for the protection of French in Quebec and claimed that studying at an English institution in the province significantly increased the probability of living one’s life in English. Drouin, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Francophonie, described their rhetoric as “plein de marde”—or full of shit.
Drouin seemed irritated by their narrow focus on Quebec’s English-language schools. He argued that the decline of French in the province isn’t the fault of institutions like McGill University but part of a larger phenomenon, noting that even France is experiencing anglicization. What was needed was a broader, international perspective on the challenges facing the French language. When Bloc Québécois MP Mario Beaulieu accused him of “Quebec bashing,” Drouin countered that the Bloc (the only federal political party in Canada devoted to Quebec nationalism and the promotion of Quebec sovereignty) has “never defended francophones in a minority situation.”
Drouin later apologized for the outburst. But while the phrasing may have been sloppy, the incident wasn’t just a gaffe; it underscored a deep-seated frustration among francophones in the rest of Canada—or ROC—who believe Quebecers have little sympathy for their plight. While most of the country’s French speakers can be found in Quebec—where they have long controlled the province socially and politically—everywhere else, they live in predominantly English provinces with little political power to safeguard their linguistic rights. Outside Quebec, French-language communities make up just 3.3 percent of Canada’s population, and their numbers are dwindling.
Groups such as Acadians, Franco-Ontarians, Franco-Manitobans, and Franco-Saskatchewanians—or Fransaskois—might expect Quebec to be a natural ally in their battle for linguistic survival. Instead, they’ve been left to fend for themselves.
Canada’s francophone population is broadly split in two: Quebec’s dominant group and the minorities scattered across the rest of the country. They add up to approximately 8 million French speakers, and while they share a common linguistic heritage, their historic trajectories have forged widely divergent perspectives and political loyalties.
This divide stems from the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s—a cultural upheaval that birthed a Québécois identity that prioritizes its own interests even at the expense of other francophones. “Quebecers practically turned their backs on French-speakers in the rest of Canada,” explained journalist Jean-Benoît Nadeau in L’actualité when describing the effect of a fierce new nationalism that strove to protect its language and culture at all costs. So when Quebec nationalists watch ROC French speakers spend a big part of their lives in English and express support for federalism, they see the very fate they fiercely resist: assimilation.
The rift is further widened by dismissive attitudes from Quebec’s elite. Writer Yves Beauchemin once referred to Franco-Ontarians as “still-warm corpses” who had no chance of surviving as a community. Former premier René Lévesque referred to Canada’s French-speaking communities as “dead ducks.” Journalist and columnist Denise Bombardier caused an uproar when, appearing on popular Quebec talk show Tout le monde en parle, she confidently claimed that “across Canada, all French-speaking communities have virtually disappeared,” angering many of the more than 1 million Canadian francophones across the country still very much alive and speaking. Bombardier also criticized the way Chiac (a dialect of Acadian French) is spoken. To her and other purists, it wasn’t proper French. Bombardier never apologized for her remarks.
To French-speaking communities in the ROC—who struggle to maintain their language, institutions, and rights in overwhelmingly English environments—this condescending dismissal by Quebecers adds insult to injury. Throughout the years, they’ve had to fight provincial governments (notably those of Ontario and Saskatchewan) that have made concerted efforts to limit, and in some cases even ban, French instruction in schools. More recently, inadequate funding is being used to chip away at efforts to maintain le fait français.
As a result, speaking French hors Québec is often a deliberate political act, an expression of resilience and defiance. But it’s also a rearguard battle that Quebec, with its insular focus on its own survival, has repeatedly failed to back—and has even undermined.
The legal notion that has frustrated the linguistic survival of francophones in the ROC is called symmetry. Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ensures minority language-education rights for both French speakers outside Quebec and English speakers within Quebec. Over the years, both communities have used the law to force provinces to build and fund better schools and to allow them to control their own educational institutions.
This symmetry aims for a balanced political framework, but in practice, it creates a paradox. That’s because any setbacks for English-speaking Quebecers can theoretically translate into losses for francophones across Canada. If Quebec legally justifies a certain treatment toward its English-speaking minority in the courts, such as the right to cut English-language education, then Ontario’s government could argue that it, too, can cut funds for its French minority. In other words, by restricting English-language rights, Quebec could inadvertently weaken the linguistic rights of its ROC counterparts.
Further complicating things, Quebec governments have tried to suppress French-language rights in the rest of the country to avoid handing over additional privileges to its own English-speaking minority. In 2009, the Yukon government attempted to strip the Yukon French School Board of some of its funding and powers to recruit students from beyond the territory’s pool of francophones. When the legal challenge went all the way to the Supreme Court, the Quebec government intervened against the school board. Why? It worried that a win for the Yukon French School Board could lead to a broader interpretation of the law, resulting in more students being admitted to Quebec’s English schools.
Some have referred to this dynamic as a “trap” that Canada’s two francophone populations can never escape. Quebec’s fierce protectionism, born out of fear and nationalism, ends up alienating the very communities that could be its strongest partners in preserving French across the country.
This was likely what Drouin was referring to in his outburst. The Coalition Avenir Québec government is carrying out increasingly punitive and restrictive measures against English-speaking universities and CEGEPs in the name of protecting the French language. Yet French-speaking campuses outside its borders are closing their doors in the face of hostile provincial governments that refuse to provide sufficient funding. “We are constantly fighting, we get crumbs,” laments University of Alberta associate professor of history Valérie Lapointe Gagnon in a Journal de Montréal article. “It’s never a given; you always have to explain how you’re not a burden.”
What adds to the frustration for French speakers outside Quebec is seeing the province consistently leverage their struggles as proof of how a “genuine” linguistic minority suffers, all in an effort to weaken the legitimate grievances of Quebec’s English-speaking minority.
The Canadian government has responded with Bill C-13. The legislation essentially modernizes the Official Languages Act to recognize that French is threatened and aims to increase French-language child care, education, and health care services across Canada. The law comes with $1.4 billion of federal investment along with promises to recruit French teachers from abroad and help French-speaking immigrants integrate.
But Bill C-13 won’t be enough. Increased respect and good-faith collaboration between the federal government and provincial governments will achieve better results. Ultimately, ROC francophones need Quebec. Specifically, they need Quebec to understand that weaponizing language against anglophone minorities with no concern for the eventual fallout for ROC francophones has to stop. Solidarity should be rooted in a common objective: the vitality of the French language.
In a multicultural Canada where nearly a quarter of the population speaks neither English nor French as a first language, the fight for bilingualism can feel like a colonial relic. But protecting minority voices—and that includes Indigenous languages, which face even greater threats—begins with preserving a major part of what still shapes and defines this country.
