How Quebec municipalities will maintain bilingual status amid Bill 96

Pierrefonds-Roxboro, Dorval, Kirkland, and Côte Saint-Luc, are some of the municipalities in Quebec that have bilingual status. But with Bill 96, the province’s French-language reform law could see that taken away if census data shows English speakers don’t makeup 50 per cent of the population.

This could mean a town’s signs, services and documents would be exclusively in French.

“It’s not inclusive, it’s exclusive,” said one Côte Saint-Luc resident about the bill.

“Every time we have language tension more Anglophones leave the province,” said Mitchell Brownstein, Mayor of Côte Saint-Luc. “If you have bilingual status today, doesn’t mean you’ll have it tomorrow.”

The City of Côte Saint-Luc is described as a wonderful multicultural community by its mayor.

Côte Saint-Luc city hall (Photo: Pamela Pagano, CityNews)

Over 50 per cent of its population is English speaking – which means their bilingual status stays under Bill 96 – but if that changes, Brownstein says they will stick by their residents.

“We are going to support all the legal contestations, there’s a lot of areas in the law that are not constitutional,” said Brownstein. “We will support those legal challenges and support our residents.”

CityNews spoke to residents of the Côte Saint-Luc municipality who expressed their concerns surrounding the potential changes to be introduced due to Bill 96.

“My first language is French, and now I speak like fluently English, like with all my friends and everything, my family. So for me, if it’s only going to be French like, you know, I’m also losing a bit my French, so it’ll be hard.”

“It’s not going to affect me. But everybody you know, anybody who’s growing up here who is not a francophone. Allophone or Anglophone, you know, this is a mistake”

“Personally, I would say that everything has to be bilingual. Montreal will lose its experts just because of the French language.”

“In order for us to succeed in the universe, like in you know in the world, I find that it’s always good for us to get choices with what you want to do with our lives rather than being labelled as French or English.”

Preserving bilingual status

“I hope that they’ll stay and join the fight, as we have for so many years,” said Brownstein. “It’s still a great province.”

If a city or borough wants to preserve their bilingual status, it can adopt a resolution to that effect. But Brownstein explains that if a municipality wants to pass a resolution, they have to have the numbers to substantiate that right. At least 50 per cent of English speakers, only including Anglophones, not Allophones.

“Every government is only in for the term that they’re in, and then a new government comes in and things always are changing and evolving,” said Brownstein.

“If the issue comes to bear in Côte Saint-Luc, and there’s a threat for our bilingual status to be taken away, we’ll certainly fight it.”