Executive Summary

The Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages (hereinafter, the Committee) launched its study of Quebec’s Anglophone communities in the winter of 2009. It met with more than 60 witnesses (represented by nearly 200 spokespersons) at public hearings and informal meetings in Ottawa and in three regions of Quebec: Quebec City, Sherbrooke and Montreal.

This study reports on the testimony heard over the past two years and provides a socio-demographic profile of the Quebec’s English-speaking population. It describes the challenges and success stories of English-speaking communities in various sectors affecting their development, and sets out the Committee’s findings and recommendations in light of this testimony.

The Committee noted that the realities and challenges experienced by the Anglophone minority are sometimes different from those faced by the Francophone minority living outside Quebec. The Anglophone minority does not face the challenge of ensuring the survival of its language. Rather, its challenge lies in ensuring the community’s survival and supporting its vitality in all regions of Quebec. Therefore, a way must be found to ensure that Quebec’s English-speaking minority can fully develop in a context in which its future is inevitably intertwined with the future of a population group that sees the survival of French as a priority.

The Committee examined many areas of development: community life; education; health and social services; arts, culture and heritage; media; economic development; early childhood development; youth; immigrants and newcomers; women; seniors; and research. According to the witnesses, Quebec’s English-speaking communities live in a unique social, political, economic and cultural context; that context must be taken into account when considering the challenges they face.

Despite all the goodwill there may be on the ground, there are major disparities when it comes to access to schools, cultural products, heritage, training and jobs in English. For the English-speaking communities, fluency in French is an essential asset to ensure that young people can succeed in their own communities. A relationship with the French-speaking majority based on partnership, dialogue and mutual understanding is also essential to the vitality of the English-speaking communities.

The federal government must pay close attention to ensuring that the rights of the Quebec’s Anglophone minority are respected. That is why the Committee prepared 16 recommendations for the federal government to support the vitality and development of this minority.

In summary, federal institutions must fully respect the rights enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and meet their obligations under Part VII of the Official Languages Act. To do so, they must stay informed of the day-to-day challenges and needs of English-speaking communities across Quebec. For this to happen, consultation must be the watchword for relations between governments and communities in all instances.

It is understood that the federal government must protect and promote the rights of the English-speaking minority while respecting Quebec’s authority to legislate in its own area of jurisdiction. It is important to understand that a “win” for the rights of the Anglophone minority does not necessarily threaten the aspirations of the Francophone majority. The goals of the two communities do not have to be mutually exclusive and can be achieved in an atmosphere of respect for the rights of both.

The Committee hopes that, in future, the results and recommendations of this study will provide direction for the federal government’s approach to Quebec’s English-speaking communities. It is particularly important that the specific needs of these communities in the various sectors that affect their development be well understood, especially now that the federal government is beginning to examine how to follow up on the current Roadmap for Canada’s Linguistic Duality (2008-2013).