After refusing, new official languages minister Bendayan acknowledges decline of French in Quebec

The Minister for Official Languages and Associate Minister of Public Safety, Rachel Bendayan, signs a document during a cabinet swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, Friday Dec. 20, 2024. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

The newly appointed Minister for Official Languages, Rachel Bendayan, has backtracked after refusing to acknowledge the decline of French in Quebec despite the fact that all linguistic indicators show this to be the case.

"I didn't refuse to answer. It's true that French is in decline in Quebec," she said as she arrived at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's new cabinet meeting on Friday afternoon.

A few hours earlier, however, Bendayan was far less convinced as she left Rideau Hall, the Governor General's residence, immediately after being sworn in.

"Quebec has a very important role to play. It is the province that must first and foremost be francophone in order to ensure that the linguistic duality we have here in Canada is protected and maintained," she initially said.

But the parliamentary journalist who questioned her cut her off, repeating her question a second time. "Is French in decline, yes or no?" she asked.

Bendayan, who is the MP for Outremont, once again ignored the question, as is often the custom with Liberals.

Her role as minister for official languages, she said, is "to ensure that the English-speaking minority in Quebec is protected and that the French-speaking minority outside Quebec is protected so that bilingualism is protected throughout the country, and that we maintain the linguistic duality that we have and of which we are so proud," she said.

Asked to react, Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet said he was sorry that the prime minister had given responsibility for official languages to someone who is "in denial" about the state of French in Quebec.

"This is one of Justin Trudeau's biggest mistakes if he wants to have any chance of slowing his fall from grace in Quebec," he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

The New Democratic Party (NDP) was also outspoken.

"When you get to the point of appointing Rachel Bendayan to Official Languages, you've reached the bottom of the barrel. When did she show any interest in the French fact or Francophones outside Quebec? This is nonsense," wrote deputy leader Alexandre Boulerice on X.

Scolded by Quebec

In Quebec City, French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge insisted that it is "a fact" that French is declining in the province.

"The new Minister for Official Languages, Rachel Bendayan, must absolutely recognise this, because it is her responsibility to reverse this decline," he wrote on X.

Bendayan replied that "protecting and promoting French can be done in concert with our support for English-speaking Quebecers."

She sent the same reply to Quebec minister Simon Jolin-Barrette, who steered the reform of the Charter of the French Language, after he made comments similar to those of his colleague, Roberge.

But Jolin-Barrette had not said his last word. "There is only one official language in Canada that is in danger and must be protected: French. Do you deny it?"

Statistics Canada repeatedly confirms the trend for French in Quebec.

From 2016 to 2021, the agency observed a decline in the proportion of Quebecers who had French as their mother tongue (from 77.1 per cent to 74.8 per cent), as the language spoken predominantly at home (from 79.0 per cent to 77.5 per cent) and as their first official language spoken (from 83.7 per cent to 82.2 per cent).

Over the same period, the proportion of Quebecers able to conduct a conversation in French fell from 94.5 per cent to 93.7 per cent, although it had been stable for several decades after a marked fall in the 1970s.

As for the language most often used in the workplace, French fell from 79.9 per cent to 79.7 per cent. The difference is even more marked in comparison with the 2011 census, when French accounted for 81.9 per cent.

Bendayan was not the first to refuse to acknowledge the decline of French in Quebec. She was following in the footsteps of her colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount, Anna Gainey, who did the same last year.

Another Liberal, the MP for Saint-Laurent, Emmanuella Lambropoulos, was forced to resign from the Official Languages Committee after denying the decline of French in Quebec.

The Liberals have often expressed concern about the decline of French in Quebec and elsewhere in the country. They even pushed through a reform of the Official Languages Act in the hope of tackling it.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Dec. 20, 2024.