By Joel Goldenberg
The Suburban

About a third of anglophones in Quebec feel discriminated against by the province and feel inhibited in terms of speaking English outside the home, says Statistics Canada’s 2022 Survey on the Official Language Minority Population.

StatsCan says the survey was conducted to “shed light on different aspects of the situation of English-speaking populations in Quebec and French-speaking populations in Canada’s other provinces and territory capitals…. These results will be used to develop official languages policies, programs and services in Canada.”

The survey says that “in 2022, 31 percent of English-speaking adults in Quebec had experienced a situation of linguistic insecurity in the five years preceding the survey—in other words, a situation in which they hesitated to use the minority language….In 2022, 80% of English-speaking adults in Quebec used English daily or a few times a week in the public sphere, outside work with people other than family or friends. This percentage was higher in the Montreal area (83%) than in the rest of the province (69%).”

There has been a tendency over the years, witnessed by The Suburban and others, of two anglophones speaking to each other in French or English questions being answered in French by both francophone and anglophone officials.

Regarding language-based discrimination, 36 percent of Quebec anglophones -compared to 13 percent outside Quebec in the case of francophones — felt “discrimination or unfair treatment based on their use of the minority language in the five years preceding the survey.” The survey does not mention Quebec’s Bill 96 per se, which is perceived to have intensified instances of discrimination against Quebec’s English-speaking population and sparked numerous protests.

Other findings relating to Quebec anglophones include:

-”In 2022, the vast majority (90%) of English-speaking adults in Quebec felt it was important to receive health care or services in English. Among those who felt it was important to receive such services, approximately half (52%) of English-speaking adults in Quebec always or often received health care or services in English.”

-In terms of education, in Quebec in 2022, “66 percent of parents of preschool-aged children in a minority situation intended to enroll their children in an English-language elementary school. An identical proportion (66%) of parents of children who attended elementary school intended to enroll them in an English-language high school.”

The Quebec Community Groups Network posted last week that the StasCan survey “will guide our efforts to advocate for equity and cultural vitality in Quebec.” n