English-speaking Quebec: An Integral Part of Quebec & Canadian Society

Founded in 2000, the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network (QAHN) is a non-profit, non-partisan, province-wide organization engaged with its over one hundred organization members in the preservation and promotion of the history, heritage, and culture of Quebec – and in particular of Quebec’s English-speaking communities. This brief, presented to federal Official Languages Minister Ginette Petipas Taylor, was in reaction to the federal government's Renewed Action Plan for Official Language. The brief points out that the plan focuses on the needs for the survival of the French language and culture across Canada, including in Quebec, but ignores the equally legitimate needs (and fears) of the English-speaking community of Quebec, which is barely mentioned in the document. QAHN's brief states: "Quebec’s English-speaking community, so often disparaged as the “best-treated minority in the world,” is deeply concerned that our needs and our rights seem to be of secondary concern to the Government of Canada. We are concerned that our federal leaders are beginning to accept the tired old cliché that English-speaking Quebecers are a domineering, repressive, exploitative, affluent elite. This representation, of course, is far from the reality." The brief points out that many of Quebec’s English-speaking communities and institutions, especially outside of Montreal, are fighting for their very survival. Indicators such as education or income level point to a community that is, in many parts of Quebec, socially and economically disadvantaged in comparison to the provincial Francophone majority.

[Brief presented in the context of the Government of Canada's Consultations on a Renewed Action Plan for Official Languages]

July 7, 2022

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