Chapter 16: Language Policy and Social Justice in QuÉBec

Québec is a predominantly French-speaking province within Canada, and its language policies have evolved over the past 40 years from official bilingualism to French monolingualism. Most prominent among language laws adopted by the government is the Charter of the French Language (“Bill 101”), which imposes the use of French in virtually every sphere of activity in the province. This law has had a profound effect on Québec society, enabling Francophones to have access to jobs that, traditionally, had been occupied mainly by the English-speaking elite (Bourhis, 1984). On the other hand, some of the articles of Bill 101 have been denounced as discriminatory against English-speakers, for example the ban on the use of English in commercial signs or restrictions on access to English-language public education. These perceived injustices have been blamed for the exodus of over 100,000 English Québeckers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, mainly toward Ontario. This paper discusses issues related to the social and economic consequences of language legislation in Québec over the past four decades, with reference to the economics of language framework developed by scholars such as Grin (1996, 2003), which identifies and measures economic benefits and drawbacks of specific language policy decisions.