Speakers:

Stephen Thompson, Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN)

“Minority Language Educational Rights”

Minority language educational rights are deeply entrenched within the Canadian Constitution.  The purpose of these rights is not only to preserve and promote Canada’s two official languages, but the culture these languages represent.  Although there is a collective aspect of these rights, they are conferred individually on parents belonging to a minority language group.  This presentation reviews the constitutional minority language educational rights of eligible parents living in Quebec, and the obligations of the provincial government to fulfill these rights.

Thérèse Nguyen, Statistics Canada

“Children Eligible for Instruction in the Minority Official Language”

For the first time in the Census, 5 new questions on language of instruction were asked. The primary objective was to obtain the number of children eligible for instruction in the minority official language based on the criteria set out in section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “Minority official language” means English in Quebec and French in the rest of the country. These new questions are based on the criteria of eligibility. Using the results, we were able to see the number of children eligible for the instruction in the minority official languages across Canada.

Richard Bourhis, Psychology, l'Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) 

“Community Vitality and the Acceptability of English Canadian Migrants Rated by Québécois Francophone, Acadian, and Franco-Ontarian University Students.”

Community vitality refers to the strength of language communities based on their demography, institutional support and status. French Canadians (FC) constitute host communities for interprovincial migrants of English Canadian (EC) or French-Canadian (FC) backgrounds who can bolster or weaken the vitality of French Canadians. Questionnaires were completed by Québécois Francophone, Acadian and Franco-Ontarian undergraduates. FCs were more willing to personally mobilize to improve their own French vitality than English vitality, and perceived that FC migrants contributed more to French vitality than EC migrants. Francophone students felt more threatened by the presence EC than FC migrants and preferred to welcome Francophone more than Anglophone migrants to their province. 

The more FCs felt threatened by the presence of EC migrants the less they accepted them as migrants. The more Francophone students perceived that ECs could contribute to French vitality the more willing they were to welcome EC migrants.