It’s been in the news lately, the recent update to Bill 101, the French Language Charter. I wondered how it will affect services offered by our two municipalities with legal bilingual status, so I questioned the mayors of Bury and Newport.

“Has your municipality formulated directives about communicating with citizens in French? Do you plan to ask citizens to attest that they are eligible for services in English, per Bill 14?”

The new law says all services must be in French, with a few exceptions. First, you attest you always received services in English before May 13, 2021. Or you have an eligibility certificate to attend school in English. You can also receive services in English if you immigrated to Quebec within the last six months, or you are an Indigenous person.

This directive has caused a kerfuffle in the news recently regarding Lennoxville, the only borough of Sherbrooke to have bilingual status.

Putting it politely, Mayor Denis Savage of Bury and Mayor Robert Asselin of Newport both received my questions with consternation. I’d say both are proud of the official bilingual status of their small municipalities.

When this status was under threat three years ago, the councils of both municipalities voted unanimously to retain it. I interviewed the mayors then. I recall their expressions of community, historical awareness, and respect.

The law is an ass, it’s been said. That sounds rude, but in fact it simply points out that laws, in general, express an ideal or ideology that cannot account for the multitude of exceptions to the rule one encounters in real life. Blindly and strictly following the letter of the law may well lead to an unfair or absurd outcome rather than true justice.

So how does Bill 14 work in the context of a municipality with legal bilingual status? Which law has primacy?
What happens in real life? It’s a dance we all know, where French and English speakers negotiate their limits of expression and understanding in both languages, sometimes congenially expanding those limits.

As Mayor Asselin noted, French-speaking employees cannot legally be required to speak English. But both mayors remarked that French-speaking municipal personnel and English-speaking citizens manage to communicate together. Both municipalities publish bilingual newsletters. Neither has a plan to quiz citizens about their eligibility to receive services in English.

That just seems like common sense.

Rachel writes from Newport.