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A day after being named federal culture minister, Marc Miller is drawing the ire of several Quebec officials, including the premier of his home province.
Miller, who replaced Steven Guilbeault in cabinet on Monday, said Tuesday that the French language is precarious across North America, rather than saying it is declining specifically in Quebec, as the provincial government would characterize it.
“As a Quebecer, I am quite fed up with this debate that generally based on identity,” Miller said in French during a scrum.
Describing the language issue in Quebec as “very complex,” Miller noted that saying French is declining sometimes diminishes the achievements of legislation, such as Bill 101, the province’s historic French Language Charter, and the Canada-Quebec Agreement.
In 2023, the Montreal MP, then Immigration Minister, repeatedly refused to acknowledge the decline of French in Quebec, preferring to refer to it as a “threatened” language.
Heading into question period in the National Assembly, Quebec Premier François Legault responded by calling the Montreal MP a “disgrace to all Quebecers.”
“I don’t know how he can show up at a cultural event in Quebec after saying nonsense like that,” Legault told reporters Tuesday.
That same day, Legault declined to comment on Miller’s appointment, saying only that appointing Miller to the cabinet was Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision.
The use of different indicators to measure the health of French in Quebec has contributed to the ongoing linguistic debate.
In 2021, 85.5 per cent of Quebecers reported speaking French at home at least regularly, according to census data published by Statistics Canada.
That compares with 87.1 percent in 2016, although the agency had also revised the format of its questions about the languages most commonly spoken at home since then.
Although the number of people speaking French at home increased (from 6.4 million in 2016 to 6.5 million in 2021), they made up 77.5 per cent of Quebecers, falling 1.5 percentage points in five years.
The proportion of Quebecers who most frequently spoke French at home as well as another language increased slightly, from 3.3 per cent in 2016 to 3.5 per cent in 2021.
Carney on the defensive
In the House of Commons in Ottawa, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre questioned Carney’s decision to appoint Miller.
“Of all the liberal deputies, why [Carney] Choosing to appoint an MP who is so fed up with French? Poilievre said.
“We conservatives are not fed up,” he said, promising to “defend the French language and Quebec culture.”
In response to Poilievre, Carney said he supports Miller but did not address the Montreal MP’s comments about the Frenchman.
“I support my new minister. I am against the opposition leader who opposes the $4 billion French language action plan,” Carney said. “He opposes investments in Quebec’s cultural sector,” said the prime minister, alluding to elements of the 2025 budget.
A few minutes earlier, Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet argued that there was no better evidence than Miller’s appointment to demonstrate how the Carney government “has absolutely no understanding of the reality of Quebec.”
