As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prepares his third Throne Speech and a return to Parliament, he has a golden opportunity to make good on his longstanding pledge to modernize the Official Languages Act and fulfill his vision of linguistic duality and strong official language minority communities. Read more
Our community has the Constitutional right to manage and control our schools. The Coalition Avenir Québec government has taken this right away from our English-speaking community – and together we must fight to take back this fundamental right. All nine of our English school boards along with the Quebec English School Boards Association have launched … Read more
Rather than picking fights with our community, we urge the Legault government to alter course, work with us, and cease defining us as a problem, writes QCGN President Geoffrey Chambers in this opinion piece for The Gazette. Chambers argues that today’s English-speaking community is invested in Quebec. We have encouraged and enabled our children to … Read more
Quebec Superior Court has granted a stay to English school boards challenging a provincial government law abolishing them, pending the outcome of a legal challenge on its merits. The province passed the law — known as Bill 40 — in February, abolishing school boards and replacing them with service centres, eliminating school board elections for … Read more
A Quebec Superior Court judge has ruled in favour of the Quebec English School Boards Association (QESBA) request for a stay on Bill 40, the law that abolishes school boards and replaces them with service centres. “We are very pleased with the decision today which has the effect of suspending the application of Bill 40 … Read more
Quebec’s English School boards will remain as they are after the province’s superior court judged in favour on a stay of Bill 40 on Monday. The Quebec English School Board Association (QESBA) is applauding the court’s judgment on the education reform bill, a legislation that abolishes boards across the province and replaces them with service … Read more
Quebec’s plan to change English school boards into service centres has been put on ice temporarily after a Quebec Superior Court justice ruled that the plan raised “very serious questions” pertaining to the constitutionality of Bill 40. Justice Sylvain Lussier also ruled that the disappearance of English-language school boards (and their transformation into English-language school … Read more
It is more important to understand why there is a difference in reporting anxiety levels among Quebecers than to deflect, writes Jack Jedwab, President of the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS). An ACS/QCGN survey reveals that some 34 per cent of Quebec anglophones know someone who has been diagnosed with the virus compared with 21 … Read more
A new poll commissioned by the Quebec Community Groups Network and conducted by Leger shows anglophones and allophones are more worried than francophones about contracting COVID-19. When asked why he thinks angolphones fear catching the virus more than francophones, Legault suggested English media coverage may be to blame. Read more
A new poll shows that English speakers in Quebec are significantly more worried about COVID-19 than French speakers, and are almost twice as likely to wear a mask. Faced with these numbers on Wednesday, Legault lashed out at English-language media, saying at a press conference that the Montreal Gazette in particular “has a certain responsibility.” … Read more
English-speaking Quebecers are more likely than francophones to be afraid of contracting COVID-19 and more likely to know an infected person, according to a new Léger Marketing survey. The survey, commissioned by the Quebec Community Groups Network and the Association for Canadian Studies, found 68 per cent of anglophones polled were afraid of contracting COVID-19, … Read more
The Quebec Community Groups Network and the Association for Canadian Studies commissioned Léger Marketing to conduct a Web survey on COVID-19 and the perceptions of English-speaking Quebecers. Results indicate that English-speaking Quebecers are more afraid of getting the virus than their francophone counterparts and more likely to be afraid of an immediate family member getting … Read more
The Quebec Community Groups Network believes that during this unprecedented crisis, it is essential that members of linguistic minority communities have access to quality information in our language. In response, QCGN’s team has created an online information tool that provides access to reliable information in English from trusted sources. Our coronavirus response hub, put together by QCGN … Read more
Last fall, representatives of the QCGN attended the community consultation sessions organized by the Secretariat for Relations with English-speaking Quebecers. The QCGN maintains that while the consultation opened a dialogue, the process addressed surface symptoms. It largely failed to identify specific pragmatic solutions – in language instruction, health care, education, and elsewhere – required to … Read more
Statement by the Quebec Community Groups Network This has been a difficult week for Quebec’s English-speaking community as our rights continue to be dismissed and our relations with the Quebec government deteriorate further. On Monday, the Alliance for the Promotion of Public English-language Education in Québec (APPELE-Québec), an alliance of 16 groups representing parents, educators … Read more