Second to voting intentions, the PQ is climbing the slope.
Jean-Talon’s by-election victory will solidify this momentum.
But these surface movements mask deeper realities.
shrink
Laval, Quebec’s third largest city by population, has long been a political barometer in our society.
If Laval votes blue, the PQ forms a government. If Laval votes red, it’s PLQ.
Frédéric Lacroix, one of the most articulate analysts of our language situation, has just looked at the state of French in Laval based on 2021 data.
His blog (fredericlacroix.quebec) is a must for anyone with a serious interest in our language.
It’s simple: Laval’s anglicization is galloping, erratic. Laval was “western-islanding” at breakneck speed.
The number of Laval residents whose mother tongue is French (54.8% in 2021) has decreased by almost 20 points in 20 years!
Native English speakers get three points.
The number of Laval residents who speak mostly French at home (62.1% in 2021) decreased by 15.4 points over 20 years, while Anglophones increased by 5.6 points.
Here, dear reader, I ask you for real attention.
Why is the mother tongue different from the language spoken at home?
To measure the host society’s ability to integrate languages.
The native language of the immigrant family is Arabic or Russian. But after a few years in Quebec, what is the most spoken language at home?
This is called linguistic “transfer”: What is the new language imposed on the household?
In 2021, 35.5% of Laval residents had a mother tongue other than French or English.
For the future, it is important to know whether they are going to French or Anglicize.
Lacroix shows that the Anglophone block, six times smaller than the Francophone block, attracts half of these transfers!
As immigrants gradually abandon their mother tongue, they turn to English en masse!
Deniers of Anglicization respond that all that counts is the language used in the public sphere, which is above all the languages used at work.
However, in Laval, Anglophones impose their language at work, Lacroix explains, “in a proportion 2.3 times higher than the relative size of their group by mother tongue.”
The future?
Like Montreal, Laval is becoming inextricably anglicized, and the future of French Quebec – forgive me for this evidence – will not be played out in areas far from the metropolis.
That is why the PLQ, with only 4% of francophones’ voting intentions, stands at 13% overall and holds 17% of the seats in parliament.
He must wait.
Laval, not Jean-Talon, is, to quote Lacroix, “the Quebec laboratory of tomorrow and the prototype of what awaits us” if we don’t work hard.
Laval: Once a barometer, always a barometer?
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