French-language groups call for changes to Quebec’s automated phone menus

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This article was published 08/11/2007 (6589 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL – The English option on automated government telephone menus has become a hot-button issue for some French-language groups in the province.

Language activists are decrying the fact that callers to many Quebec government offices are told to “press nine” for English before instructions are delivered in French.

Two hardline language groups are now teaming up to launch a campaign calling on the Quebec government to put the English option at the end of the message.

“Asking for the English option to come at the end of a message is not something extremist,” Mario Beaulieu, president of Mouvement Montreal francais, said in an interview Thursday.

“We’re asking the government and the departments to respect their own language policy.”

The Quebec government’s language watchdog – the Office quebecois de la langue francaise – recently issued a pamphlet reminding agencies it is indeed official policy to include the English option only after the French message has been delivered in its entirety.

But Beaulieu’s group and the like-minded Imperatif francais lament what they see as government inaction on the issue.

“Such government services are serving to anglicize newcomers, and even some francophones,” he said. “It’s abnormal that a large number of deprtments don’t respect the language policy of the Quebec government.”

The reaction from Quebec’s other solitude has been a rolling of the eyes.

“These guys have got way too much time on their hands,” said anglo-rights lawyer Brent Tyler. “They must be scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to complain about if that’s what they’re coming up with.”

Tyler, a former head of Alliance Quebec, a defunct anglophone lobby group, claims there is nothing in Quebec’s language laws that stipulates minorities can’t be served in their language.

“The law says someone has to be served in French,” he said, adding the legislation also allows the government to provide service in another language.

The issue may appear even more arcane for those anglophones who “press nine for English,” only to be served in French anyway.

Yet there appears to be a growing disaffection among many Anglo-Quebecers who feel the provincial government is doing little to protect their minority rights. It has led to a modest return to some of the linguistic militancy that has characterized the community in the past.

An ardently federalist political party – Affiliation Quebec – was founded earlier this year in an attempt to channel dissatisfaction with the governing Liberals. A group also recently set up the Office quebecois de la langue anglaise – a non-profit group concerned about the “slow and methodical disappearance of the English language in Quebec.”

All this has only fed the peculiar Quebec sport of competing for whose language is more at risk.

Beaulieu cites this reason for insisting there is a pressing need for the government to take action on English in automated phone messages.

“It’s urgent because French is declining in Montreal,” he said. “For us it’s a crucial question, it allows the integration of newcomers to Quebec’s common culture.”

Mouvement Montreal francais and Imperatif francais will launch their campaign on Friday, when 50 of their members will bombard government phone lines while reading excerpts from Bill 101, the province’s French Language Charter.

They have given the operation an English moniker – “Press nine.”