By Tracy N.

Since the "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s in Quebec, the province has taken a series of measures to "protect" the French language.

Prior to Bill 101, several initiatives were taken to promote the use of French, without impeding on the rights of the English. However, it wasn’t long before laws meant to slowly weed out the use of all English were enacted.

August 26, 1977 saw the birth of Bill 101, an openly discriminatory law enacted by the Province’s first separatist government, which took away the right to freedom of speech from its citizens.

Under the law, tighter restrictions on the use of English were introduced, as well as access to English schools. It became against the law to produce any commercial sign that wasn’t in French-only, and the law aimed to make French the language of the workplace.

The separatist government at the time knew very well that this new law violated the Canadian constitution, and in an earlier draft of the Bill (then known as Bill 1), they attempted to include a clause exempting it from the Quebec Charter of Human Rights. Few were willing to support a bill that deliberately and pointedly violated the constitution, and so the bill was dropped, only to re-appear later on as Bill 101 with all but the exemption making the law above the Charter still intact.

One year after its passing, the constitutionality of the law was challenged in the Superior Court after a Quebec businessman refused to remove an English-only sign from his store. Six years later, five businesses joined in the challenge, but it wasn’t until 1986 that the Quebec Court of Appeals ruled in their favor.

The Quebec government appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, who ruled in 1988 that the law was indeed in violation of the guarantee of freedom of expression. The government immediately invoked the notwithstanding clause, a clause within the Canadian constitution that allows the use of unconstitutional laws for a period of 5 years.

This period saw the birth of a new law, Bill 178, which allowed the use of some bilingual signs inside stores, but still forbade them outside. In 1993, a report that Bill 178 violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was released by a United Nations human-rights committee.

Two months later, the Quebec Government introduced new legislation allowing bilingual signs both inside and outside of businesses as long as the French was predominant. Bill 86 was scoffed at by separatists, but welcomed as a step in the right direction by Anglophones and Francophones alike.

The following year, a new separatist government was elected on the promise to abolish Bill 86, and make unilingual signs the law once more. However, abolishment was postponed until after the referendum, when the government decided to keep the law after all, provided that other language laws were toughened up instead.

1996 saw the re-introduction of the Language Police, government officials hired to seek out language violations and hand out fines and warnings for using the "wrong" language. The organization, officially called the Office de la Langue Francaise, has driven the wedge between Quebec’s Francophones and Anglophones even deeper with its petty enforcement of the law, seeking out technicalities and often measuring the size of lettering to make sure that French is no less than twice the size of English.

Presently, the Language Police are still in force operating with a three million dollar budget despite recent hospital closings. Businesses are leaving the province in search of freer grounds, and Anglophones are packing up in droves.

The Quebec government is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Bill 101, also known as the 20th anniversary of oppression.

They simultaneously hold on to their claim of being a democratic, fair government.