The municipal council for the Town of Brome Lake held its first meeting of the year on Jan. 9 where it passed a resolution to preserve the municipality’s bilingual status. The bilingual status allows for the municipality to communicate with citizens in both French and English.
Under Quebec’s Bill 96, a new language law that is meant to promote and protect the French language, towns, cities, municipalities, boroughs, and townships that currently hold a bilingual status must pass a resolution to maintain such status if less than 50% of citizens identify English as their mother tongue.
According to the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) website, there are 93 “municipal organizations” (a term used by the (OQLF) in Quebec that hold a bilingual status, 19 of which are located in the Eastern Townships.
Notices were sent out by the (OQLF) to all municipal organizations to inform them that they must pass a resolution within 120 days of receiving the notice or the bilingual status is revoked.
“We thought that we probably wouldn’t even get this notice, but I guess it was sent out to all towns that have a bilingual status that are below 50%. There are some towns that are over 50%, like one here in the MRC is the village of Brome with over 50% of English. They do not have to adopt a resolution to that effect,” explained mayor for the Town of Brome Lake Richard Burcombe.
According to Burcombe, Brome Lake falls under the mark with just 42.7% of citizens claiming English is their mother tongue.
“We adopted the resolution stating we were keeping our bilingual status and it was unanimous. Henceforth, we will send this back to the provincial government to be put on record that we are keeping our right to have a bilingual town,” said Burcombe.
For the municipality, the biggest part is the communication with the English population, noted Burcombe.
“Most of the information we send out, council meetings and everything, is all in French and English. If we didn’t have the bilingual status of course, we would not be able to operate and have signs in half French and half English,” he highlighted.
Burcombe emphasized that bilingualism remains a “great asset for our community.”
“It was built on this and the cohabitation is going to be preserved that is for sure; I guarantee that and the council guarantees that also. It is essential to the democratic life of the municipality that we continue to serve our English-speaking fellow citizens like myself,” he said.
Burcombe described the decision to preserve Brome Lake’s bilingual status as “a no-brainer.”
“There was not one negative comment concerning us keeping our bilingual status. As they say, it’s proof in the pudding right with nobody contesting it, nobody mentioning, and it’s just people saying ‘are we going to keep it? We have to keep it.’ Well, we did,” he explained.
While he recognizes the trend of the English-speaking population slowly decreasing in Brome Lake, Burcombe said that it is important to not forget about English speakers.
“There are a lot of other towns that have expressed the same ideas too. It’s very important to serve and not to forget about the English people, how the town was built, and how also the French have contributed to the building of the Town of Brome Lake also. (…) We are a prime example to the rest of the province” he mentioned.
Listen to the full interview below: