Office qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois de la langue fran\u00e7aise (OQLF) website,<\/span><\/a> there are 93 \u201cmunicipal organizations\u201d (a term used by the (OQLF) in Quebec that hold a bilingual status, 19 of which are located in the Eastern Townships.<\/p>\nNotices 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe thought that we probably wouldn\u2019t 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,\u201d explained mayor for the Town of Brome Lake Richard Burcombe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAccording to Burcombe, Brome Lake falls under the mark with just 42.7% of citizens claiming English is their mother tongue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe 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,\u201d said Burcombe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFor the municipality, the biggest part is the communication with the English population, noted Burcombe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cMost of the information we send out, council meetings and everything, is all in French and English. If we didn\u2019t have the bilingual status of course, we would not be able to operate and have signs in half French and half English,\u201d he highlighted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBurcombe emphasized that bilingualism remains a \u201cgreat asset for our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Burcombe described the decision to preserve Brome Lake\u2019s bilingual status as \u201ca no-brainer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was not one negative comment concerning us keeping our bilingual status. As they say, it\u2019s proof in the pudding right with nobody contesting it, nobody mentioning, and it\u2019s just people saying \u2018are we going to keep it? We have to keep it.\u2019 Well, we did,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhile 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of other towns that have expressed the same ideas too. It\u2019s 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. (\u2026) We are a prime example to the rest of the province\u201d he mentioned.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nListen to the full interview below:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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\u2019s bilingual status. The bilingual status allows for the municipality to communicate with citizens in both French and English. Under Quebec\u2019s Bill 96, a new language law that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":99798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,225],"tags":[22370,22369,9299,18184,7760,22366,22367,22368,1507,22371],"radio":[246],"origine":[274,259,260],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135468"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135480,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135468\/revisions\/135480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135468"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=135468"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=135468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}