It was a headline from the star that started the fire: “Canada’s shortage of Tylenol for children is getting worse — and bilingual labels are part of the problem.”

part of the problem. We, the Canadian Francophonie.

Resistance and refutations in the French-language media in Canada, Ontario Government Leader yet that headline picked up a few days later, conveniently unaware that French-speaking parents also have a right to understand dosing and safety requirements to protect their children in the event of a triple outbreak.

“Yes, it’s the fault of the French”. tweeted former Franco-Ontarian journalist Philippe Orfali. ” Happy 4th Anniversary Black Thursdayby the way. »

Happy fourth birthday from the Franco-Ontarian Black Thursday 2018, indeed.

It was fitting evidence of the kind of year it was for Francophones in Ontario and elsewhere. A year in which the question of universities from Alberta to Ontario went unanswered; where the official language law languished; and where we learned that we could not even die peacefully in French, asked to » express themselves in English. ”

However, it is not the protection of French that led to the most ink flowing in 2022. Earlier this year, Quebec passed its controversial Bill 96, a law restricting the use of English in courts, healthcare and other public services. This discriminatory law angered English-speaking Canada. Well named.

But the grim realities facing Canadian Francophonie have been met with silence.

For French Canadians, it was the year that new census data revealed the painful folklorization of our language, a colonial legacy sparked by racist immigration policies and Canadian government practices.

This summer, the appointment of renowned Franco-Ontarian and Abenaki judge Michelle O’Bonsawin to the Supreme Court of Canada drew criticism that bilingualism is a ” huge institutional barrier” for “minorities”,‘, ignoring that Canadian Francophonie itself is multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious, with kin among First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities.

In the fall, during the Rouleau Commission’s investigation into the federal government’s use of the emergency law, we were confronted with marginal use of French, relegated to our language “secondary” by a Rebel News reporter.

A year in which Premier Blaine Higgs of New Brunswick, Canada’s only bilingual province, ‘cut bridges’ with Acadians and other Francophones, appointed a notorious Francophobe to a committee reviewing provincial officials’ language legislation, and sacrificed French immersion education — while continuing his Persecution as Academia lamented monolingual English.

but YesCanada’s Francophonie is to blame. We are the problem.

“Language rights are human rights” recently tweeted Scott Tilton, a French Creole American. “Deconstructing narratives that speech loss is ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ is important in understanding how laws and prejudice deliberately deprive of rights. »

As the new year begins, Canada must seek to understand how its own laws and prejudices have entrenched Anglonormativity in its national consciousness, and challenge assumptions that the French language will inevitably decline and be unworthy of protection.

Because we are always there. Always a problem. always wild, proudly and open.