Bill 63

Bill 63

Bill 63, the Act to Promote the French Language in Quebec (Nov 1969), required children receiving their education in English to acquire a working knowledge of French and required everything to be done so that immigrants acquired the knowledge of French upon arrival in Québec. In 1967, the school board of Saint-Léonard (Montréal) had insisted that children of immigrants within its jurisdiction receive unilingual French education. Anglophone opposition caused the Union Nationale government to introduce Bill 85, which never passed the parliamentary committee stage.

The Gendron Commission was then established to investigate language problems in Québec, but when a compromise proposed by the Saint-Léonard school board trustees led to violent demonstrations, the government introduced Bill 63 without awaiting the commission's recommendations. Bill 63 aroused unprecedented opposition among Québec's francophone population who believed it was too weak a measure. It was eventually repealed and replaced by the more comprehensive Bill 22.