Official Language Community Media Consortium meets with Minister Mélanie Joly

Alexandre Schmitt (Vice President, Alliance des radios communautaire du Canada); Lily Ryan (President, Quebec Community Newspaper Association); Mélanie Joly (Minister of Tourism, Official Languages and La Francophonie); Francis Sonier (Association de la presse francophone); Guy Rodgers (Executive Director, English Language Arts Network) and Hugh Maynard (representative on behalf of English-language community radio in Quebec).

The Official Language Community Media Consortium has been working for the last two years to raise awareness of the urgent necessity for government support for media in a minority language situation.

Through the federal government’s Action Plan for Official Languages 2018-2023, a $14.5 million investment toward community-based, minority language media has already been initiated, made up of $4.5 million over five years to create 100 internships, and $10 million toward the Minority Media Fund to provide financial assistance for projects that contribute to the maintenance of official-language minority radio and newspapers. The Consortium met with Minister Joly on July 11, 2019 to update on the progress of the support measures and to talk about progress on a Harmonized Interdepartmental Action Plan to Support Official Language Community Media, especially a proportionate share of federal government advertising in official language minority media.

Land Acknowledgement

ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtià:ke, the original name for Montreal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.

We acknowledge the colonial origin of English and French in Canada, and recognize that both languages benefit from official status throughout the land. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Kanien’kéha and Anishinaabemowin are but two of the original languages of this province; Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, all well before French and English.

ELAN acknowledges the important work being done by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages.

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Land Acknowledgement