The children of Bill 101 (les enfants de la loi 101) is the name given to the generation of children whose parents immigrated to Quebec, Canada after the adoption of the 1977 Charter of the French Language (Bill 101).
One of the Charter's articles stipulates that all children under 16 must receive their primary and secondary education in French schools, unless one of the child's parents has received most of their education in English, in Canada, or the child or the child's sibling has already received a substantial part of their education in English, in Canada. If a child qualifies for a certificate of eligibility for instruction in English under one of those criteria, then the certificate is permanent and can be passed on to future generations even if the child ends up attending French instead of English school. The permanent certificate can only be granted if one of the child's parents is a Canadian citizen. In addition, children of foreign temporary residents living in Quebec on study or work permits, as well as children of diplomats, can also obtain a temporary certificate of eligibility that is only valid for the duration of their permit.[1]
Mostly because of this, many of the children of Bill 101, already adults as of 2001, numbering between 93,800 and 100,600 individuals,[2] have adopted French as their primary language of communication, and in a much greater proportion than the previous generations of immigrants, who had adopted English.
From the time Bill 101 was adopted until 2010, there existed a legal loophole for the children of francophones and allophones to attend public and subsidized private English schools if they went to an unsubsidized private English elementary school for at least one year. An estimated 11,000 children used this loophole between 1992 and 2002 to receive an English education in Quebec. In 2010, the provincial government introduced a more complicated point system under Bill 115 to replace the previous loophole, making it more difficult for the children of non-anglophones to attend any English school that received government funding. The bill required a student without anglophone parents to attend a minimum of three years in an unsubsidized private English elementary school before a certificate of eligibility required to attend government-funded English schools can be granted.[3][4][5] The Quebec government does not provide any subsidies to private schools for elementary, so private English schools that took subsidies starting in grade 7 have always been able to accept students without certificates in kindergarten to grade 6 while requiring them in high school. However, since Bill 115 was passed, making it more difficult for children of non-anglophones to obtain a certificate in time for grade 7, some private English schools have decided to forego those subsidies so that they can admit students without certificates even in their high school section.[6]