In 1975, the C’est l’temps movement offers Le Droit a unique opportunity to re-engage in the resistance mission that brought the newspaper into being some 60 years earlier. Young people in Ottawa, preferring prison to paying traffic tickets printed in English only, find an unwavering ally in Le Droit.
Le Droit publishes no less than 107 articles on the C’est l’temps movement over nine months, from April to December 1975, five times more than the capital’s two English-language daily newspapers together. Le Droit reports on all the initiatives of the movement and its many tactics to rally public opinion to the cause. The newspaper does not hide its sympathies for members of the movement, and vigorously defends their crusade for French services in the Ontario justice system. Le Droit emphasizes the support of politicians for the movement, and decries the slow pace of government in responding to its demands.
The tone Le Droit employs to discuss the activities of the movement and the words it chooses are eloquent. In its pages, the members of the movement become heroes, their actions splendid deeds, their struggle that of the whole community.
Le Droit, with a circulation of more than 50,000 copies, is not a simple megaphone of the C’est l’temps movement. By virtue of its thorough coverage and the way it portrays the struggle against English unilingualism in the province – in the context of C’est l’temps, as well resistance to Regulation 17 and the threatened closure of the Hôpital Montfort – Le Droit plays an important and active role.