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| Quebec's Shameful, Coercive Language Law |
‘Je me souviens’ les palmarès Top 20 de la loi 101 sacrée qui nuit à la société Québécoise.
The author is well aware of the typical and detestable knee-jerk reaction this pamphlet shall provoke, but my francophone brethren know me well enough to understand that this is much wider critique of the reasons why it has to be replaced immediately. The goal is to find an Entente cordiale and settle the myths of prejudice that exist between our communities in Quebec. We must begin the process of reconciliation and not head the opposite direction by increasing funding, especially in a budget wage-freeze, for the Quebec Office of the French Language (Office Québécoise de la langue française)! However, we should first fully understand via these twenty points, what damage and a nuisance to Quebec interests on a whole this infamous Bill 101 has done, and what these separatists and ultra-nationalists have truly done to our once great belle province.
We, since I am not the only one contributing, hope with this document that we can once and for all find solutions to move forward, and convince even the die hard Péquistes, language hawks, et al. that it is time for a change - brisons l'impasse indeed and return respect for the Rule of Law. Normalement, dès qu’un Anglophone donne son opinion en ce qui concerne la loi 101, la majorité de la province bûchent les oreilles ou crie au racisme, même des amis proches qui habitant au Plateau se sont convaincus, que le futur de la province devrait être mené par la calisse de classe politique corrompu avec sa magouille partout, ne veulent rien entendre. Well, to these people, who not have the intelligence or impartial reasoning, from living in other parts of the world perhaps, to realise what has been and continues to go on here, unabated embarrassing malfeasance, just listen to Kamal Maghri from Gatineau regarding the condescending immigrant guide of that city. You’ll notice that at the end of the article, he makes it clear that these legal codes are offensive against all those who do not make up the ethnic majority, and asks when there’ll be 'un autre code pour les méchants anglais' – to this, as informed Anglophones who know of the legislated ignorance (but this is just one of the many, Bill 22, 68, 104), it already exists as the Quebec Charter of the French Language – better known as Bill 101 .Disclaimer: The scope of this document is language discrimination in the Canadian Province of Quebec, this is to direct the reader to fully understand the situation here, without being distracted by what happens outside of the province. We have to set the bar within our own province much higher, as Stéphane Gendron is trying to do, despite the large backlash he has received/vandalism against his property et la brimade médiatique. Although Patriquin of MacLean’s did his best to describe most explicitly the provincial corruption, and Maxime Bernier has blazed a trail with his refreshing take on this unjust law for this Brave Mayor, it is necessary to summarize the top twenty reasons we need this bill replaced now, since it in it is no longer necessary to 'protect' the French language in Quebec, and many would argue that it never was the first place. We need to take Quebec back from its current unaccountable bullying Losership. Il est grand temps qu’on évolue de cette anglophobie ridicule - il faut arrêter 'La Chasse aux Anglos!'ET si vous pensez qu’avec un prénom français je ne suis pas capable de l'écrire aussi? Bien, le voilà :
Veuillez prendre en note que je ne suis pas francophobe, je blogue en français et je partage, vers un côté de la famille, les mêmes racines que la majorité ici. Je suis né à Vancouver, et ma sœur Monique et moi aussi, nous sommes allés à l'école bilingue. Je veux que nous améliorons notre société au Québec; non pas seulement pour faire des accommodations raisonnables aux nouvelles arrivées dans la province, mais pour rendre du 'respect' à la minorité anglophone qui vit ici depuis des siècles. Le mal traitement dont j’ai vécu à la Caisse de Dépôt est un cauchemar absolu, mais ce n’est pas isolé à cette organisation gouvernementale exclusivement, et existent dans certaines sociétés privés au Québec. Je resterai toujours positif, parce que je suis un Champion pour le Canada, and Quebec is included in my country. Mais, il faut que ces extrémistes ultranationalistes soient mis en règle afin de laisser le Québec se progresser, car à mon avis, c’est leur faute que la province est en déclin tranquille (à cause de deux referendums, et maintenant $47 Milliards perdus à la CDPQ). J'emploi mon droit constitutionnelle de s'exprimer - to clearly counter sovereigntist bullies who have repetitively told me that my constitutional rights in Quebec do not exist.
Pour lire le reste de texte contre LaCaisse.com : http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/hugo/archive/2010/02/15/first-public-hearing-against-quebec-s-pension-fund-manager-the-beginning-of-proof-multiple-laws-were-violated-before-sabia-took-over.aspx
D'autres exemples, et ce depuis des années:http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/hugo/archive/2009/09.aspx
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/hugo/archive/2009/10.aspx
http://dbhive.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
Message spécifiquement au sépérateux: Je suis Canadien pas un ‘anglais’. Les anglais habitent en Angleterre, Grande Bretagne!
Firstly, what originally was released as a white paper under the name of Bill 101, the Charter of the French Language must be replaced to change with the times since we are not living in the 60s, nor the 70s anymore. It was unwanted by the English Speaking Minority in Quebec from the beginning, but forced through by provincial Separatists (Parti Québécois) dominating the provincial legislature, aided by Quebec ethno-Nationalist Political parties (Parti Libérale du QC) that sought to take advantage of the post-colonial era by claiming to be the saviours of culture.
After receiving death threats for my stance on the Bill, I posted this response, to elaborate on the above:
We, since I am not the only one contributing, hope with this document that we can once and for all find solutions to move forward, and convince even the die hard Péquistes, language hawks, et al. that it is time for a change - brisons l'impasse indeed and return respect for the Rule of Law. Normalement, dès qu’un Anglophone donne son opinion en ce qui concerne la loi 101, la majorité de la province bûchent les oreilles ou crie au racisme, même des amis proches qui habitant au Plateau se sont convaincus, que le futur de la province devrait être mené par la calisse de classe politique corrompu avec sa magouille partout, ne veulent rien entendre. Well, to these people, who not have the intelligence or impartial reasoning, from living in other parts of the world perhaps, to realise what has been and continues to go on here, unabated embarrassing malfeasance, just listen to Kamal Maghri from Gatineau regarding the condescending immigrant guide of that city. You’ll notice that at the end of the article, he makes it clear that these legal codes are offensive against all those who do not make up the ethnic majority, and asks when there’ll be 'un autre code pour les méchants anglais' – to this, as informed Anglophones who know of the legislated ignorance (but this is just one of the many, Bill 22, 68, 104), it already exists as the Quebec Charter of the French Language – better known as Bill 101 .Disclaimer: The scope of this document is language discrimination in the Canadian Province of Quebec, this is to direct the reader to fully understand the situation here, without being distracted by what happens outside of the province. We have to set the bar within our own province much higher, as Stéphane Gendron is trying to do, despite the large backlash he has received/vandalism against his property et la brimade médiatique. Although Patriquin of MacLean’s did his best to describe most explicitly the provincial corruption, and Maxime Bernier has blazed a trail with his refreshing take on this unjust law for this Brave Mayor, it is necessary to summarize the top twenty reasons we need this bill replaced now, since it in it is no longer necessary to 'protect' the French language in Quebec, and many would argue that it never was the first place. We need to take Quebec back from its current unaccountable bullying Losership. Il est grand temps qu’on évolue de cette anglophobie ridicule - il faut arrêter 'La Chasse aux Anglos!'ET si vous pensez qu’avec un prénom français je ne suis pas capable de l'écrire aussi? Bien, le voilà :
Veuillez prendre en note que je ne suis pas francophobe, je blogue en français et je partage, vers un côté de la famille, les mêmes racines que la majorité ici. Je suis né à Vancouver, et ma sœur Monique et moi aussi, nous sommes allés à l'école bilingue. Je veux que nous améliorons notre société au Québec; non pas seulement pour faire des accommodations raisonnables aux nouvelles arrivées dans la province, mais pour rendre du 'respect' à la minorité anglophone qui vit ici depuis des siècles. Le mal traitement dont j’ai vécu à la Caisse de Dépôt est un cauchemar absolu, mais ce n’est pas isolé à cette organisation gouvernementale exclusivement, et existent dans certaines sociétés privés au Québec. Je resterai toujours positif, parce que je suis un Champion pour le Canada, and Quebec is included in my country. Mais, il faut que ces extrémistes ultranationalistes soient mis en règle afin de laisser le Québec se progresser, car à mon avis, c’est leur faute que la province est en déclin tranquille (à cause de deux referendums, et maintenant $47 Milliards perdus à la CDPQ). J'emploi mon droit constitutionnelle de s'exprimer - to clearly counter sovereigntist bullies who have repetitively told me that my constitutional rights in Quebec do not exist.
Pour lire le reste de texte contre LaCaisse.com : http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/hugo/archive/2010/02/15/first-public-hearing-against-quebec-s-pension-fund-manager-the-beginning-of-proof-multiple-laws-were-violated-before-sabia-took-over.aspx
D'autres exemples, et ce depuis des années:http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/hugo/archive/2009/09.aspx
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/hugo/archive/2009/10.aspx
http://dbhive.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
Message spécifiquement au sépérateux: Je suis Canadien pas un ‘anglais’. Les anglais habitent en Angleterre, Grande Bretagne!
 |
| April 17th, 2011, the First Contemporary Protest against Bill 101 |
Firstly, what originally was released as a white paper under the name of Bill 101, the Charter of the French Language must be replaced to change with the times since we are not living in the 60s, nor the 70s anymore. It was unwanted by the English Speaking Minority in Quebec from the beginning, but forced through by provincial Separatists (Parti Québécois) dominating the provincial legislature, aided by Quebec ethno-Nationalist Political parties (Parti Libérale du QC) that sought to take advantage of the post-colonial era by claiming to be the saviours of culture.
After receiving death threats for my stance on the Bill, I posted this response, to elaborate on the above:
The goal of our Greater Montreal Multi-Ethnic Territory Committee to Abolish Bill 101, is begin the process to rid Quebec of all discriminatory Language legislation. The most commonly known and little understood in its full implications of Ethnic Cleansing ('the planned deliberate removal from a specific territory - QC, in this case - persons of a particular ethnic group, by force or intimidation, in order to render that area ethnically homogeneous) is the law French Charter Law Bill 101. Thus, many of our 25 Committees have this Abolitionist intent embedded in the actual title of the group.
The provincial majority has been able to maintain a tyrannical stranglehold over the rest of Quebec’s population for over a generation now, and it shall come to an end - as does all tyranny. However, we understand that it is not the individual citizens who are responsible for this, but rather a corrupt and manipulative assortment of politicians within provincial Nationalist/Sovereigntist élite governments that have failed the people of Quebec repetitively with their Illusion Tranquille (Grand Illusion). This 'Gouvernemama' has taken advantage of every opportunity to squash minority rights with legislation during the Anglo-Exodus, taking for granted the English-Speaking minority vote ever since by Mafia-like Liberal provincial 'supposedly Federalist' Governments, since the Parti-Québécois or Bloc Québécois are simply not a choice at all for minorities. The power vacuum since the beginning of the Independence movement in the sixties and seventies, following the latter and former conditions has left minorities in the province completely politically disenfranchised (not dis-engaged, as certain misguided authors from National Post seem to state). To cite clear evidence of this, just last September 2010, we see the pitiful 12% voter turnout in the City of Saint Laurent, one of Montreal's most ethnically diverse communities, for the parachuted Liberal Party of Quebec candidate Jean-Marc Fournier.
One can read more from last Springs' episode of the Tyranny of Bill 101.
This law is worshiped as these political factions' false prophet to shield the political élite’s corruption, since we have seen clearly over the past year or so, the exposure of each of these political factions after another of immense mafioso-infiltrated corruption while Billions are blown out the windows on the public purse (Duschenau tried, Bellemare tried…both failed to stop even a corrupt Judicial system that white-washed Charest). This infamous Bill has led to the legalised bullying of the Anglophone Community in Quebec, and any ethnicity (even French speaking immigrants that are not 'white enough') that opposes the local Maîtres chez nous mentality, with support from street gang militant separatist terrorists like Renaud Léger of Beloeil (who assaulted me shortly after this was filmed, on April 17th, 2011, photo below) of the Réseau de resistance québécoise. Note, the RRQ is led by the sore loser who refused the Plains of Abraham battle re-enactment with their repetitive ‘take 101 or the 401’ or 'En Français!' verbal harassment chanting from the boot stomping storm trooper wannabes - incidentally, this was right in front of World-Renowned McGill University, downtown Montreal, a University founded by one of Quebec's most famous Scots-Quebeckers.
Is this the type of Quebec that awaits graduates from such a great University? Why do I have to listen to a supposedly ‘pertinent’ Paul Arcand on the Radio each morning who complains that so many students come to Montreal and just 'leave' afterwards – is it not obvious enough for you Paul?! Ils quittent le Québec, car il n'y a pas de futur évident pour eux icitte ! Le Queéec est en déclin depuis qu'il essait de homogéniser ces minorités. As mentioned in the rise and fall of EN Montreal, the video documents, at about six minutes, the documentary describes how even bilinguals leave the province to be appreciated elsewhere, due to institutionalised discrimination based on ethnicity and linguistic background, which is reinforced by this law. Did not Maxime Bernier complain about using coercion, only to be attacked from all sides by the knee-jerk reacting Quebec media (la brimade)? If you missed it, see the Press Review. Now we have Marc Gendron calling it out for what it really is, a racist and discriminatory bill – this is how we can beat the discrimination together, by having an honest discussion and not just denying the elephant in the room, as this law is and those related to it: 22, 68 - for all Quebeckers.
For those who want a quick Top 10 read, from the Rally to Abolish Bill 101 FB page, my friend Mike Bradley puts a great summary of why this bill is a failure to interests of Quebec:
1) To stop dividing our Quebec society so that we can all live in harmony;
2) To allow the freedom of choice for all of Quebec’s citizens to send their children to whichever school they feel will give their child the education they need to succeed in life;
3) To recognize the rights of the Anglophone community and not just those of the Francophone;
4) To have all institutions of the Government of Quebec provide services in BOTH of Canada’s official languages to all of Quebec’s citizens and companies;
5) To allow immigrants the opportunity to attend English schools (Especially if their mother tongue is English);
6) To stop the migration of our most talented and educated citizens;
7) To enable companies to work in BOTH of Canada’s official languages;
8) To stabilize the economy from the constant fear of separation;
9) To increase investment in Quebec;
10) To change the world’s perception that Quebec is anti-English and only concerned for its French citizens
This law is worshiped as these political factions' false prophet to shield the political élite’s corruption, since we have seen clearly over the past year or so, the exposure of each of these political factions after another of immense mafioso-infiltrated corruption while Billions are blown out the windows on the public purse (Duschenau tried, Bellemare tried…both failed to stop even a corrupt Judicial system that white-washed Charest). This infamous Bill has led to the legalised bullying of the Anglophone Community in Quebec, and any ethnicity (even French speaking immigrants that are not 'white enough') that opposes the local Maîtres chez nous mentality, with support from street gang militant separatist terrorists like Renaud Léger of Beloeil (who assaulted me shortly after this was filmed, on April 17th, 2011, photo below) of the Réseau de resistance québécoise. Note, the RRQ is led by the sore loser who refused the Plains of Abraham battle re-enactment with their repetitive ‘take 101 or the 401’ or 'En Français!' verbal harassment chanting from the boot stomping storm trooper wannabes - incidentally, this was right in front of World-Renowned McGill University, downtown Montreal, a University founded by one of Quebec's most famous Scots-Quebeckers.
Is this the type of Quebec that awaits graduates from such a great University? Why do I have to listen to a supposedly ‘pertinent’ Paul Arcand on the Radio each morning who complains that so many students come to Montreal and just 'leave' afterwards – is it not obvious enough for you Paul?! Ils quittent le Québec, car il n'y a pas de futur évident pour eux icitte ! Le Queéec est en déclin depuis qu'il essait de homogéniser ces minorités. As mentioned in the rise and fall of EN Montreal, the video documents, at about six minutes, the documentary describes how even bilinguals leave the province to be appreciated elsewhere, due to institutionalised discrimination based on ethnicity and linguistic background, which is reinforced by this law. Did not Maxime Bernier complain about using coercion, only to be attacked from all sides by the knee-jerk reacting Quebec media (la brimade)? If you missed it, see the Press Review. Now we have Marc Gendron calling it out for what it really is, a racist and discriminatory bill – this is how we can beat the discrimination together, by having an honest discussion and not just denying the elephant in the room, as this law is and those related to it: 22, 68 - for all Quebeckers.
For those who want a quick Top 10 read, from the Rally to Abolish Bill 101 FB page, my friend Mike Bradley puts a great summary of why this bill is a failure to interests of Quebec:
1) To stop dividing our Quebec society so that we can all live in harmony;
2) To allow the freedom of choice for all of Quebec’s citizens to send their children to whichever school they feel will give their child the education they need to succeed in life;
3) To recognize the rights of the Anglophone community and not just those of the Francophone;
4) To have all institutions of the Government of Quebec provide services in BOTH of Canada’s official languages to all of Quebec’s citizens and companies;
5) To allow immigrants the opportunity to attend English schools (Especially if their mother tongue is English);
6) To stop the migration of our most talented and educated citizens;
7) To enable companies to work in BOTH of Canada’s official languages;
8) To stabilize the economy from the constant fear of separation;
9) To increase investment in Quebec;
10) To change the world’s perception that Quebec is anti-English and only concerned for its French citizens
....moving on :)
The second reason why Billy 101 (thanks Steve Théberge) sucks: after seeking recourse against the largest Institutionalised Pension Fund Manager in the country, it became blatantly obvious to me that this law serves as a method of psychological harassment to make unilingual English speakers feel as if they are not in their ‘native’ or ‘official’ territory (en réponse à ceux qui pense qu’il n’est pas correct qu’Anglophone soit unilingue chez eux). Sovereigntist and ultra-nationalist leadership, or more rightly described as Losership, have brainwashed this minority into feeling that they are a Bad Quebeckers if they do not speak French (or even if they are bilingual, for not assimilating themselves completely), even though you are both undoubtedly Canadian and Quebecker no matter what official language you chose to speak, which includes first nations native languages also. This has been repetitively stated by the political Losership, and even mainstream television hosts like notre ‘ti Guy A. LePage on Tout le monde en parle (a popular TV show considered the Sunday Mass equivalent show on Radio-Canada, the French language), as well as an incitement to hatred by P.K. Peladeau’s wife and Star Académie Prime-Time Anglo Bashing hostess Julie Syder - to stop this, please file a complaint with the CRTC here ladies and gentlemen (even if it is after the archaic 28 day limit, Quebecor will have to hear about it), it has been over a decade we have had to listen to Julie bitch about ‘les anglais’ although her geography could do with some serious work, since England is where the English live, we are in Canada, thank you very much. You can easily find Parti Quebecois leaders stating that un bon Québécois parle le français – and the ethnic majority of the province, even Marois Dumont, has stated how ridiculous this idea is, as well as Mongrain vis à vis le Bloc Quebecois last year, just before their spectacular fall from grace.
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| Our Small but Loud and Proud Protest, April 17th, 2011 (there was one in August+October too) |
The second reason why Billy 101 (thanks Steve Théberge) sucks: after seeking recourse against the largest Institutionalised Pension Fund Manager in the country, it became blatantly obvious to me that this law serves as a method of psychological harassment to make unilingual English speakers feel as if they are not in their ‘native’ or ‘official’ territory (en réponse à ceux qui pense qu’il n’est pas correct qu’Anglophone soit unilingue chez eux). Sovereigntist and ultra-nationalist leadership, or more rightly described as Losership, have brainwashed this minority into feeling that they are a Bad Quebeckers if they do not speak French (or even if they are bilingual, for not assimilating themselves completely), even though you are both undoubtedly Canadian and Quebecker no matter what official language you chose to speak, which includes first nations native languages also. This has been repetitively stated by the political Losership, and even mainstream television hosts like notre ‘ti Guy A. LePage on Tout le monde en parle (a popular TV show considered the Sunday Mass equivalent show on Radio-Canada, the French language), as well as an incitement to hatred by P.K. Peladeau’s wife and Star Académie Prime-Time Anglo Bashing hostess Julie Syder - to stop this, please file a complaint with the CRTC here ladies and gentlemen (even if it is after the archaic 28 day limit, Quebecor will have to hear about it), it has been over a decade we have had to listen to Julie bitch about ‘les anglais’ although her geography could do with some serious work, since England is where the English live, we are in Canada, thank you very much. You can easily find Parti Quebecois leaders stating that un bon Québécois parle le français – and the ethnic majority of the province, even Marois Dumont, has stated how ridiculous this idea is, as well as Mongrain vis à vis le Bloc Quebecois last year, just before their spectacular fall from grace.
Example of how little Quebec Authorities care about criminals who terrorise us in the street for protesting for equal rights: specifically to a Montreal Crown Prosecutor who rejected our President’s right to press charges (pending Civil Suit against Renaud Léger of Beloeil – wearing Black RRQ cap below):
Your declaration (Prosecutor) to the very helpful Montreal Police investigator in October 2010, that this televised assault was 'not important' that someone be assaulted and have no criminal recourse is disgusting – this just yet another documented piece of discrimination against our community. In our most recent protest, of October 16th, 2011, one could hear this RRQ member chanting on the other side of the de Maisonneuve Street 'la loi 101 ou la 401 - pour un Québéc prospère, Hugo à Vancouver' - such is the typical personal attacks by what we refer to locally as Bluenecks or Septards (militant retarded separatists - Thanks to Steve Mace for this term). Perhaps this is also a result of their poor working conditions and being forced back to work by the Liberal Party of Quebec. In the same way, my Friend Eric Bouthillette was picked up just the other week by police just for protesting, and walloped with a $435 fine – our democratic rights have been stripped from us in Montreal in general by an over-zealous police force, unless you show up as 200 hundred thousand, as did the students the other day.
Nous sommes les anglophones du Québec qui adore la langue française (tel que bien expliqué par Josh Freed ) : c’est la raison pour laquelle nous vivons ici. Mon prénom, et celui de ma sœur, Monique, sont en partie d’origine française parce que nos traditions Franc-Normandes continuent depuis plus que 1000 ans déjà (voir Ascelin Perceval de Gouel, ou bien, Robert D’Ivry qui on envahit l’Angleterre avec Guillaume le conquerant). We simply want to live without institutionalised discrimination based on language, and especially for it to stop at by our provincial government.
(since this is not just a Bitch fest, let's figure out how to rectify the situation...)Solution: as Provided by Charles Stuart, Member of the Quebec Office of the English Language:
Session 2
Thirty-Fourth Legislature
https://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg6n6657_155hchcmrdz&pli=1
Combined with the Ontario French Services Act, Bil 199 would be a real step in the right direction Quebec!
Mise en contexte: Deltell, before he was sucked into the CAQ, represents pretty close my point of view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYbwhlUR3EU (Gerard is certainly not Anglophobic and speaks English well. Apart from the completely and utterly part, which seems a little harsh to the ears, but well he's speaking in the heart of ethno-nationalism - at the provincial legislature...so I forgive him, for that time :) only – now I do not support him because he’s with the CAQ “dictator” LeGault.
The third reason the X Language Charter must have more importance than Y Language Charter, a simple but usually too obvious it is not mentioned one, is that it has paved the way for the free flow of [linguistic] discrimination by dividing the provincial population up by language and ethnicity, or Blood Line, as the prolific Tony Kondaks refers to in his latest Huffington Post Article.
The Quebec Office of the English Language has a great write-up on this here, I invite you to understand our point of view from their website, since this is a grass-roots organisation that has accomplished significant awareness of our situation, and many members of our Committees have contributed their stories in public there. Since this discrimination was not stopped when placed into legislation, it has spilled over onto all other minorities, such as laws against those who wish to wear headscarves as part of their religious upbringing – this law, and laws like it, pass judgement against communities that are well established in Quebec and punish them for not being homogenised with the ethnic majority. Jean-François Lisée just confirmed this to us the other day, so sickening that even the Globe and Mail's great Lysiane Gagnon kicked this man in the pants below - thankfully in text, not physically!
The Quebec Office of the English Language has a great write-up on this here, I invite you to understand our point of view from their website, since this is a grass-roots organisation that has accomplished significant awareness of our situation, and many members of our Committees have contributed their stories in public there. Since this discrimination was not stopped when placed into legislation, it has spilled over onto all other minorities, such as laws against those who wish to wear headscarves as part of their religious upbringing – this law, and laws like it, pass judgement against communities that are well established in Quebec and punish them for not being homogenised with the ethnic majority. Jean-François Lisée just confirmed this to us the other day, so sickening that even the Globe and Mail's great Lysiane Gagnon kicked this man in the pants below - thankfully in text, not physically!
-
www.theglobeandmail.com
The PQ leaped on L’actualité’s ‘findings’ to proclaim that, once again, French is being mortally threatened...
Here is how Victoria, a very vocal friend whom is against this law, has found the exact term that describes what has been freely flowing since the assent of this law:Victoria Lys Hunter
Position Number Four, as reason to replace this law (as mentioned above, a good replacement would be Bill 199) goes to: discouraging competition and diversity in the workplace by acting as if the external world to QC does not exist, nor should be considered when making decisions that affect all members of the province (comme si on continuait de vivre dans un village Québécois avec un Mur qui s’appelle la loi 101 toute autour de nous), because it is dominated by an Anglosphere surrounding the province, and favoring the ethnic majority of the province Uber Alles. Lucien Bouchard and many lucid individuals of the Franco-Quebecker élite have complained repetitively about the complacency and lack of competitiveness that are directly to the workplace environments no thanks to this discriminatory law, especially since it discourages bilingualism. And that is where Quebec’s ‘guvmint’, and its love for ‘collective rights’ (?) have failed Quebec, by ignoring the importance of open and clear communication with not only its neighbors in surrounding provinces (and visiting tourists) and United States, but also a 1M person strong anglo provincial minority. What FGdamn logic is there in backing a law that is against the Lingua Franca and against investment by those from 'outside the Clan'- Cessons de jouer à l'autruche. This is rather ironic considering the Anglophobia of the Parti Québécois is well known (with PQ party strategists J.-F. Lisée propagating for them hatred through big QC media; his message that English is bad for QC ‘Icite on parle English’ and we refuse to integrate into the provincial majority French speaking community). Yet, the PQ consider itself The Party of Quebeckers, listen to la scélérate Marois here, who, on one hand, has stated QC is the poorest and most taxed region in all of Canada and the U.S.A. (or on its way to being shortly),while they are the provincial party that pushed through the Law that has turned Quebec into the poorest province in the first place!From I am a Champion for Canada, et le Québec est Inclus dans Mon Pays, here is the verbose reasoning:
We can make a difference and embrace bilingualism not only for many of the reasons above - mais il faut penser aussi, ceux qui vivent en Europe, par défaut, doivent apprendre trois langues normalement au début. Pensez plus loin que les deux langues, s’il vous plait. We have to help people learn French in Montreal by promoting bilingualism, since we are a bilingual country, even my father in Vancouver shows us an example of French speakers in Vancouver back in the early eighties (see near the end of the clip please), and to welcome visitors here, meaning signs should be equal in size when it is with respect to a person's security, and to help those who wish to learn French slowly (while seeing the equivalent in the other language), since it is done in several ways/speeds depending each individual and their situation.
Mais il y a un autre règle bien claire - il faut parler la langue du client and not throw everybody off the bus because someone asks the time in English. Is it that hard to imagine why? Can the 'territorialists’ think farther than their own foot please? Projecting a language battle onto a Tourist or new arrivals to the Metropole makes utterly no sense! If you do not speak to a client in a language they are comfortable with, then you are asking to be put out of business (hmm, high number small business failures here, wonder why? And called Losers if they fail – but then again, how do you learn without making a mistake?): maybe those in QC who espouse this mentality should look in the mirror a little and see how they are shooting themselves and the rest of the province collectively in the foot. Even if most Quebeckers are way more progressive than this, the faction within the government I am targeting prevents everyone from moving on (and in many private companies too, even some multi-nationals), hence my argument that this is internal QC govt issue in the end (weed out the xenophobe goons, and send them back to development for the Quebecker 3.x patch, guys who espouse the shameful behaviour described above). This faction would typically think “Oh, no, we don't want evil money anyway” (more the point Montreal Blogger Fagstien has already mentioned, about ridiculous QC judgemental issue concerning what linguistic side the money comes from) – and project their fear of losing the French language in North America (still here after 400 years) by repetitively attempting to drop bilingualism in Montreal, which has benefitted from being bilingual for hundreds of years (naw, let's just over-write that history shall we M. Legault/ Montmorency/Harel/...of when Montreal was the financial centre of Canada: now reputable for Graft and municipal mismanagement). Meaning the Anglo minority has to suffer by having these Zombies (listen to the lyrics from the Cranberries' song) using psychological harassment and preaching hatred due to this Québécois knee-jerk reaction of insecurity over continuing to share territory with English-speaking Canadians (feeding the territorial myth that QC is a country espoused by some clannistes in denial). We, as the minority, are being repetitively asked to accept their ill-will to make Montreal a linguistic battleground via bureaucratic blockade, even accusing trilingual Allophones of being 'pawns' because they haven't been brain-washed to demonise English to the extent this faction would have one believe, which is openly supported by certain government organisations in the form of Sociological Propaganda.
Denying the fact that English even exists as an official language (! because local Anglo-Quebeckers are simply an irritant to them?) is another one of the nasty tricks also - quite the myth since many municipalities of the Island Metropole are officially bilingual, as well as many surrounding areas in Greater Montreal. Not even two elections ago, all major political debates were in both languages, and should return to that state, but Mayoral candidate Harel refused due to her lack of experience with debates in la langue des traites (how militants describe the English language in forums). Canada is a bilingual country, but we get the impression that le Gouvernement du Québec's pro-independence faction wishes to maintain a double-standard; trying to maintain a tyrannical precedent with Bill 101 put in place by the Liberals as an appeasement to the Sovereigntists, whilst trying to make minorities which follow the Lingua Franca, a natural occurrence in itself, feel unwelcome/uncomfortable with respect to their linguistic skin.
Here is more explanation of the message that was sent out to those who joined us for the first three
Position 5: Bill 101 is legislative xenophobia, even if passive and articulate - it represents the underlying Anglophobia of the provincial ethnic-majority against its own population. The Anglophone community is a diverse group that lives in over 70 communities in QC, and over 90 municipalities, yet are written in this infamous bill, as officially unofficial, which is typical disrespect from the separatist/independantist/souverainist Losership against the rest of Canada, and frankly immoral. QC is not a separate country and QC's populace has already decided three times it will not be (Referenda, and the Orange Crush last year) leaving the country, yet this legislation continues, une loi désuete qui appartient aux années 70-60 (a reactionary law from the 60-70s), which the Feds have done little to stop. Here is an example of that tribal territorialism written into the Bill, that clearly is against bilingualism, from a Government site itself:
For another example of a source of these territorialists and how far they will go with their Xenophobia: Here is a great article from Éric Duhaime (La Nouvelle Lubie de Curzi) regarding crazy anglophobes like Pierre Curzi, and their nasty ideas of re-writing Bill 101 to ban English signage in QC completely (as was passed and rolled-back in April 2011 during the Parti Québécois’ convention). Thankfully, the Minister I often criticise, Christine Ste-Pierre, rejected this outright.
Position 6 Je me souviens de la loi discriminatoire 101 – One day, both sides of the linguistic divide shall look back at this and shame the ridiculous Losership of the septards and natchialeux and their legalised discrimination, which has been used as a bureaucratic tool of insurgency for an independent state, while the Feds have used our minority as the sacrificial lamb of Canadian Unity appeasement to the former political factions while failing to protect minorities in Quebec and ensure the rule of law is respected. This has misled QC into severe negative interdependence situation financially and economically - when I looked just now, April 4th, 2012, that Debt Clock number was $248.756BN - divide that up by 8M people and think of solutions - is it not obvious ridding us of Bill 101 would help? If the interests of ALL Quebeckers were a priority by both the Feds and the QC Losership, we would not be now considered the Alabama of Canada (replace racial segregation with linguistic segregation). In this way, inaction by the Feds has destroyed our community – especially the school boards (subject of schools covered thoroughly below).
Here are the findings of the Chaput-Champagne report conducted over two years by Francophones from New Brunswick and Saskatchewan - In short, the English-speaking communities would like to be seen as an asset, not a threat, and would like to be able to take part in the decisions that affect their future and the future of Quebec society.
“The committee hopes that in the future the results of this study and the recommendations set out in it will provide direction for the federal government’s approach to Quebec’s English-speaking communities. It is particularly important that the specific needs of these communities in the various sectors that affect their development be well understood”, stated Senator Maria Chaput, chair of the committee. “In summary, federal institutions must fully respect the rights enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and meet their obligations under Part VII of the Official Languages Act. To do so, they must stay informed of the day-to-day challenges and needs of English-speaking communities across Quebec. For this to happen, consultation must be the watchword for relations between governments and communities in all instances.”
“It is not an issue of winners and losers. It is a reflection of the federal government’s obligations with respect to the promotion of official languages”, added Senator Andrée Champagne, P.C., deputy chair. “A ‘win’ for anglophone minority rights does not necessarily constitute a threat to the aspirations of the francophone majority. The goals of the two communities do not have to be mutually exclusive and must be achieved in an atmosphere of respect for the rights of both.”
In presenting the results of the study, the committee was mindful that the federal government has a duty under the Official Languages Act to support the development of both of the country’s minorities, English-speaking and French-speaking. Furthermore, the committee reminds the government that it needs to recognize that since the realities and challenges experienced by the English-speaking and French-speaking minorities are sometimes similar, sometimes different, each minority must be treated in a way that takes its specific needs into account. Finally, the government must ensure that federal institutions take positive measures to enhance the vitality of the English-speaking minority and support its development, while acting in accordance with the province of Quebec’s jurisdictions and powers.Il n'y a aucune contradiction entre promotion de la francophonie et diversité. On peut très bien promouvoir simultanément les deux, selon moi. Mais dès que l'on se sent menacé, on a tendance à se refermer. Which leads me to the next of the top twenty points.
7th position: Bill 101 Attacks Multiculturalism by turning its back to the interests of Quebec’s ethnic minorities by attacking the politics of multiculturalism, by asking that Quebec be exempt from the rest of Canada’s open-armed approach to different cultures establishing themselves in their new homeland. As Billy 101 suggests Quebecois values exclude the multi-cultural base (i.e. integrate with the ethnic FR-speaking majority or leave) - notice EN - speakers are required exclusion, of course, by default - 1M people! Many intellectuals have argued that this Inter-Culturalism is good, which really means cede to the dominant culture or get lost.
The QC govt ignores the proven positive effects of the multicultural approach to integration of these minority communities, and especially in the workplace (link to least diverse study). Study after study, the QC govt refused to take into consideration the interests of ethnic communities in Quebec (whether natives, anglo, allo, etc – all these annoying labels used to segregate society here), and francophones those who appreciate multicultural diversity brainwashed into being ‘bad Quebecker’s for thinking outside of the Tribe/u. Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois (I call her la Scélérate) arrogantly states that her party is the party for Quebeckers, and none other, of course (thanks to Mario Dumont for pointing this out) - imagine a U.S. Party calling itself the American Party, and thus declaring voters ‘Bad Americans’ if they did not vote for the American Party? Insisting that this goes against Quebec values to allow immigrants to maintain their respective cultures on Canadian soil, and using the straw-man of survival ofQuebec’s French speaking culture, is absolutely contrary to the reality and interests of modern Quebec.
This combination of xenophobic ideas is directly related to the lack of diversity in the workplace, as mentioned above in point four, since Bill 101 projects that idea that the Master ethnicity must control culture in Quebec, and this leads to the negative effects of tribalism described in the previous paragraph – Bill 101 indirectly promotes a non-competitive government for the ethnic majority of the province who hold 97.5% of Civil Service positions due to the constant demonization of multi-culturalism as a detriment to Quebec Society.For more on this, please see the article here in comments (which has vanished from the Gazette, as usual): Despite government promises, anglophones remain a small proportion of civil servants. Why aren't more being hired? BY MARIAN SCOTT, THE GAZETTE OCTOBER 9, 2010I have personally sat through ceremonies, with sadness, where international entrepreneurs and recent immigrants entered contests only to be find their great work ignored because they weren`t part of the ethnic majority. The disappointment on the face of a man of Jordanian background, who had invented an actual product for the international markets that had great potential (but needed the financial boost to get started), to see the first serious financial prize given to a small business that needed a new oven for a local restaurant – hardly the big job creation investment, I tell you! Note that restaurants are places devoid of innovation, but if you really are an international City, you look for things that need help to be put on the international market.
7th position: Bill 101 Attacks Multiculturalism by turning its back to the interests of Quebec’s ethnic minorities by attacking the politics of multiculturalism, by asking that Quebec be exempt from the rest of Canada’s open-armed approach to different cultures establishing themselves in their new homeland. As Billy 101 suggests Quebecois values exclude the multi-cultural base (i.e. integrate with the ethnic FR-speaking majority or leave) - notice EN - speakers are required exclusion, of course, by default - 1M people! Many intellectuals have argued that this Inter-Culturalism is good, which really means cede to the dominant culture or get lost.
The QC govt ignores the proven positive effects of the multicultural approach to integration of these minority communities, and especially in the workplace (link to least diverse study). Study after study, the QC govt refused to take into consideration the interests of ethnic communities in Quebec (whether natives, anglo, allo, etc – all these annoying labels used to segregate society here), and francophones those who appreciate multicultural diversity brainwashed into being ‘bad Quebecker’s for thinking outside of the Tribe/u. Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois (I call her la Scélérate) arrogantly states that her party is the party for Quebeckers, and none other, of course (thanks to Mario Dumont for pointing this out) - imagine a U.S. Party calling itself the American Party, and thus declaring voters ‘Bad Americans’ if they did not vote for the American Party? Insisting that this goes against Quebec values to allow immigrants to maintain their respective cultures on Canadian soil, and using the straw-man of survival ofQuebec’s French speaking culture, is absolutely contrary to the reality and interests of modern Quebec.
This combination of xenophobic ideas is directly related to the lack of diversity in the workplace, as mentioned above in point four, since Bill 101 projects that idea that the Master ethnicity must control culture in Quebec, and this leads to the negative effects of tribalism described in the previous paragraph – Bill 101 indirectly promotes a non-competitive government for the ethnic majority of the province who hold 97.5% of Civil Service positions due to the constant demonization of multi-culturalism as a detriment to Quebec Society.For more on this, please see the article here in comments (which has vanished from the Gazette, as usual): Despite government promises, anglophones remain a small proportion of civil servants. Why aren't more being hired? BY MARIAN SCOTT, THE GAZETTE OCTOBER 9, 2010I have personally sat through ceremonies, with sadness, where international entrepreneurs and recent immigrants entered contests only to be find their great work ignored because they weren`t part of the ethnic majority. The disappointment on the face of a man of Jordanian background, who had invented an actual product for the international markets that had great potential (but needed the financial boost to get started), to see the first serious financial prize given to a small business that needed a new oven for a local restaurant – hardly the big job creation investment, I tell you! Note that restaurants are places devoid of innovation, but if you really are an international City, you look for things that need help to be put on the international market.
The political faction that supports Bill 101 is still stuck in the middle of another century, following the losership of Camille Laurin or Jacques Parizeau avec des lois dèsuetes !?
80% of Quebeckers are francophone, and a qualified majority of the remaining are bilingual, the French language has existed here for over 400 years, but one thing is for sure that the rise and fall of zealotry and intolerance occurs very frequently in Quebec culture (FLQ, SSJB, Jeune Patriotes, RRQ). They represent the militant separatist Anglophobes, and here is one of their ignorant chiefs, Louis Préfontaine, getting owned by my francophone friends.
I have to correct the Editor of No Dogs or Anglophones (for his article Cautionary Tale of Anglophobia), regarding Ubisoft (2300+ employees/consultants in the gaming industry here) - because I just helped my Cousin pack up his stuff in December 2011 and head home to Spain after he was invited over to on a tax-free artificial intelligence visa. The work environment at Ubisoft was majority FR, as well as for communications, and because he is not a linguist (picked up EN well, but never really FR - mainly because it was forced upon him so much) and they did not bother do translate much in to EN also (another by product of Bill 101 stating that the work environment must be unilingual, if over 50), he found it unwelcoming an unaccommodating to say the least.
He was also sick of the structure (Je SUIS TANNÉ AUSSI M. PRESCOT, merci!), run by ethno-nationalists who did not care about the international talent, considering he was invited over for an artificial intelligence visa in the first place (!), and the hard work they put in over many, many a weekend, months and months on end. They showed their appreciation for all his extra work by offering him a SINGLE DAY-off extra... so they were all surprised when he resigned and waved good goodbye within a few week of them showing how little they cared about his free-visa level technical knowledge (most corp environments are not sympathetic anyway, but considering all the ethno-nationalist 'we're better than everywhere/one else in the world syndrome' added on... it was a no-brainer to him to search for greener pastures.
Where the Editor of No Dogs or Anglophones is right: the Insane have taken over the asylum of the QC's largest metropolis, and until they become more open minded to OTHER cultures, and allow the 'impure' to advance, companies will chose elsewhere to setup their head offices or branches once they are warped by local culture, unless they are bribed by our corrupt provincial government to say – in which we should greatly discourage, since it means pulling from your and my pocket to continue this dead-end and broken ideology of linguistic purity! Our public purse has so many other issues more pressing, instead of fixing the root causes of the tranquill decline of the province, by putting more money in to bribe companies dilutes our wealth – c’est l’équivalent de mettre de l’eau dans son vin.
Even fresh on newly minted Huffington Post Quebec site, we have a die-hard Partie Québécois member admitting that …quoiqu'on dise ou qu'on affirme, dans les faits, la langue française n'est pas la seule langue « officielle » au Québec. L'anglais a droit de cité et bénéficie de droits légaux devant les tribunaux ainsi qu'en toute matière concernant l'immigration, la radiodiffusion, les douanes, en d'autres mots, dans les matières qui relèvent du parlement fédéral. (basically, whatever QC’s separatist-independantist-nationalist politicians say, English is still an official language in the province, however he states that falsely that we benefit from equal rights in courts, immigration – This is what the Chaput-Champagne report on the Vitality of the English Speaking Minority in QC has proven wrong: The Feds are not doing enough to protect minority rights in QC as well as of the failure of the provincial govt to respect our rights.
The Fraser Research Institute has documented the pitiful $7-person spent on bilingualism while the Franco-Ontarians have much better share at over $650 (that is over 90 times as much spent, btw) – the disrespect for our Official Language Minority has even been legitimised by not only discriminatory statements by members of the PQ refusing to answer questions in English, but also by a hypocritical QC Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fornier of the QC Liberal Party who stated he will no longer (CTV source) – this is hyprocritical because at the time of his statement you can see on his public Facebook page that he posts in BOTH Official languages still. He lives in an officially bilingual neighbourhood, so I guess this is just another case of a dirtbag Anglophobic lying politician in QC: "I want to fix this habit that we had to treat both languages as if both languages were official languages of Quebec." That is correct people, there is our Justice Minster stating that I have no need to address people in English, and you wonder why it is hard to have a fair trial in Quebec, well, there you have it trickle right on down from the Political élite.
Francine Weston, an executive member of our Committee, originally from the United States, has been disgusted with the Quebec Governments’ never-ending process to obtain a simple certificate just to obtain the right to have her child educated in a bilingual school, instead of a French-only (with only 1.5hrs a week of English) – this is counter the United Nations Convention, rights of education (source):
The Fraser Research Institute has documented the pitiful $7-person spent on bilingualism while the Franco-Ontarians have much better share at over $650 (that is over 90 times as much spent, btw) – the disrespect for our Official Language Minority has even been legitimised by not only discriminatory statements by members of the PQ refusing to answer questions in English, but also by a hypocritical QC Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fornier of the QC Liberal Party who stated he will no longer (CTV source) – this is hyprocritical because at the time of his statement you can see on his public Facebook page that he posts in BOTH Official languages still. He lives in an officially bilingual neighbourhood, so I guess this is just another case of a dirtbag Anglophobic lying politician in QC: "I want to fix this habit that we had to treat both languages as if both languages were official languages of Quebec." That is correct people, there is our Justice Minster stating that I have no need to address people in English, and you wonder why it is hard to have a fair trial in Quebec, well, there you have it trickle right on down from the Political élite.
Francine Weston, an executive member of our Committee, originally from the United States, has been disgusted with the Quebec Governments’ never-ending process to obtain a simple certificate just to obtain the right to have her child educated in a bilingual school, instead of a French-only (with only 1.5hrs a week of English) – this is counter the United Nations Convention, rights of education (source):
What the government is getting away with is interminable bureaucracy and destructive to the lives of families and the futures of our children. The government does not give a damn about who they hurt or how destructive these languages laws are to our families. The drop -out rate of high school students in Quebec is a sure indication that the language laws are not working. Does anyone give a damn? Where are the francophone parents of these drops out students? Why are they not enraged that the government is shackling our children’s future to the insolvent province of Quebec with no tools of communication to allow them access to other job opportunities. It is so wrong what goes on here in Quebec, it is incomprehensible that the government of Canada allows this injustice.
Position 8 of the top 20 reasons Bill 101 is not in the interests of Quebec: It is a vindictive legal tool put in place as revenge for injustices from past generations against French Canadians - and holds present and future generations of all Quebeckers accountable for actions they personally had no control over. If one were to watch what Mandella did in the recent Movie Invictus, one would fully understand that? Bill 101 has been the wrong approach, and turns the nasty vindictive turn with a former ruling minority elite, and is not reconciliatory in any way. More than vindictive even, is when you hear the myths propagated for an entire generation by Camille Laurin, and his PQ contemporaries like Bernard Landry, as a fanatical religious sect would do. The President of France, Sarkozy, even attacked these ideas as not sharing values of La Francophonie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4ve1bN6uz0&feature=related) and takes a hard-line against the separatists and their sectarian style of politics.
Position 9 Bill 101, as mentioned before, has been used as a big long-term pry to separate from the Rest of Canada (hence the RoC ackronym). Even at the height of language hysteria, the post-colonial era, and after two referenda and the Orange Crush of Spring 2011, Quebeckers still wish to remain in Canada. Even the Liberal Party of Quebec has acted as a soft partner (see Bill Johnson’s G+Mail article) with their repetitive ethno-nationalist propaganda, and their recent do nothing but add inspectors, despite a hiring freeze, to the provincial language bullying office - what we know as the Office Québecoise de la langue française - which should focus on improving the use of the French language in Quebec and stop inventing legal reasoning to harass International businesses in Quebec - voir Aucune Assise Juridique de Denis Lessard. This just drives a wedge between the population based on language, yet again, and uses our minority as a scapegoat to appease hardline separatist parties complaining that nothing is being done to stop the supposed 'anglicisation' of Montreal - a bilingual city!
At every chance and every opportunity, the Parti Québécois and it’s Federal equivalent Bloc Québécois (although the latter now has less seats that a Toyota Tercel, now!) demand that any sight in Quebec of the Federal government be wiped out (see last year's Flag incident, eastern townships, one of many anecdotes), or any Federal involvement in the lives of Quebeckers vanish (yes, react negatively to Harper if you want, but he at least recognised the sociological nation of Les [franco]Quebecois).
A recent example can be found by means of the demands in February 2009, regarding federally owned lands in the region of Quebec City. Presenting the Federal government as if it were a `foreign nation’, the Bloc and their PQ cohorts demand in warrior-like rhetoric that the Plains of Abraham and the lands surrounding it and including the Quebec National Assembly be ceded to the Province. The Plains of Abraham, a Canadian National Historic site, are managed and maintained by National Battlefields Commission since its creation in 1908, with the goal of honouring the memory of soldiers from both sides of the decisive battle in 1759, and preserving the site for future generations. This sad tendency to strive for the disappearance of any Federal presence from the province applies also to Canadian Flags, which the presence, as minimal is it is already in the province of Quebec, would be considered an insult, or worse still, as a declaration of war by the Canadian Federal government according to the separatists who enacted put this infamous Charter into law in 1977. Having voted against separation, not once, but twice and witnessed their willingness to stay within a United Canada, do Quebeckers not have the right to proudly raise the Canadian Flag? Considering that, the central Maple Leaf design itself originated from Ottawa-based francophone Jacques Saint-Cyr, and that our Canadian National Anthem originated from Quebec, or is this perhaps yet another part of history the sovereigntists have tried to cyclically brainwash the populace to forget, anywhere they wish in Quebec?
At every chance and every opportunity, the Parti Québécois and it’s Federal equivalent Bloc Québécois (although the latter now has less seats that a Toyota Tercel, now!) demand that any sight in Quebec of the Federal government be wiped out (see last year's Flag incident, eastern townships, one of many anecdotes), or any Federal involvement in the lives of Quebeckers vanish (yes, react negatively to Harper if you want, but he at least recognised the sociological nation of Les [franco]Quebecois).
A recent example can be found by means of the demands in February 2009, regarding federally owned lands in the region of Quebec City. Presenting the Federal government as if it were a `foreign nation’, the Bloc and their PQ cohorts demand in warrior-like rhetoric that the Plains of Abraham and the lands surrounding it and including the Quebec National Assembly be ceded to the Province. The Plains of Abraham, a Canadian National Historic site, are managed and maintained by National Battlefields Commission since its creation in 1908, with the goal of honouring the memory of soldiers from both sides of the decisive battle in 1759, and preserving the site for future generations. This sad tendency to strive for the disappearance of any Federal presence from the province applies also to Canadian Flags, which the presence, as minimal is it is already in the province of Quebec, would be considered an insult, or worse still, as a declaration of war by the Canadian Federal government according to the separatists who enacted put this infamous Charter into law in 1977. Having voted against separation, not once, but twice and witnessed their willingness to stay within a United Canada, do Quebeckers not have the right to proudly raise the Canadian Flag? Considering that, the central Maple Leaf design itself originated from Ottawa-based francophone Jacques Saint-Cyr, and that our Canadian National Anthem originated from Quebec, or is this perhaps yet another part of history the sovereigntists have tried to cyclically brainwash the populace to forget, anywhere they wish in Quebec?
The Tenth reason why Quebec’s Charter of the French Language, much like the failed Turbon laws in France, is a failure to the interests of the province as a whole, is that it officially tries to un-officialise a language that is Official across the Country (yet another rule of precedence - B.N.A. - ignored by this belligerent provincial government)! It is completely hypocritical to think that at on one hand Quebec’s Separatists and Nationalists demand bilingualism Coast to Coast (and many Federal Liberal Politicans too, including Justin Trudeau). All this, while in their own province, since the late Seventies, they have done all they can to legislatively force through unilingualism by declaring Quebec a French [only] province, while there are still over 70 communities that are bilingual and approximately 90 municipalities that remain officially bilingual. Is this how you keep peace, by making hypocritical demands? What we hear constantly from the xenophobes within the Parti Québécois camp, is that la langue anglaise est une langue étrangère (English is a foreign language, as if FR were a Native language of QC)!As Steve Karmazenuk always states - until there is NO EQUALITY, you shall have NO PEACE from your Maudit Anglos! Negligence with respect to a minority that has effectively helped build QC for hundreds of years, but has been almost completely excluded within the recent generation by Govt policies, and it is for US, with the help of smart Francophones like Jeff Plante, Stephane Gendron or Maxime Bernier, to work with us to overcome our Gouvernemama Oppression in Quebec, and language bullies (see below) by regularly standing up for our rights in the face of those who have attempted to legislate our rights away.
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And, again, you cannot ask most Francophones to give good reasons why Bill 101 should still be around, like listen to this gaffe from the lucid André Pratte, venerated editor of La Presse:
‘Even with Bill 101 in force for nearly 30 years, the 2001 census showed that there were still more allophones who adopted English as their language of use at home than there were who adopted French. In trying to attract immigrants to your ranks - if I can put it that way - you have a powerful tool: the domination of the English language on the continent and, indeed, in the whole world. French Canadians do not have the equivalent of that, and never will. They have only one tool: the law.’
Of course, André is completely wrong here (dearly sorry M. Pratte), considering how little importance he puts on how you attract people to a culture by enticing them to a great language with the creative films we have here (Incendies, Les invasions barbares, Monsieur Lazar), work at great Quebec Inc. companies (Transcontinental, Transat, Bombardier, Cirque du soliel), or great music (Daniel Belanger, Dumas, Arrianne Moffat, Eric Lapointe, Jean LeLoup, DJ Champion), or any other forms of media to gracefully attire Quebeckers to the French language – and this is where Maxime Bernier was trying to persuade people also – you cannot FORCE people to love a language, and this is probably the reason for so many turning to the English language, because it associated with Freedom and not draconiamism. Francophones outside of Quebec, continue speaking their language and work in it to a percentage of about 70%, as reported here by CTV following Stats Can studies, so yet another myth preached by Quebec’s fear mongers, that Francophones instantly get assimiliated into the ‘sea’ of the anglosphere once outside of ‘mother’ Quebec’s language laws.
Bill 101 is the kiss of death, according to the following author, of attracting people to the French in Quebec (voir Le baiser de la mort, MERCI Jean Barbe!), and this spills over into the rest of Canada too. You want to see what it is like to come across this attitude from franco-fascists like Louis Préfontaine, who project their Bill 101 attitude online, as if the Charter has jurisdiction over the Internet (!), here you go:
---Context: people making political conversation about QC on facebook, the page of a Liberal Candidate to attempt to oust Gilles Duceppe from his own riding, 2010:Louis Préfontaine En français SVP. Vous êtes au Québec. Si vous voulez parler une langue étrangère, allez vivre ailleurs. (he demands people speak in FR, tells us we are in QC, although this is the Internet, and stattes that we want to speak a ‘foreign’ language, we should go live elsewhere – nice, eh? So André, is this the intended use of your Only Tool? A sacred tool, to be used by Language Bullies?)
Insert stats of population from 100 years ago
And, again, you cannot ask most Francophones to give good reasons why Bill 101 should still be around, like listen to this gaffe from the lucid André Pratte, venerated editor of La Presse:
‘Even with Bill 101 in force for nearly 30 years, the 2001 census showed that there were still more allophones who adopted English as their language of use at home than there were who adopted French. In trying to attract immigrants to your ranks - if I can put it that way - you have a powerful tool: the domination of the English language on the continent and, indeed, in the whole world. French Canadians do not have the equivalent of that, and never will. They have only one tool: the law.’
Of course, André is completely wrong here (dearly sorry M. Pratte), considering how little importance he puts on how you attract people to a culture by enticing them to a great language with the creative films we have here (Incendies, Les invasions barbares, Monsieur Lazar), work at great Quebec Inc. companies (Transcontinental, Transat, Bombardier, Cirque du soliel), or great music (Daniel Belanger, Dumas, Arrianne Moffat, Eric Lapointe, Jean LeLoup, DJ Champion), or any other forms of media to gracefully attire Quebeckers to the French language – and this is where Maxime Bernier was trying to persuade people also – you cannot FORCE people to love a language, and this is probably the reason for so many turning to the English language, because it associated with Freedom and not draconiamism. Francophones outside of Quebec, continue speaking their language and work in it to a percentage of about 70%, as reported here by CTV following Stats Can studies, so yet another myth preached by Quebec’s fear mongers, that Francophones instantly get assimiliated into the ‘sea’ of the anglosphere once outside of ‘mother’ Quebec’s language laws.
Bill 101 is the kiss of death, according to the following author, of attracting people to the French in Quebec (voir Le baiser de la mort, MERCI Jean Barbe!), and this spills over into the rest of Canada too. You want to see what it is like to come across this attitude from franco-fascists like Louis Préfontaine, who project their Bill 101 attitude online, as if the Charter has jurisdiction over the Internet (!), here you go:
---Context: people making political conversation about QC on facebook, the page of a Liberal Candidate to attempt to oust Gilles Duceppe from his own riding, 2010:Louis Préfontaine En français SVP. Vous êtes au Québec. Si vous voulez parler une langue étrangère, allez vivre ailleurs. (he demands people speak in FR, tells us we are in QC, although this is the Internet, and stattes that we want to speak a ‘foreign’ language, we should go live elsewhere – nice, eh? So André, is this the intended use of your Only Tool? A sacred tool, to be used by Language Bullies?)
(when did this happen? Here’s the FB timestamp, 2010)
July 21 at 10:09pm · Like · 1 person
Valérie Brown ?@Louis ....tu es terrible mais j'aime ton franc parler
July 21 at 10:09pm · Like · 1 person
Valérie Brown ?@Louis ....tu es terrible mais j'aime ton franc parler
July 21 at 10:46pm · Like · 1 person (Valerie Brown says it is terrible, but likes it…and it goes on, and on… )
Louis Préfontaine Merci Valérie. Je ne suis qu'un simple Québécois tanné de se faire traité comme un citoyen de seconde classe par des anglophones incapables de s'intégrer à notre culture. (he tells Val thank you and says that he’s a simple Quebecker sick of being treated as second class by anglophones – notice the self-victimisaiton already – then he proceeds to state that we are incapable of integrating ouselves into ‘our’ culture, as if in QC, it is only franco-phone culture and we MUST integrate into theirs or leave the province)
Louis Préfontaine Malheureusement, il y a aura toujours des traîtres et des carriéristes qui bâtissent leur carrière sur le corps encore chaud du peuple québécois. De toute temps, et dans l'histoire de tous les peuples, il y en a toujours eu de cette sale race-là. (Sadly, he says there are traitors and those interested in building a career on the backs of a dying people while they are still alive, there have always been this dirty race – of course, he’s being racist, but doesn’t explicitly state which race he hates, but is clear he is anti-English)
July 21 at 10:53pm · Like
Kathy Y I'm not in Quebec so I'll speak whatever I damn well choose to speak or type. It's refreshing having a choice. Sadly if this Louis person actually wanted to know what it is like to be treated as a second class citizen he should try being an Anglo in Quebec. Oh the irony.
July 22 at 12:00am · Like
Louis Préfontaine Je suis désolé Kathy, mais je ne comprends pas ta langue étrangère. Si tu veux parler en anglais, tu as tout l'Amérique du Nord au complet. Ton racisme et ta fermeture d'esprit ne sont pas les bienvenues ici. À bon entendeur. (he states again the EN is a foreign language, and to go somewhere else in Canada or the USA – and he states your racism and closed spirit are not welcome here – as in, on the internet, he thinks his bullying is supported by a the racist law Bill 101)
July 22 at 12:02am · Like · 1 person
Kathy Y Well that's pretty sad for your Louis, I can understand you perfectly. Enjoy your ignorance. You wear it well.
The French language Charter has a section to prevent harassment of people based on their language, but of course, the bullies of the RRQ, OQLF, PQ, and the Nationalists amongst the Liberal Party of Quebec, and the like, forget discrimination against non-francos immediately. It was sort of like when I asked at the Caisse de dépôt to be protected by the code of ethics and they came back and did nothing, Human Resources did nothing (even deleted the e-mail when I reported it), then I went to report a complaint to the Working Standards Commission, and the judge did nothing to condemn the severe harassment (but took the time to attack me for documenting their Internal Audit Failure of 2008), and now I am waiting on the QC Human Rights Commission’s Panel to deal with that we all know very well, that Anglophones are not welcome in the Quebec office place, especially not the Government Office space. Update, the QC Human Rights Commission dropped the ball...
Prevention of advancement is passive racism (a scenario that repeats itself everywhere, in different forms), and during the fall of 2008 all I saw were Algerians, Vietnamese, Anglos, (et al...allos) virés ou contrats coupés par la Caisse de Défauts. It was not until the arrival of Sabia that the 'cream' of incompetents at the top started to lose their jobs: as if before he arrived, they were taking Parizeau's idea that it's all la faute des éthniques...very sad. Vraiment triste, we could have saved billions if I was allowed to optimise things and get the reports working quickly. It is as if everything was delayed so the thieves could get out with their bonuses before everyone really found out what was really going on...
The French language Charter has a section to prevent harassment of people based on their language, but of course, the bullies of the RRQ, OQLF, PQ, and the Nationalists amongst the Liberal Party of Quebec, and the like, forget discrimination against non-francos immediately. It was sort of like when I asked at the Caisse de dépôt to be protected by the code of ethics and they came back and did nothing, Human Resources did nothing (even deleted the e-mail when I reported it), then I went to report a complaint to the Working Standards Commission, and the judge did nothing to condemn the severe harassment (but took the time to attack me for documenting their Internal Audit Failure of 2008), and now I am waiting on the QC Human Rights Commission’s Panel to deal with that we all know very well, that Anglophones are not welcome in the Quebec office place, especially not the Government Office space. Update, the QC Human Rights Commission dropped the ball...
Prevention of advancement is passive racism (a scenario that repeats itself everywhere, in different forms), and during the fall of 2008 all I saw were Algerians, Vietnamese, Anglos, (et al...allos) virés ou contrats coupés par la Caisse de Défauts. It was not until the arrival of Sabia that the 'cream' of incompetents at the top started to lose their jobs: as if before he arrived, they were taking Parizeau's idea that it's all la faute des éthniques...very sad. Vraiment triste, we could have saved billions if I was allowed to optimise things and get the reports working quickly. It is as if everything was delayed so the thieves could get out with their bonuses before everyone really found out what was really going on...
Federal politicians are guilty of not doing anything about this discriminatory law either (still playing the role of innocent Boyscout while Ethnic cleansing has been going on), they have used our minority within a minority as a sacrificial lamb to secure their vote – many of us find this deplorable. It is even more deplorable since the majority of Anglophone politicians in Quebec adhere to this ignorance too (to keep the ‘peace’), even my own MP Irwin Cotler, who fought tooth and nail in the beginning of his career against this unilateral declaration of Quebec as a unlingual province, yet now, he has totally given up on that since he wants to secure his re-election in a riding that is now majority French Speaking.
This ignorance of an official language minority, with no-one to stand up for their rights (Not Even Federalist Politicans, other than Maxime Bernier or Larry Smith) leads me into my the next reason this discriminatory legilsation is disconnected from today’s society in Quebec. Please note that ignorance is not a language or cultural based failing – it’s a personality disorder that uses whatever fear is current to cause problems.
Sunday June 15th, 2012, our Fifth Protest Against Bill 101 - with Natives supporting our cause, and fed up of language discrimination within their communities forced by QC City, since they use English as the language to communicate with other Native Nations across Canada.
This ignorance of an official language minority, with no-one to stand up for their rights (Not Even Federalist Politicans, other than Maxime Bernier or Larry Smith) leads me into my the next reason this discriminatory legilsation is disconnected from today’s society in Quebec. Please note that ignorance is not a language or cultural based failing – it’s a personality disorder that uses whatever fear is current to cause problems.
Sunday June 15th, 2012, our Fifth Protest Against Bill 101 - with Natives supporting our cause, and fed up of language discrimination within their communities forced by QC City, since they use English as the language to communicate with other Native Nations across Canada.
The 11th Position – The English Speakers of Quebec, the Anglophones: the Minority the Quebec Government Repetitively Attempts to Ignore Exists
You only have to look briefly at the CSST, or QC Govt Portals (Not in EN, a typical anti-English attitude as expressed by some of the QC govt élite) site to understand the type of society this government dictates: a society where prejudice against Quebec’s English speaking population continues, and, that it is acceptable, by legislation, they be treated as second class citizens – as such, a direct result of a Bill that states they are speaking an ‘unofficial’ within their own province, as mentioned above. Hence the constant language discrimination re-inforced by this manipulative bill.
Marceau Bletard I'm a francophone, but I support you guys. You should be treated like the francophone minority in new-brunswick and have equal rights.
I despise the law 101. I'm ashamed to say that I'm francophone very often in this province.
Marceau Bletard I'm a francophone, but I support you guys. You should be treated like the francophone minority in new-brunswick and have equal rights.
I despise the law 101. I'm ashamed to say that I'm francophone very often in this province.
January 12 at 1:53pm · 
1
Marceau Bletard In Belgium there are 11M people 2/3 dutch 1/3 french speaking and also 75.000 german speaking people and the country is officially... TRILINGUAL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-speaking_Community_of_Belgium
Here we don't respect 1 million people in Quebec.
1Marceau Bletard In Belgium there are 11M people 2/3 dutch 1/3 french speaking and also 75.000 german speaking people and the country is officially... TRILINGUAL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-speaking_Community_of_Belgium
Here we don't respect 1 million people in Quebec.
Do not Anglophones, along with their fellow Quebeckers, have an interest to contribute equally to the Economy, the Environment, and Culture? With the success of musical talent like Arcade Fire or Sam Roberts, you`d think with such success the QC govt would fully embrace it – nope, when it’s an English Speaking success… Need more proof from our belligerent government? From the Economic Investment leader in the Province, we are excluded openly and officially, here is a recent Communiqué from the Caisse de dépôt and placement du Québec, by an Anglophone who has drunken the QC nationalist kool-aid of the élite in this province which methodologically and systematically exclude us from the largest institutionalised investment and pension fund in Canada (Charest included):
With Bill 101, one cannot even put up a bilingual sign that has both languages in Equal size, since this Bill states that French must be predominant (an extension of language discrimination since the days of Bill 22,78)! How can this Provincial Government pretend to defend the interests of Quebec while affirming, according to the ‘Dr.’ Camille Laurin, that Anglos are a spoilt, over-funded minority, best-treated in the world minority (an disgusting opinion widely held, even to this day mais faux - lisez le Devoir), whereas at the same time, they refuse to address them in English through their tools of communication (Bloc+Parti Québécois policy!!!!)? What political party writes off an entire part of the population that represents between 1 Million English speakers (and downtrodding the + 2 Million Bilingual persons of French-speaking majority) within their own province of 8M, by not even providing a link to English on their several government web sites? For more details see below, thanks to a study from the Fraser Institute, on this 'Best Treated Minority in the World' myth, please read Don MacPherson's latest.
What possible credibility do these Provincial Separatist and Nationalist parties have, when they demand that our francophone brethren across Canada be respected, when their own ‘National-Assembly’ forces segregation-is-the-only-answer and unilingualism (the manipulative phrase 'la langue officiel du Québec', which does not say the ONLY official language, but is a sophisticated form of reverse discrimination) upon their local linguistic minority – what other result can we have than to deduce pure hypocrisy (while Children of the élite attend bilingual or English private schools and attend American Universities)? Their idea of a unilingual Quebec is not what our society represents, thus, supporting Bill 101 (or even more crazy, re-enforcing it for Adult Education!) means swallowing the ‘Anglos do not matter to me’ pill.
A Franco-Ontarian friend described our situation clearly recently (I fixed up the FR for readability):
Les anglophones du Québec ne puissent occuper la position de minorité la plus choyé au monde, les séparatistes du Québec l’occupent déjà cette position. J'ai remarqué qu’Hugo semble être bien au contraire très positif. Il a bien appris le français alors qu'il habitait en Colombie britannique. Pour une personne qui n'est guère intéressé, je trouve cela amusant que tu prennes la peine de répondre. En tant que Francophone, j'ai constaté que le problème vécu par des anglophones au Québec est différents du nôtre. Nous avons de la misère à recevoir les services en Français car le bilinguisme chez les graduer anglophones en dehors du Québec est faible. Alors que les anglophones ont de la misère à recevoir les services dans leur langue parce que des séparatistes ont l'attitude de dire qu'ils n'ont aucuns droits à ces services (septards sont des crasseurs!). Il y a même des lois qui limitent l'accessibilité aux services dans leur langue (fausse seuil de 50% dans les municipalités, surtout quand le site de L’OQLF dit le contraire). Il y a aussi la loi 101 qui est fondamentalement nuisible et franchement irrespectueuse envers le segment anglophone de cette province. Vous devriez comprendre ce concept: Les anglophones ont autant droit à cette province que vous. Ils sont chez eux aussi, ils payent des taxes et ils votent. Ce ne sont pas des réfugiés ni des touristes, ce sont des citoyens Canadiens. En Ontario ils ont compris cela avec les services en Français, et nous sommes respectés comme il faut depuis une bonne génération.
A positive way forward would be to bury the myth that anglo’s deserve to be ignored because they refuse to speak French – with the level of bilingualism ranging from 70-80 percent, depending on the municipality, these old ideas, as old as the ideas that back this unjust law in the first place, have no place in a modern, international society. Open-minded studies, led by lucid academic Richard Y. Bourhis, at the University of Montreal how put aside the usual indifference and have contributed significant documentation, via a conference, as to why our community is still taken for granted amongst the majority in Quebec.
Motivating quote time for minorities ...
« La démocratie ce n’est pas la dictature de la majorité, c’est le respect des minorités »
Albert Camus
BTW - Here is the updated Anglo-Quebecker Flag, designed and voted on in 2011.
 |
Anglo-Quebecker Flag |
A note from Erik LaCharity on the Flag to represent the English Speaking Community in Quebec (Official Language Minority: 994,723 (13.4%):
The Anglo-Quebecker Identity Flag - (usually from wikipedia, but always edited out by opponents to the existence of our minority in Quebec]
On August 21st 2011, the Facebook group ''Anglo-Quebec Identity Flag'' promoted the development of a community flag for the whole of the Anglo-Quebec population. The process was similar to the development of various provincial francophone identity flags. The winning flag was a compromise between those submitted by Erik Lacharity, Francine Weston and Dominque St-Pierre Murphy. The red cross represents the Anglophone culture in the north, south, east and west Quebec. The central fleur-de-lys (Lilly) represents Quebec. On October 9th, 2011, the four red Maple leafs were added upon recommendations from Peter-Thomas Kennedy, Kirk Bennett, Brendan Myers, Mark Stranacher, Erik LaCharity and myself to represent the Anglo-Quebec people in all four corners of the province, who are proud to be part of Canada. The light blue symbolizes the many waterways of Quebec.
Why a Flag? Every Canadian province has a flag for the Francophone minority and its ok with the majority of their population (not perceived as a threat), but somehow in Quebec and Anglo flag is considered by certain Quebec Nationalists, or Sovereigntists, as offensive. We have a flag. It was recently emended with maple leaves to better reflect a connection to our country, let's embrace it.
Here are the oft-forgotten Seventy Bilingual Communities in Quebec (% of EN speakers):
On August 21st 2011, the Facebook group ''Anglo-Quebec Identity Flag'' promoted the development of a community flag for the whole of the Anglo-Quebec population. The process was similar to the development of various provincial francophone identity flags. The winning flag was a compromise between those submitted by Erik Lacharity, Francine Weston and Dominque St-Pierre Murphy. The red cross represents the Anglophone culture in the north, south, east and west Quebec. The central fleur-de-lys (Lilly) represents Quebec. On October 9th, 2011, the four red Maple leafs were added upon recommendations from Peter-Thomas Kennedy, Kirk Bennett, Brendan Myers, Mark Stranacher, Erik LaCharity and myself to represent the Anglo-Quebec people in all four corners of the province, who are proud to be part of Canada. The light blue symbolizes the many waterways of Quebec.
Why a Flag? Every Canadian province has a flag for the Francophone minority and its ok with the majority of their population (not perceived as a threat), but somehow in Quebec and Anglo flag is considered by certain Quebec Nationalists, or Sovereigntists, as offensive. We have a flag. It was recently emended with maple leaves to better reflect a connection to our country, let's embrace it.
Here are the oft-forgotten Seventy Bilingual Communities in Quebec (% of EN speakers):
|
460 Grosse-Île in the Magdalen Islands (75%) |
|
555 Harrington (71.6%) [1] |
|
2015 Stanstead (69%)[2] |
|
230 Arundel (37%)[3] |
|
3,905 Pincourt (35%) Not sure why, but the Town of Mount Royal is about 40% English-Speaking, yet is not on this list from Wikipedia. |
Position 12 – Les écoles anglophones écopent en masse depuis la loi 101 (see La Presse June 14
2011 front page above) – Bill 101 is directly related to the closing of HUNDREDS of English schools across the various school boards - attendance was approximately 250,000 students 30 years ago, and now it is barely 100,000. The exact number is a shocking, but contested, so I cannot provide a definitive figure here. La Presse itself says it plainly and clearly how this Bill places our minority
under involuntary servitude to the fears of the majority (tyranny of the majority), combined with a low
birth-rate and competition from private schools has hurt the English School system for a good generation
now – La loi 101 de même que la baisse de la natalité…font mal aux écoles Anglophones. Literally the
School Boards have had the rug pulled out from under them due to this law which restricts access (prevents immigrant access), and
financially thus had their budgets reduced – this is the slow war of attrition, disguised as the protection of the
language of the majority which is not in threat in the province. But again, let's read page eight of the Senate Committee's (see, this is not just coming from a group of 'angryphones' in QC: The Vitality of Quebec's English-Speaking Communities: From Myth to Reality – Report of the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages
...The terms governing education for Quebec’s Anglophones were established before
Confederation. Over the past 40 years, several legislative amendments have
restricted access to English schools. As is the case in several Francophone
communities elsewhere in Canada, enrolment in minority schools has declined, and
the percentage of eligible students who attend these schools is not at its
maximum. According to the portrait published by Statistics Canada, “the language
of the school attended by young Anglophones depends on several factors, one of
the most important being the restrictions imposed by Quebec language legislation.
Added to this is the sizable proportion of French-English [intermarriage] as well as
the desire of Anglophone parents to further their children’s learning of both French
and English.”
Immersion programs are proving to be very popular among
Anglophones. Over the years, many parents have campaigned to improve the
teaching of French in English-language schools. Others have simply chosen to send
their children to French schools, at least at the primary level....
And the cycle of fear continues to cloud people’s judgement – just listen to Boris here below propagate myth and deny that our institutions are disappearing, despite the facts:
·
Boris Martinez No it's not, vivant en Amérique du nord on auras toujours besoin de l'anglais en affaire, en communication et tourisme. Il y aura toujours des emplois que demandent ou exigent l'anglais. Il y auras toujours des multimédia et communication anglophones. Le français par contre, à part quelques communautés ici et là, est bien plus en danger et faut la promouvoir comme langue d'état et langue sociale. Les langues en danger au Quebec sont les langues amérindiennes qui, elles, sont protégé part la loi 101(qui assure l'éducation de ses langues dans les communautés autochtones. )
November 18, 2011 at 9:52am · 1 (trans - it is a quick and typical reponse, and refusal to accept that EN in QC is geographically separate from the rest of the Canada and U.S.A. He associates workplace demand of English with the vitality of a communities' institutions. It is the classic FR is in Danger in QC bull that simply reflects the widely held Anglophobia we have to deal with on a daily basis. Another false statement is that Bill 101 protects Native languages? Really, and that is why on Mohawk land they would show you a gun if you tried to apply this racist law on their bilingual EN-Mohawk signs. For the true list of endangered languages in Canada, primarily First Nations Languages, isn't it funny that the United Nations doesn't recognise French as endangered, despite the constant false fear of its loss in Quebec (80% francophone).
1 (trans - it is a quick and typical reponse, and refusal to accept that EN in QC is geographically separate from the rest of the Canada and U.S.A. He associates workplace demand of English with the vitality of a communities' institutions. It is the classic FR is in Danger in QC bull that simply reflects the widely held Anglophobia we have to deal with on a daily basis. Another false statement is that Bill 101 protects Native languages? Really, and that is why on Mohawk land they would show you a gun if you tried to apply this racist law on their bilingual EN-Mohawk signs. For the true list of endangered languages in Canada, primarily First Nations Languages, isn't it funny that the United Nations doesn't recognise French as endangered, despite the constant false fear of its loss in Quebec (80% francophone). It is time for Bill 101 to be abolished and replaced with Bill 199. Restrictions on access to our community’s school system have had a very damaging effect for far too long. As mentioned by Maxime Bernier, a poll conducted last year (somehow, the Gazette has erased the article, which I saw myself even) by the respected firm Léger Marketing showed that 66 per cent of Quebecers, including a 61 per cent clear majority of francophones, agreed with the principle that everyone in Quebec should be free to choose their language of education.
Why protest Bill 101 now? I was asked on CJAD Radio last Spring, just prior to our first anti-Bill 101 protest (there were 3 last year) – I told them, on live radio, how many more schools have to shut down before you give a damn?! Do we have to go through another Exodus before action is taken?
Why protest Bill 101 now? I was asked on CJAD Radio last Spring, just prior to our first anti-Bill 101 protest (there were 3 last year) – I told them, on live radio, how many more schools have to shut down before you give a damn?! Do we have to go through another Exodus before action is taken?
The Nationalists or Sovereigntists do not listen to our demands, so we must seek this via passive resistance and repetitive protest, as was warned a generation ago. It is time for our Community to thrive again, and leaving access to our school system unrestricted is a must, otherwise Carlyle and Nesbitt will go at the next round of cuts. On n'en veut plus des lois vindicatives péquistes ou nationalistes, merci. Aidez-nous à mettre l'anglophobie des parties politiques (de même le CAQ) dans le passé SVP.http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/provincial_territorial_politics/clips/7445/ This law has moved QC away from bilingualism officially, while claiming to protect a language that is not in danger in QC - by using coercion versus incentive, anti-free market ignorant of the realities, for more, please read Maxime Bernier's comments (for which he was attacked by all sides).
It has been the result of this Parti Quebecois, and help of QC nationalist parties – they have ignored the warnings that the English School system was going to be destroyed in the late seventies. It has its enrolment restricted and thus the main reason for the decline from 250k to 100k students, as well as the general sociological propaganda and constant reminder by the coercive types that 'Au Québec, c’est en français' linguistic fascists harassment as one can see from above. Au Québec, c'est une province bilingue car 1 million qui parle notre langue sont belle et bien vivant ici, alors voici la raison pour laquelle rien n'est plus difficile à réfuter que ce qui est entièrement faux
The Thirteenth Reason this false prophet for French Language in Quebec: Bill 101 has rendered the provincial economy broke, and left us in the greatest debt. In fact, we are in the top five of the most-indebted industrialised nations, if you compare the province to the rest of the industrialised world. After the loss of Canada’s financial centre in Montreal to restrictive legislation and nationalist/separatist extremism, and referenda (1980, 1995). In the sixties, early seventies and before, Montreal was the most cosmopolitan, International city in Canada, yet once Bill 22, 78 and 101 set in, and consequently threw liberty and drove investment away, the flight up the road to Toronto was unstoppable - the trend still continues to this day with 18 companies moving out of Montreal, as denounced by Legault of the CAQ at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce - his recent plan is to push more private investment in Montreal, but refuses to accept the reality that Bill 101 has everything to do with the lack of business investment in Montreal (which drives QC's economy, effectively our powerhouse - and remains thwarted by discriminatory legislation).
SunLife Canada explicitly stated Bill 101 (image on No Dogs page) and that the Government meddling into Private business, a con of Stateism (which has replaced the dominance of the power of the Catholic Church here, or filled political vacuum), is the reason for their departure from Montreal. Montreal is such a joke of a city with respect to head offices, that even the Bank of Montreal is managed from Toronto, with only the skeleton crew local to the Montreal offices.
Air Canada, one of the last of the major National companies, has also been discreetly moving operations to Toronto and shrinking its Montreal base, since the drone and harassment of the provincial population at the hands of inebriated QC Nationalists and Separatists is incessant, and downright unaccommodating for internationally-oriented businesses.
Why is it that only some companies are allowed to benefit from a dispensation and have the right to act and operate like a real international company, whilst others have to `satisfy’ petty bureaucratic conditions to have the right to operate their private companies as they wish, and if they employ over 50 people: organisations such as the OQLF are not necessary that stringent, but any impediment on business turns investment away – il faut se souvenir que la liberté crée la richesse, en non pas l’inverse !
14th Reason to ignore this Law - motivated activists have used great historical quotes:
The Thirteenth Reason this false prophet for French Language in Quebec: Bill 101 has rendered the provincial economy broke, and left us in the greatest debt. In fact, we are in the top five of the most-indebted industrialised nations, if you compare the province to the rest of the industrialised world. After the loss of Canada’s financial centre in Montreal to restrictive legislation and nationalist/separatist extremism, and referenda (1980, 1995). In the sixties, early seventies and before, Montreal was the most cosmopolitan, International city in Canada, yet once Bill 22, 78 and 101 set in, and consequently threw liberty and drove investment away, the flight up the road to Toronto was unstoppable - the trend still continues to this day with 18 companies moving out of Montreal, as denounced by Legault of the CAQ at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce - his recent plan is to push more private investment in Montreal, but refuses to accept the reality that Bill 101 has everything to do with the lack of business investment in Montreal (which drives QC's economy, effectively our powerhouse - and remains thwarted by discriminatory legislation).
SunLife Canada explicitly stated Bill 101 (image on No Dogs page) and that the Government meddling into Private business, a con of Stateism (which has replaced the dominance of the power of the Catholic Church here, or filled political vacuum), is the reason for their departure from Montreal. Montreal is such a joke of a city with respect to head offices, that even the Bank of Montreal is managed from Toronto, with only the skeleton crew local to the Montreal offices.
Air Canada, one of the last of the major National companies, has also been discreetly moving operations to Toronto and shrinking its Montreal base, since the drone and harassment of the provincial population at the hands of inebriated QC Nationalists and Separatists is incessant, and downright unaccommodating for internationally-oriented businesses.
Why is it that only some companies are allowed to benefit from a dispensation and have the right to act and operate like a real international company, whilst others have to `satisfy’ petty bureaucratic conditions to have the right to operate their private companies as they wish, and if they employ over 50 people: organisations such as the OQLF are not necessary that stringent, but any impediment on business turns investment away – il faut se souvenir que la liberté crée la richesse, en non pas l’inverse !
14th Reason to ignore this Law - motivated activists have used great historical quotes:
14. a) As stated on West Island Committee to Abolish Bill 101 ( Brave makers of the up and coming film The Tyranny of Bill 101, various photos above and below)
“An unjust law is not law at all.” St. Augustine
14.b) As the prolific Editor of the Blog No Dogs OrAnglophones recently republished the famous quote: "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so." - Thomas Jefferson
14.c) and perhaps the best recent reference, thanks again to the Editor of No Dogs or Anglophones:
14.c) and perhaps the best recent reference, thanks again to the Editor of No Dogs or Anglophones:
Doctor King's quote is fantastic. How can Bill 101 be ‘allowed’ to exist by complacent Federal Governments? Smart Quebeckers, however, do not have to listen to this belligerent Provincial Government since our political losership is ignoring the precedence set in the British North America Act: (Section 133 of the BNA) and the Federal Official Languages Act that make English an official language of Canada. French was made official thanks to the OLA in 1980, but we know very well the seppies and nationalista in our province have decided to cheat and use the notwithstanding clause to declare the province unilingual. This declaration within this unfair Charter still a lie, since there are over 70 bilingual communities in Quebec and 85 municipalities that are officially bilingual. Est-ce que c'est le comportement d'un grand peuple de baisser son voisin avec une loi si discriminatoire ? Bien sur que non, c'est hònteux !
Is Bill 101 not simply a legislative wall between linguistic communities? Does not this cartoon summarise the legislated discrimination we have been enduring for thirty five years now?
This is why we have dedicated number fifteen of all these reasons to campaign Anglophones for return and respect of their rights in the Province of Quebec. We must listen to the wisdom expressed Gaetan Frigon, former boss of the Société des alcools du Quebec (SAQ) and of Loto-Quebec, in a piece in La Presse last month: Francophones, he wrote, now must "put aside the idea that English is the symbol of British domination, and embrace English, since it has become the only international language." The alternative, he said, would be a "francophone ghetto with no future."
Regarding language and culture, here is a great point from Jacques Cadieux:Jacques Cadieux Et que faites vous du Latin…cette langue morte mais combien exigée encore dans les universités, la langue est très importante, mais la culture l'est encore plus. Le latin est une langue pourtant usuelle dans les cours universitaires, mais ce que l'on retire de cette langue c'est la culture, connaitre 5 langues de nos jours est un fait connu, mais une seule est retenue, tout dépend dans quel pays nous nous trouvons, mon fils parle 4 langues, il voyage dans tout les continents et il demeure à Winnipeg, pourtant, il est un vrai Québécois de souche, cessez de vous morfondre avec votre coeur sur le bras gauche, la vrai raison est notre culture, qu'elle soit Frangland ou Anglfench, soyons de vrais Québécois et croyons que le Canada est une entité dans laquelle le Québec n'a jamais été aussi bien.. Si une séparation aurait lieu aujourd'hui, chaque petit Québecois devrait à l'état une dette qui prendrait plus de 50 ans à effacer, soyons originals pour cette fois et devenons de Québécois Canadiens qui veulent se sortir d'une impasse.
Regarding language and culture, here is a great point from Jacques Cadieux:Jacques Cadieux Et que faites vous du Latin…cette langue morte mais combien exigée encore dans les universités, la langue est très importante, mais la culture l'est encore plus. Le latin est une langue pourtant usuelle dans les cours universitaires, mais ce que l'on retire de cette langue c'est la culture, connaitre 5 langues de nos jours est un fait connu, mais une seule est retenue, tout dépend dans quel pays nous nous trouvons, mon fils parle 4 langues, il voyage dans tout les continents et il demeure à Winnipeg, pourtant, il est un vrai Québécois de souche, cessez de vous morfondre avec votre coeur sur le bras gauche, la vrai raison est notre culture, qu'elle soit Frangland ou Anglfench, soyons de vrais Québécois et croyons que le Canada est une entité dans laquelle le Québec n'a jamais été aussi bien.. Si une séparation aurait lieu aujourd'hui, chaque petit Québecois devrait à l'état une dette qui prendrait plus de 50 ans à effacer, soyons originals pour cette fois et devenons de Québécois Canadiens qui veulent se sortir d'une impasse.
16 This law was needed in the 60-70s as a reassertion of the provincial majority’s desire to preserve their rights to work in the French language (fair enough, back then the shoe was on the other foot), to improve the social mobility of francophones who were obviously discriminated against by certain companies that had a glass ceiling for upward advancement. There was a real issue at that time with social equality and justice, but we are not living in the sixties and seventies anymore (voir ‘Le Pense Petit’ article of La Presse). In the same way, old grudges should be put aside, but it seems the majority, or at least a great part of it, are still holding onto this former situation as a justification for contemporary self-victimisation, while ignoring the underlying fact Anglophones are treated as a threat to Quebec Society, or as Victor Goldbloom put it in 2008: “We are not the enemy and it is time we stopped being perceived as such.” For a more recent article, please read 'Anglos have seen the enemy, and it is us' by the senior prolific and bilingual reporter, Don MacPherson.
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| August 29th, 2011 - Protest Against Bill 101, Lionel-Groulx Metro |
17th reason Billy 101 is an outdated law. Every majority holds prejudice; it is an unfortunate by-product of human nature that exists everywhere, in the same way that discrimination exists everywhere. However this law, in contemporary Quebec, has made bigotry against those who are not of the ethnic majority commonplace, so bad that the Anglophone and Allophone communities are not simply not listened to at all (multi-culturalism point above). And even when you ask Joanne Marcotte, famous author of the Grand Illussion (Illusion Tranquille) and Pour en finir avec Gouvernemama (Let`s do away with the Nanny State), she has the audacity to state that the Government making decisions against minority rights is fair, and that this coercive law is not severe – even blamed for raising issues that would have saved the province Billions of Dollars (2008).That's right people, think differently on either side, and it is about mutual respect that we achieve balance and peace. We are at a time, were the pendulum has swung so far to the Nationalist side, that the Charter of Human Rights are completely ignored by the majority. At the Commission des normes du travail, for example, only two out of 6 persons working there would serve me in my language (actually fits the provincial majority's average perfectly) - but for the benefit of the province and respect for our rights that should be more like 2/3 (as are Anglos bilingual numbers approx) - this way we can rebuild the province together and not as adversaries. But the repetitive harassment or all forms by the Clannista makes this very hard for our collective wealth to improve. In this way, liberty and wealth is affected, since any discrimination breeds contempt, and speaking to each other openly and frankly will lead us to a path that involves more liberty and wealth - and especially not Maìtres chez nous style, meaning your rights are not Universal as they should be, but subject to a whethera QC bureaucrat feels like helping a maudit anglo, which is unlikely (unless you demand ‘faites valoir mes droits ostiie!’) considering we are not considered ‘worthy’ of a job in the QC civil service (btw – the ethnic majority holds 97.5% of the jobs, yet are 80% of the population…do the math).
Since the sixties, the neo Ancien Regime types have sucked up many of key positions within the government under the guise of protecting la belle langue - they are the false prophets, and have only led us, with their Losership, to the depths of this Illusion Tranquille where we have either a conservative mafia or a franco-supremacist fascist party to choose from: maybe we can change that together, once the CAQ can grab a enough seats to make a difference - il est grand temps de travailler ensemble, ne pensez-vous pas ? (Is it not time to work together, again?)
My ideas, are not only mine, they are those of anyone who has lived outside of contemporary QC or cherish Freedom of Choice and True Libery. When I arrived here, after living in Brussels, I had to deflect the constant barrage of, 'oh, you do that differently...so it must be wrong.' It’s not made here, or done that way in QC, so it’s Crap (sounds like that Scotch joke: if it ain`t Scottish it’s CRAP, right?). Very wrong headed.
Since the sixties, the neo Ancien Regime types have sucked up many of key positions within the government under the guise of protecting la belle langue - they are the false prophets, and have only led us, with their Losership, to the depths of this Illusion Tranquille where we have either a conservative mafia or a franco-supremacist fascist party to choose from: maybe we can change that together, once the CAQ can grab a enough seats to make a difference - il est grand temps de travailler ensemble, ne pensez-vous pas ? (Is it not time to work together, again?)
My ideas, are not only mine, they are those of anyone who has lived outside of contemporary QC or cherish Freedom of Choice and True Libery. When I arrived here, after living in Brussels, I had to deflect the constant barrage of, 'oh, you do that differently...so it must be wrong.' It’s not made here, or done that way in QC, so it’s Crap (sounds like that Scotch joke: if it ain`t Scottish it’s CRAP, right?). Very wrong headed.
And regarding separatists and their constant delusions - an independent QC, means stealing rights from Millions of Quebeckers (otherwise, you confirm that you only think of yourself, a typical septard), stealing land from this great Multi-Nation State that hundreds of thousands (perhaps Millions already) of persons have given their life to defend (even francophones, who septards think are `traites`), whilst maintaining the freedom and providing felicity in which you benefit from on a daily basis.
On se trompe énormement avec cette phrase: Il n'y a aucune loi ne touchant aux origines des travailleurs de l'état : Even Lucien ‘lucide’ Bouchard commented on the results of the post-B-101 generation as being anti-competitive and complacent. An attitude that prevented him from realising his own dream of independence. If you don`t understand how a uni-ethnic government projects its xenophobia through the existing laws, then you are ignoring the statistics completely and the repetitive devalorisation of the work of those who are considered ‘not part of the Clan.’ At the Caisse, for example, there were 7-8 Anglophones out of 850 (for in an office in Montreal, CDP Capitol, this is outrageously unrepresentative of `les autres` that live on the Island): yet the typical member of the majority will say there are no laws preventing les anglos ou allos de prendre leur par des emplois au gouvernement - so all the harassment laws (bureaucratic jambetttes), protectionist laws have no long term effect? How can you stand next to the truth and not see it...aveugle comme la majorité à cette problématique, et il est triste.
If many Canadians do not speak French, it may be for several reasons that dissuade them (prefer other languages, are bad at languages, simply not interested due to the negative association with neverendums, Bill 101, 22..etc), even if you act as if they are anti-French for questioning la Classe politique québécoise, btw assuming only the negative viewpoint is your fault, not theirs – because the majority of Canadians or Quebeckers are too nice to get wrapped up in the incessant insecure negativity separatist/nationalists try and spill onto the rest of us who are quite happy (regardez justement les résultants aux Jeux-Olympiques: quand on travaille bien ensemble, on peut battre le monde Grace à notre diversity, and not in spite of it). Franco-Quebeckers are not self-entitled to Judge unilingual Canadians (or the other way around either), this is a Free country, and I am sorry if they are not as interested in bilingualism (yet Anglo-Quebeckers are, thus our difference from the RoC), but it still remains their choice.
Why are we making so much noise!? Still after all these Years of Bill 101, is it not obvious!
We are no Complacaphones (maîtres chez nous? cela veut dire que je suis un ésclave?) – SOLUTION we need ENFORCED MINORITY QUOTAS in the Govt, by the Commission des normes du travail, or the Human Rights Commission, who recently told the Medical Board to actually open the door to outside doctors, instead of completely (and they validate this) shutting them out of opportunities here. I listened to Paul Houde the other night, whose guest, from the association stated that the foreigner standards were too low to be allowed in, instead of admitting that racism might be a factor!!!! Is not sweeping a valid reason under the rug the typical childish method of denial, a negative defense mechanism, as Houde demonstrated? Whatever the case, we are desperate for more doctors, so why not allow some in, there might be surprises instead of using the scapegoat of 'they don't practice as our level over there in their country'... And we have heard so much noise about the new McGill hospital, and its demonization by the anti-bilingual language hawks, while everyone has forgotten about the loss of three major Hospitals for our community: Sherbrooke Hospital, Jeffery Hales’ Hospital in Quebec City, and the Reddy Memorial!
18 Violation of the Human Rights of the English Speaking Community, since to live with legislated discrimination based on language for 35 years against the bilingual reality of the province, state sanctioned by the Office Québécoise de la langue française, amongst other departments (CSST, RAMQ), against the development and freedoms of our minority. Nobody should have to live with the constant ‘Vous êtes une menace pour la société Québécoise’ attitude of a certain faction within our very own provincial Governement. For those seeking to understand how we are treated as a menace to QC society, here are a few anecdotes, one directly from the official leader of the provincial government opposition party: Cette scélérate - this wretched Marois should understand that you reap what you sow, et qu'elle n'est surtout pas 'plus blanche que blanche,' considering she walks hand in hand with terrorists of the Reseau de résistance québécoise (et al.), and her party funds many other proxy fringe groups that promote ethnic cleansing of minorities in QC by harassment:
Pensez-y, dans n'importe quelle autre province du Canada, un chef de parti politique sera mis dehors toute suite s’il sont vus en train de promener avec un organisme terroriste tel que le RRQ, mais 'icitte dans notre illusion tranquille le Mafia infiltrés aux partis politiques et ceux qui veulent épurer la province de notre minorité continue de jouer leur jeux de bouc-émissaire, quand ils sont tous les deux (PQ ou PLQ) corrompus pour autant.
Pensez-y, dans n'importe quelle autre province du Canada, un chef de parti politique sera mis dehors toute suite s’il sont vus en train de promener avec un organisme terroriste tel que le RRQ, mais 'icitte dans notre illusion tranquille le Mafia infiltrés aux partis politiques et ceux qui veulent épurer la province de notre minorité continue de jouer leur jeux de bouc-émissaire, quand ils sont tous les deux (PQ ou PLQ) corrompus pour autant.
For those seeking proof of the RRQ association, here she is - a sitting member of Parliament who cohorts with language fascists (excuse my disgust, but how much more sick can this get):
I do understand that she has every right to a differing political opinion, but this is a known terrorist organisation. There are even videos of her screaming out in the QC City legislature (videos are at assnat.qc.ca ) Anglophobic statements - pushing for the closure and the cease of funding for our 'foreign [to her]' language schools, universities and hospitals. Her former senior party deputy language critic Pierre Curzi, for example, also abets openly extremist whack-jobs like Anglophobe Louis Préfontaine -www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2F4gvgTcNQ In the video Pierre Curzi gives him extra time to ramble on against the use of English in Quebec, against bilingualism and states that French is the only 'national' language of Quebec. Yes, I know extremists do not stop complaining, it is the eternal fear of loss of a language that is vibrant across the country (there is always room for improvement), and is still here after 400 years - but they act like bullies here and threaten violence if they do not have their way (les gros bébés qui ne lâche pas leur nombrils toujours!!!). Just last year the RRQ posted a page with the Patriote Flag (man holding a gun) and asked people to intimidate members who donated to a provincial Federalist political party.
BTW: I posted Yvan Major's (RRQ, etc...) threats to Shebbeare, who complained about the harassment at work, and nothing was done by the RCMP, nor the local security service:
See more from the Facebook Site here Change bill 101 Fr: Modifier la loi 101
Making decisions for francophones that they cannot attend an English school is typical of this Nanny State intervention which violates the rights even of the majority, while making minorities and immigrants prisoners of the province – taking their choice of language preparation for a global world away from this – this is simply dishonest and 'crasseur'! As mentioned before,a poll conducted last year (somehow, the Gazette has mis-placed the online article) by the respected firm Léger Marketing showed that 66 per cent of Quebecers, including a 61 per cent clear majority of francophones are in favor of choice of language in education, which would meant the Gouvernemama is disconnected from QC society and ignorant of UN conventions.
Looking back at point 12, this is yet another part of the treacherous bureaucratic war of attrition at the hands of the provincial government against choice of the language of education with the intent of trapping Quebeckers from opportunities in other provinces in Canada, or from leaving for greater opportunities in the United States and abroad. But do not take my word for it, here are the full details from this great site (Thanks to Andrew Moroney for this reference):
The language of commercial signs
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
The UN Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the binding treaty, called the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, that was based on that declaration, was drafted by the late Professor John Humphrey of McGill University and was signed by Canada in 1976. Professor Humphrey was also the first director of the UN's Human Rights Division. He supported CIT-CAN in opposing the Quebec language laws. He said "The only way to get anywhere [about Quebec's language rights violations] is to speak as loudly as possible and shame [Canada] into doing something" (Ottawa, 1993). Canada continues to violate Articles 19 and 50 of the Covenant.
Article 19
1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary: (a) for the respect of the rights or reputations of others; (b) for the protection of national security or public order (ordre publique) or of public health or morals.
Article 50
The provisions of the present covenant shall extend to all parts of federal states without any limitations or exceptions.
The UN's decision against Canada
In 1993 the UN Committee on Human Rights heard a case brought by Gordon McIntyre, an English-speaking Quebec undertaker, against Quebec's language law. At the time, the Charter of the French Language prohibited McIntyre from even identifying his business in English outside his building. Here is what the UN Committee wrote in its decision on the McIntyre case:
"While the restrictions on outdoor advertising are indeed provided by law, the issue to be addressed is whether they are necessary for the respect of the rights of others. The rights of others could only be the rights of the francophone minority within Canada under article 27 [of the Covenant]. This is the right to use their own language, which is not jeopardized by the freedom of others to advertise in other than the French language. Nor does the Committee have reason to believe that public order would be jeopardized by commercial advertising outdoors in a language other than French... The Committee believes that it is not necessary, in order to protect the vulnerable position in Canada of the francophone group, to prohibit commercial advertising in English. This protection may be achieved in other ways that do not preclude the freedom of expression, in a language of their choice, of those engaged in such fields as trade. For example, the law could have required that advertising be in both French and English. A state may choose one or more official languages, but it may not exclude, outside the sphere of public life, the freedom to express oneself in a certain language. The committee accordingly concludes that there has been a violation of article 19, paragraph 2."
But in Quebec, outdoor billboard advertising and public transit advertising is still prohibited in any language other than French. This violates both article 19(2) of the International Covenant and it also violates article 51, since the restriction applies only to Quebec. No other province restricts the language of commercial advertising. If you thought that freedom of expression was taken for granted in civilized countries you were wrong: free expression is suppressed in the Canadian Province of Quebec.
Access to English-language Education
UNESCO Convention/Recommendation against Discrimination in Education
Canada did not sign the Convention because education is a provincial jurisdiction and the provinces refused to allow Canada to sign the Convention on their behalf. Nevertheless, as a member of UNESCO, Canada is still bound by the Recommendation.
Section I (1)(c) of this convention prohibits discrimination in education:
1. For the purposes of this Recommendation, the term 'discrimination' includes any distinction, exclusion, limitation or preference which, being based on race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, economic condition or birth, has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing equality of treatment in education and in particular:
(c) Subject to the provisions of section II of this Recommendation, of establishing or maintaining separate educational systems or institutions for persons or groups of persons;
Section II
When permitted in a State, the following situations shall not be deemed to constitute discrimination, within the meaning of section I of this Recommendation:
(b) The establishment or maintenance, for religious or linguistic reasons, of separate educational systems or institutions offering an education which is in keeping with the wishes of the pupil's parents or legal guardians, if participation in such systems or attendance at such institutions is optional [our italics] and if the education provided conforms to such standards as may be laid down or approved by the competent authorities, in particular for education of the same level;
When these sections are read together, the conclusion is inescapable. In the absence of choice, the establishment or maintenance, for linguistic reasons, of separate educational systems or institutions is discriminatory by definition.
Article 5 of this Covenant guarantees parents the right to establish private and/or religious schools that operate outside the state system.
Here are some paragraphs from Article 5 of this Covenant.
(c) It is essential to recognize the right of members of national minorities to carry on their own educational activities, including the maintenance of schools and, depending on the educational policy of each State, the use and teaching of their own language, provided however:
(i) That this right is not exercised in a manner which prevents the members of these minorities from understanding the culture and language of the community as a whole and from participating in its activities, or which prejudices national sovereignty;
(ii) That the standard of education is not lower than the general standard laid down or approved by the competent authorities; and
(iii) That attendance at such schools is optional.
The law in Quebec
The passages in green apply to Canada's "national minority" of French Canadians, who comprise perhaps twenty-four percent of the total population. But Quebec's language law violates this treaty.
In Quebec, children of French-speaking parents are prohibited from attending English schools. English-speaking immigrant children are forced into French-language schools. There is no option. The right to attend an English public school in Quebec is hereditary, being passed from parents to their children, and so down the generations, establishing a "blood line" of people raised in Quebec who are eligible to attend English schools in Quebec. This "blood line" excludes all children of French-speaking parents from anywhere in Canada or the rest of the world, and it excludes English-speaking immigrants to Quebec from anywhere else in the world. If you thought that hereditary privileges disappeared along with feudalism, you were wrong: hereditary privileges live on in the Canadian Province of Quebec.
Le dernier des top vingt, the final of the top twenty (not to say that hundreds more exist), French, a language that defies centuries around the globe and for 400 years in Canada (depuis 400s ans, une langue qui défie les siècles, malgré la defaite sur les plaines) even hundreds of years after the definitive end to the Colony of New France, the French language has been maintained in Quebec, and is most certainly not in danger in the province - no matter how hard fear politics are played by the franco-supremacist blowhards like Mario Beaulieu, Gilles Proulx, Pierre Curzi who brainwash the ethnic majority of the contrary - with now over 7 Million speaking the language (alors vraiment une fausse tempête et débat), it is time for the ‘other’ official language in QC to be respected again (as done this week in Chateauguay), instead of the rights of Quebec’s Anglophone minority being forsaken for Canadian Unity. A generation of this damage to a once great province is enough, we all need to move on - il faut laisser l’anglophobie dans le passée pour le bien être de nous tous.
Autre exemple sur la planete, peut-être ? Mauritius, L’île Maurice is another example of where a French speaking colony that has thrived post handover to British authority (mon ami Hervé Seneque me raconte comment cette ïle est toujours en bon état, et le règle de droit respecté) – it should be noted, that honestly, how many former French colonies have been able to maintain a foot in the G20 or even the G7?
I am more than persuaded that I am doing what is right for the people of the province of Quebec, and nothing else matters to me now. The rule of law shall no longer be forsaken for the rights of minorities in this province, so help me God.
I am more than persuaded that I am doing what is right for the people of the province of Quebec, and nothing else matters to me now. The rule of law shall no longer be forsaken for the rights of minorities in this province, so help me God.
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| Decorated Army Veteran Mr. Austern, at the Quebec For All Protest, Montreal Stock Exchange, 1981 |
As many may have already noticed, I'm a trying my best to be even-handed about these issues surrounding the balance of power in Canada, by means of one who has ascended to the top of the said government. institution thanks to a pretty decent curriculum vitae/superior problem solving and optimization abilities/experience (despite multiple jambettes from jealous territorialists)…only to be kept down by the likes of a brain-washed generation's complacency. I hope that this palmarès of Bill 101’s failures for the future of Quebec are clear, and if not, then take the time for yourself to read up, even from the CBC, on the reality of living under language suppression at the hands of your very own Provincial Government.
Post script notes and Bibliographical references
CBC publishes story and interviews regarding Serge Provost’s death threat (first story after intro) against Hugo Shebbeare: Full Story
Thanks to the Editor of No Dogs or Anglophones Blog for the support:
http://nodogsoranglophones.blogspot.com/2011/05/hugo-shebbeare-is-vindicated.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0KpIbHIVF0&feature=related
On l'as fait [l’entretien] en français aussi, mais Radio-Poubelle n’en voulait rein savoir ! Quelle surprise !
Why? Because Anglophones cannot be victims of any discrimination here, QC is perfect for our minority since the seperateux and nationalista have preached that we are the best treated minority in the world for decades (preaching their lies until the majority believe it is true) which we have to constantly counter this tide of prejudicial propaganda. Mais, comme d'habitude, rien n'est plus difficile à réfuter que ce qui est entièrement faux.
Tony Kondaks has published yet again on this subject, with an attempt to put the myth to rest: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1EcEfj5RzB-8Yp9q0IerRjvk5ZXkb2XjtQsZsvsbXca0
Oppressed [QC] anglo[phone]s are not ‘best treated’, The Suburban, Feb 1, 2012, page 15.
If anything, we are the one of the few remaining State-Sanctioned hated communities in the G20, here is yet again directly from the govt:
javascript:WebForm_DoPostBackWithOptions(new WebForm_PostBackOptions("ctl00$ctl00$OuterTaskRegion$TaskRegion$Editor1$PostButton", "", true, "", "", false, true)) Here are what Francophones have stated regarding these laws and the Kif-Kif Import company that was subjected to harassment by the QC Office of the French Language (Language Cops):
"I am a French Canadian from Quebec City," said one. "One day I am afraid I will have to leave Quebec...for good. Being force fed French by the language police is one of the reasons my roots have been severed ... This society went from blindly following the abusive rules of the Catholic Church to a new religion fad: language fanatism. Embarrassing."
Language question like 'Molotov cocktail' at get-to-know-you meeting with CAQ leader François Legault
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Bill+business/5849606/story.html (of course, 'cleansed' from the Gazoo, only available on Vigile.net)
Ted Wrights Wall of Shame, Anglophobic Graphiti across Montreal and surrounding area (Point 1,2,3,5 cover this): http://www.wiccab101.org/tedwrightswallsofshame.html
The editor of No Dogs or Anglophones has a similar list to this, he calls it POUTINEISM
Posted by Eric Langlois on 10 May 2012
The only question I have is why this post on SQL Server Central ? / La seule question que j'ai est pourquoi afficher ce message sur SQL Server Central ?
Thanks
Posted by Hugo Shebbeare on 10 May 2012
Hi Éric,
I do posts regarding politics from time to time, this is nothing new - and they have had some of the highest ratings, and visits, which helps to reveal the absurd reality we live day to day in Quebec. I have an International Affairs and Politics degree and continue to practice the knowledge attained from Vesalius, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, with essays such as this. Finally, as Brent Tyler has recommended (in the Tyranny of Bill 101, part 1: www.youtube.com/watch ), we must continue to expose the truth and denounce the myths constantly propagated regarding our minority in the province, confirmed by francophone Senators, Maria Chaput and Andrée Champagne, from other provinces in Canada also, who wrote this report to the Senate Standing Committee on Official Languages: www.parl.gc.ca/.../Report_Home-e.htm
Examples of previous posts like this:
www.sqlservercentral.com/.../weeding-out-racism-in-the-workplace-a-letter-to-government-institutions-in-quebec
Weeding Out Discrimination in the Workplace – A Note to Government Institutions in Quebec, and ex-Premier Bernard Landry
Posted on 15 March 2009
In response to former Quebec Premier Bernard Landry’s comments of this past week regarding the posting of Michael Sabia as head of the largest institutionalised pension fund in Canada – LaCaisse.com
www.sqlservercentral.com/.../i-am-a-champion-for-canada-et-le-qu-233-bec-est-inclus-dans-mon-pays I am a Champion for Canada, et Le Québec est Inclus dans Mon Pays
After reading several pages of comments on this posting, I'm taking a stab at helping Canadian Unity on my beloved country's birthday month and because I love this province (here are just a few good reasons).
Je suis vraiment fatigué de lire des articles (in the narrow scope of the QC media) en ce qui concerne les langues (the usual, instead of finding a way out of the huge financial hole we are in…). Bien sûr que c'est possible de vivre à Montréal sans savoir un seul mot en français, mais les possibilités de trouver un emploi bien rémunéré sont presque impossibles (especially in Govt, unless you employed by an outside company, or in one of the few Internationally oriented companies with a dispensation from Bill 101, or less than 50 in the cie). Je suis un allophone et je vois avec tristesse que l'anglophobie est toujours présente. Même si un anglo est complétement bilingue, né et a grandi ici, ils sont toujours traités comme de citoyens de deuxième classe (with Bill 22, 78, 101, this is the result). L'anglais n'est pas une menace à la langue française (in QC) et jamais l'a été, si c'était ça le cas le Québec aurait devenu complètement anglophone depuis longtemps (400 years now, does anyone really believe it will dissappear? Usually only Anglophobes or PQ, sépérateux, etc – or those taught to despise the OTHER official language in QC). La seul raison pour laquelle ce sort d'articles existe c'est juste pour nourrir la haine (un journaliste whose gagne pain is made off of Anglophobia, as usual) entre anglos et francos et comme ça convaincre aux (franco-)québécois (at least that political faction) que la souveraineté est la seul façon de sauver la langue (despite two referendums on the matter, AND the Orange Crush).
Un des pires crimes qu'on peut faire au Québec c'est dire la vérité. Le peuple franco-Québécois sont un peuple encore en voie de maturité et souvent pas capable de reconnaitre quand on a tort (nationaleux ou sépérateux) – je suis en partie un Charlebois, donc je le sais très bien (aware of the faults of the two founding linguistic groups of this multi-nation state quite well). Au lieu de vouloir s'en sortir beaucoup de Québécois préfère jouer à la victime (forte dépendance sur la Gouvernemama, toujours en train de blâmer la fédé, des immigrants, des anglophones de la province for a perceived erosion of francophone culture, tous sauf nous-mêmes), et donc ne laisse personne d’autre être reconnu quand il y a un crime ou bien, dans mon cas à moi, une menace de mort par un Cave séparatisssste ‘self-agrandizing’ Major Serge Provost.
Et quand une personne a de l'ambition pour le Québec on la traite de minable... Belle mentalité de perdant !!! I do not suffer from the inferiority complex, and no matter how hard these bullies try (or opposition lawyers at FaksenMartineau for the Caisse do to attack my credibility), they will not project their narrowness of mind and spirit upon me, nor our community, despite constant harassment. Au publique, je dis souvent de ne pas suivez le Losership de Renaud Léger, Louis Préfontaine, Serge Provost, Piere Curzi, Gilles Duceppe, Gilles Proulx ,…
One of the hardest thing to do in QC is tell the truth - look at what Patriquin did the other year regarding his article - Most Corrupt Prov with Bonhomme Carnival over-flowing from his pockets - he certainly was not wrong! Same thing for Mr Gendron here. Bill 101 is a law that legalises discrimination based on language - But la calisse de class politique cried out throwing their transfer payment dependency milk-bottles out of the crib onto the floor (Les bouteilles cassées déjà) although they have been exposed recently for what they are – practically all of the two main parties with their hands controlled by the mafiosos of the province since nobody wants to invest here for fear of reprisal from the cartels.
Have a great day, essayons de rebatîr la province ensemble, and fixing QC's 'language' laws will help!
Hugo
Posted by Eric Langlois on 11 May 2012
Salut Hugo,
I am not questioning the content of your post, I am just curious to know why you chose to post this here on SQL Server Central.
I just think that post would get more visibility if posted on a more politics oriendted blog/web site.
Thanks, et bonne journée !
... Eric
Posted by Hugo Shebbeare on 4 June 2012
I am posting an entire article from Senior Journalist on this subject, from the Montreal Gazette, before it vanishes (as often is the case):
Opinion: Anglos have seen the enemy, and it is us
By DON MACPHERSON, The Gazette April 14, 2012
141
MONTREAL - I call them “the new angryphones.” I’ve heard from quite a few of them in the past couple of months, since I wrote what some of them call “that column,” about the social acceptability of anglo-bashing in Quebec.
This new genus of angryphone is younger than the ones who attended partitionist meetings after the sovereignists’ near-victory in the 1995 referendum. Many of them are baby boomers who heard John F. Kennedy tell Americans to ask themselves what they could do for their country, and the answer Pierre Trudeau gave English Canadians for theirs: learn French.
So, out of the idealism of the 1960s, long before Bill 101, they did what speakers of the world’s dominant language normally don’t do: they began to learn another language, and to have it taught to their children. And when others fled the first Parti Québécois government, they stayed; they bet their futures, and those of their children, on Quebec.
So they’re still here to read and hear what’s said about them by Québécois politicians, media commentators and entertainers, and they’re fluent enough in French to understand it. They can read L’actualité’s “dossier” on them on the magazine’s website and decide for themselves whether it’s journalism or something closer to high-class hate literature on the glossy paper of a quality magazine.
With age and experience, the idealism of their youth has given way to realism. They know they have been left politically voiceless, not by a lack of the right leadership or representation, but by fear of political separation.
So they – we – realize that conditions for our community are not likely to improve. We understand that in any forum more public than a dinner table, a “conversation” on language will be brief:
“Well, the English-speaking community needs – ” “Non! C’est le français qui est menacé!”
And we don’t expect to be thanked for investing more personal effort in strengthening the French language in Quebec than most Québécois have.
All we hope for now is to be left in peace.
Instead – and this is what has made us angry – we find ourselves once again under sustained public attack, as we had not been since the controversy over the language of commercial signs in the late 1980s.
We find ourselves to be such pariahs that not a single politician, not even among those we elect, has protested against L’actualité’s smearing us, as they all did against Maclean’s magazine’s cover story on corruption in Quebec two years ago.
And we find ourselves playing a game I call “angloball.” It’s like football, but with only one team, formed by us anglos, and with a movable goal line. As we near the goal line by learning French, the line is moved farther away, so that the new goal is for every last one of us to speak French. Then we’re told by L’actualité that we must also support Bill 101, and, in the privacy of our homes, read books in French.
We realize it’s a game we can’t win without abandoning our own language, culture and identity.
And we’re tired of playing it for the amusement of those for whom we will always be not an asset but a problem for Quebec, not exemplary allies for French but the enemy.
We are the enemy – historic, political and, above all, cultural.
It’s been only 253 years since the battle on the Plains of Abraham, and the English and French had been fighting each other for seven centuries before that.
Now, we’re an obstacle to political progress. Were it not for the votes of the “blocking minority,” as a former publisher of Le Devoir called us, the Quebec question would be settled. Either Canada would be forced to the constitutional negotiating table, or Quebec would secede.
And by refusing to “integrate” – that is, to assimilate – we English exclude ourselves from the Québécois mainstream. Thus we set a bad example for immigrants. And our community, by its mere existence, provides an alternative for immigrants, and competes to recruit them.
Even the premier speaks of us in terms usually reserved for an enemy. The Québécois must remain “vigilant” to protect their language, Jean Charest said recently in Paris, because “we are surrounded by anglophones.”
So if the English encircling the fort are a hostile force, then logically those of us inside its walls must form a disloyal fifth column.
Not surprisingly, results of a poll by Léger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies and The Gazette published this week suggest that the opinion leaders’ negative attitude toward us is widely shared.
With admirable candour, 51 per cent of Québécois admitted that most members of their linguistic community do not “feel positively” about the English, to 43 per cent who claimed they did. So the 71 per cent of us English who think that most Québécois don’t “feel positively” about us aren’t imagining things.
We and our children could place another bet on Quebec, this time on the Québécois “children of Bill 101” in Sugar Sammy’s audience or who write for Voir. But it wouldn’t be a sure bet.
A quarter-century ago, one young commentator was lionized by the English-Canadian media as a spokesman for a post-nationalist generation of Québécois “citizens of the world.” He has aged into the ranting Richard Martineau whom we now see leading a mob of his Journal de Montréal readers with torches and pitchforks against the minorities.
If an aging population and mounting debt cause economic and social conditions to deteriorate in the future, we will make readily available scapegoats.
In the meantime, the older generation still in power in Quebec doesn’t care to see our family DVDs of our children adorably singing in French in concerts at their immersion schools, or to hear our amusing anecdotes about accidentally speaking French with each other.
We new angryphones have got the message. We realize there’s only one thing they want from us.
By emigration if not by assimilation, they want us gone.
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com
Read more: www.montrealgazette.com/.../story.html
Posted by Hugo Shebbeare on 13 July 2012
Yet another, copying here before it disappears:
Aubin: Quebec’s welcome to immigrants is poor, yet few provinces’ economies are more in need of them
BY HENRY AUBIN, THE GAZETTE MAY 31, 2012
1
STORYPHOTOS ( 1 )
Henry Aubin
The curious thing about narrow-mindedness is the way it can act against one’s own ultimate self-interest. Two very different examples came up this week.
One is a reader’s objection to a point I made in recent columns – that the student boycott will weaken the quality of education at Quebec’s francophone universities and CEGEPs (harder hit by the boycott than anglo campuses) because of compressed classes, crowding, a demonstrated failure to maintain stability and a reputation that could make attracting top faculty harder. “So the quality of education is declining,” said I.R. in an email. “As an English-speaking Quebecer, why should I be concerned?”
The answer: Eighty per cent of Quebecers are francophone, and the prosperity of this province will always largely depend on their know-how. If the calibre of Quebec’s education engines weakens, the province’s knowledge economy will eventually weaken – and so, accordingly, will its fiscal health and its capacity to provide decent services to everyone, we anglos included. That’s why.
But it’s the second example that I want to focus on. It’s a more important case of how narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness can go together.
We’ve more or less known for years that Quebec employers are often biased against job applicants with ethnic backgrounds, but now a report by Quebec’s human rights commission establishes this irrefutably.
Author Paul Eid’s research team responded to each of more than 500 career want ads with two fictitious job applications. The pairs of CVs contained comparable information regarding education, work experience and bilingualism skills. The main difference was names: One application would be from an imaginary person named Mohamed Nabil (Arab), Amadou Traoré (African) or Carlos Salazar (Latino); the name on the other would be Sébastien Bélanger, Mathieu Fortin or Maxime Demers. (Other pairings were from women.) The unsurprising result: Candidates with old-stock francophone names were 64 per cent more likely to be invited to an interview than les autres.
Too bad the test didn’t measure the attitude toward applicants with anglo names, but that’s another story. Or, on second thought, maybe not.
In any case, the study torpedoes the idea that it is only foreign credentials of uncertain quality that make employers wary of applicants of unusual backgrounds. Many of the rejected “applicants” indicated they were born, educated and socialized here.
Note, too, that a deficiency in French was not a factor in these cases. Bill 101 did not come into play.
The author suggests that while some employers might stigmatize certain ethnic or racial groups, often it was simply a case of bosses liking to be around people they resemble.
Whatever the motive, this resistance to a heterogeneous workplace runs counter to many of these employers’ interest in a prosperous, increasingly French-speaking Quebec.
The aging population will cause the workforce to shrink in a few years, and Quebec needs all the immigrants it can get to keep the economy humming and give this indebted province the tax revenue it requires. Yet a study two years ago by CIRANO shows that 19 per cent of immigrants age 25 to 54 are unemployed five years after their arrival; the national average is 12 per cent. Good people are leaving all the time for Toronto and Vancouver’s superior welcome mats.
My barber’s daughter speaks four languages and is studying finance at Concordia. Her parents, who arrived 15 years ago from Poland, question whether she’ll stay here – her surname sounds peculiar. The barber says that two family members, engineers, couldn’t get jobs here, but they found work at once in Toronto. “Your name doesn’t matter there.”
It’s crazy. Sixteen years ago, the Quebec government wrested from Ottawa the power to help select immigrants; it wanted to choose people who could best fit in here. Yet successive provincial governments (as well as Montreal administrations) have failed to hire anywhere near enough people of diverse backgrounds to make the public service a model of integration that could inspire the private sector to follow suit.
With their inward-looking hiring practices, public and private employers alike are shooting themselves in the foot. Quebec is neither attracting nor retaining enough immigrants to keep the economy strong.
Yes, I know: Openmindedness is always a good thing in and of itself. But it can also sometimes bring dividends to those who practise it.
haubin@montrealgazette.com
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
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alwordman
11:17 AM on 5/31/2012
Henry, I scoured the French newspapers for articles and or comments about this issue but came up empty handed. Maybe I looked in the wrong places, but it seems to me that to the community that this paper caters, this is not new and not news. I was once told by a francophone friend that all I had to do was adopt a French last name.
Read more: www.montrealgazette.com/.../story.html
Posted by Hugo Shebbeare on 15 November 2012
Here is a great letter from Clifford Lincoln, formerly of the Provincial Legislature:
Letter: For the PQ on language, enough is never enough
MONTREAL GAZETTE NOVEMBER 14, 2012
0
• STORY
• PHOTOS ( 1 )
Clifford Lincoln, who these days is working to improve train service to the West Island, is a former MP and MNA who resigned from the Quebec cabinet in 1989 over the Bourassa government’s language policy and its adoption of Bill 178, which invoked the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause. (Pierre Obendrauf / GAZETTE file photo)
Photograph by: Pierre Obendrauf , Montreal Gazette file photo
Re: “English is not at risk, and anglos are not an oppressed minority” (Opinion, Nov. 12)
I read Brian Lipson’s opinion piece with keen interest.
Let me say from the outset that language per se poses no problem whatever for me. I am not only bilingual, but totally bicultural in French and English.
What I deplore, however, is the coercive and relentless nature of measures to suppress one of Canada’s official languages on the premise that it will obliterate the other in Quebec. Coercion is always a sensitive and risky tool to use. It inevitably provokes a counter-reaction, and disturbs harmonious relationships.
The defensive argument that holds that coercion is essential for linguistic protection is belied by those very fortunate individuals who are not only bilingual and bicultural, but multilingual and multicultural. One of my Portuguese-born friends, a skilled landscaper who never had the privilege of a higher education, speaks not only his native Portuguese and French and English, but Spanish and Italian as well. My colleague co-founder of Train de l’Ouest is at ease in his native Dutch, as well as in French, English, German and Spanish. How I envy them, I who only had the opportunity of learning French, English and Creole.
And what bothers me above all is the Parti Québécois’s relentless language crusade, where enough is never enough. It would take a totally biased observer not to recognize that French is clearly dominant and firmly established in Quebec, and is here not only to stay, but to flourish in all spheres. Reluctant as many may have been in the face of coercive and at times ridiculous linguistic measures, they have learned to adjust to them, to roll with the punches, to live and let live.
What bothers them, and me, is that the screw of coercion is never tight enough. Each new PQ government means further tightening and buttressing lest the fortress should crumble.
Let me ask Mr. Lipson this: If he lived in Florida or Arizona or another state whose majority population became Hispanic — which is a demographic possibility — and that state legislated Spanish as its official language while banning English as such, and besides, included a provision for anonymous complaints within the enabling legislation, would he meekly accept it? Or would he consider it a coercive measure that, besides creating unnecessary friction, subtracted from his personal freedoms while diminishing opportunities for Hispanic- and English-speakers alike?
I love living in Montreal, where I enjoy the access to the two cultures, and where I live by choice. So language itself is not my beef. But I am fed up to the teeth with the great obsession over language issues and battles, as well as with the relentless and draining, and yes often futile, arguments. What I, and a large number of reasonable individuals seek is to be able to live in harmony with our neighbours and in our communities. And our motto is: “Assez c’est assez!”
Clifford Lincoln
Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue
Read more:www.montrealgazette.com/.../story.html