Quebec’s Efforts to become 30% English
Many people this week were upset at the news that the Québec government was giving lifetime access to government services in English to new immigrants.
According to a report in Le Devoir, as many as 27% of the 48 000 immigrants Québec welcomed in 2009 were designated as Anglos in the State databases, even though only 3,5% of them claimed English as their mother tongue. According to Québec laws, government services in English are a privilege of Québec’s historic Anglo community, not a right of all citizens, even though any one can decide they are Anglo any time they want.
According to the numbers published by the daily, many as 30% of these new members of Québec’s historic anglo community don’t even know how to speak English!
In other words, the Québec government was now in the business of teaching English as our common and business language to immigrants.
And why not?
The future of Québec’s English-speaking community is, as everyone knows, in peril.
Québec’s Anglos, live in near isolation, a whole 45 minute drive from the biggest and most powerful English-speaking nation on earth where the fragile English language media is drowning in a sea of French media imperialism that leaves them without HBO.
Québec’s 607 165 English-speaking souls, 8,2% of the population, struggle to keep a community and a network of institutions alive with only 25% of Québec’s entire Health-care budget and a mere 50% of the money ear-marked to build two new University hospitals in Montréal.
In Montréal, where as many as 20% of the population is English-speaking, they have to make do with only 45% of the povince’s higher education budget and 57% of all university professors in the city.
There comes a time, as Angela Mancini, president of the English Montreal School Board said, when Anglos have to start thinking of themselves…
It’s only a small gesture, but maybe, just maybe, by giving up 30% of it’s immigrants to the English-speaking community, Québec can help save English in North America…
AngryFrenchGuy 
Edward
December 21, 2009 at 1:03
compelling but unscientific. the relation of co2 and temperature has been discredited for years now.
johnnyonline
December 21, 2009 at 1:12 am
there is no crisis with temperature or language.
i do not want any additional taxes or laws.
do your best – and i will do mine.
al gore should be tried for malfeasance and fraud.
johnnyonline
December 21, 2009 at 1:17 am
Johnny,
CO2 as the SOLE cause of global warming may not be correct but there remains strong evidence that CO2 does cause warming. That is far from “discredited”.
Why is it that you guys single out Robert Mugabe as the climate change “spokesmodel” when over 60 Nobel laureates have come out in support of reducing man-made climate change. An inconvenient truth, I suppose.
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/0960-nobel-laureates-copenhagen-must-be-a-turning-point-towards-global-sustainability
Edward
December 21, 2009 at 1:25 am
first it was man-made global warming, then it was global warming, it morphed into climate change and now you want to promote global sustainability?
if you want to get a grip on this planet which is 4 and a half billion years old with a track record of 99% of all species going extinct – you had better come up with something better than bogus science.
i’d sooner fund a distance warning system for asteroids than put one penny in al gore’s get rich quick scheme. at least, we have proof that that the dinosaurs disappeared because of an asteroid. and to stay on topic – until an asteroid falls on quebec – french will be the official language.
johnnyonline
December 21, 2009 at 1:46 am
“Why is it that you guys single out Robert Mugabe…”
seriously edward- if one centime were to go to robert mugabe it would be too much. he is al gore’s evil twin.
johnnyonline
December 21, 2009 at 1:57 am
ABP : «After all, most of these immigrants are from countries formerly taken over and colonized by France (in many instances forcibly) . They may speak the language but the french culture and trappings as associated are not their own.
Black is correct with his statement.»
…
ABP,
«black» means nothing.
Speaking the same language means everything.
I speak your language, Abp.
Do you speak mine?
Raman
December 21, 2009 at 5:03 am
I read Conrad Black’s article and it appears to be more of a sympathetic view on the Duplessis years than anything else. Black has always been a great admirer of Duplessis, and I believe wrote the definitive biography (in French to boot) on the man.
Though you’d think he has lots of time to check his facts, I picked up at least two errors in his article:
– It is absurd to say that Quebec had a high level of literacy during the years of church and Duplessis rule. Quebec had one of the lowest literacy rates in the Americas and only began catching up in the years after the Quiet Revolution.
– I believe the PQ minister who got caught shoplifting at Eaton’s was Claude Charron, not Claude Morin. Claude Morin was actually the RCMP mole.
Makes me wonder if there aren’t more factual errors in there that I didn’t pick up on. For example, when he said that during the Duplessis years the income gap between Quebec and the ROC began to narrow. Not sure about that one either but I can’t prove it right now. Anyway, if you look at the stats that were reported at the start of the Laurendeau-Dunton commission in the 60s, it certainly wasn’t francophones who had done most of the catching up.
Acajack
December 21, 2009 at 10:24 am
«After all, most of these immigrants are from countries formerly taken over and colonized by France (in many instances forcibly) . They may speak the language but the french culture and trappings as associated are not their own.
Black is correct with his statement.»
I hear this a lot from English-speaking Canadians these days and I would caution them on this front.
The truth is that newcomers to Quebec are increasingly divided within their own communities on these issues. Though I am not saying that there is a huge sovereignist upsurge among allophones, many more are sovereignist than before, and an even greater number (though not sovereignists) have come to sympathize with the francophone side of things and find it an aberration when people who have lived in Quebec for some time don’t learn French. It is especially galling for those immigrants who have gone to great pains to learn French since arriving here, and then see that because of those who don’t bother to learn, they can’t always use a language they worked so hard to acquire.
Case in point:
http://www.ledevoir.com/societe/actualites-en-societe/273525/la-loi-rapaillee
Acajack
December 21, 2009 at 10:33 am
“Do you speak mine?”
Yours or theirs?
ABP
December 21, 2009 at 10:56 am
Here’s a site that believes that more CO2 should be pumped into the atmosphere, not less:
http://plantsneedco2.org/default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
.
Tony Kondaks
December 21, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Nice source Tony. Plants really do need CO2. Here’s what they don’t tell you on that site, which was founded by H. Leighton Steward:
H. Leighton Steward is the spokesman for Plants Need CO2 and the registrant of their website. According to its corporate Certificate of Formation[1], Steward is a director at EOG Resources, an oil and gas company formerly known as Enron Oil and Gas Company, where he earned $617,151 in 2008. Steward also serves as an honorary director of the American Petroleum Institute.
Edward
December 22, 2009 at 7:55 am
and that disqualifies mr.steward from making a scientific observation that co2 is plant friendly – plant necessary?
but the epa just declared co2 a dangerous pollutant without any debate in the congress or senate….
so it’s settled then – unelected bureaucrats making law.
johnnyonline
December 22, 2009 at 9:02 am
I don’t see where debate in Congress or Senate has any place in deciding scientific matters? It is for scientific agencies to decide.
If congress wants to pass laws making declared “dangerous pollutants” legal that is their business. They should feel free to pass such laws if they consider them in the interests of their constituency.
All the political debate in the world won’t make a pollutant safer, but it certainly will generate excess gasseous output.
Edward
December 22, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Edward:
By telling us who and what funds Steward you are invoking the he who pays the piper calls the tune principle and that, therefore, since Steward in the graces of the oil companies anything that he says should be discounted because he is obviously biased against global warming alarmism.
Well, if that’s the case then we would have to apply that principle across the board, wouldn’t we?
I think it would be fair to say that at least 90% — if not more — of all research done on global warming has come from government. And we all know that government is never biased, are they?
Of course, government never has an agenda and is as pure as the driven snow…not!
Tony Kondaks
December 22, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Government rarely interferes in the peer-reviewed allocation of funding to scientists. (By the way it is most often conservative governments that interfere when it happens — take, for example, embryonic stem cell research)
Yes I do believe government has less to gain financially by promoting environmentalism than Enron or the American Petroleum Institute stand to gain by promoting increased fossil fuel consumption.
But I’m just funny that way.
Edward
December 23, 2009 at 9:51 am
Edward:
Yes, you are funny that way.
Government always has an agenda and always screws things up. Funding global warming research is no exception. It is an industry that perpetuates itself by turning out results that guarantee yet more government grants.
Tony Kondaks
December 23, 2009 at 2:49 pm
i have a question. this is my first time on the site and its rly interesting but why does angryfrenchguy write in english? if he is so french and angry that is.
Olivia
January 19, 2010 at 12:07 am
Please make sure to wear latex gloves when approaching the English language. You would think it is a disease in Quebec.
Jenny Addams
January 19, 2010 at 2:25 pm
As with Haiti, the French government (France) hasn’t done much for its colonies. Same thing for its Quebec colony. The French prefer good food, wine, sex, and festivals insted taking care of the people.
Jenny Addams
January 19, 2010 at 2:27 pm
That’s an expert answer to an inernestitg question
Brayan
October 5, 2013 at 6:42 am
HEY! don’t frown on christmas in smbpeeter!but i guess i’d have to SEE you in smbpeeter, eh.btw, if there’s a software/hardware glitch, *I* will find it.also, i will ALWAYS feed you no hypoglycemic poltz-isms on my watch.p.s. obama called. he couldn’t get through to modl. he wants you to play in denver.
Mahsun
October 5, 2013 at 9:57 am
No use Paul, people–myself ildunced–pretty much have their minds made up on this one.I think the article doesn’t prove much; taking the word of the head of a French-rights lobby group isn’t really the way to judge this one. I don’t think her voice is any more relevant than an anglophone with strong feelings on the issue.Also: “We feel that the rights of citizens to a full defence before Canada’s highest court trumps the rights of unilingual lawyers and judges to patronage appointments.”Does it trump the desire of Canadians to have the greatest legal minds making decisions on such important issues such as gay marriage and abortion? There is far more at stake here than this woman lets on.Remember, the Supreme Court also rules on things such as the Clarity Act; it gives advice to our government. It is FAR more than a place where people want to feel good by speaking in their own language.
Rene
October 5, 2013 at 5:30 pm
But once more, experienced the extreme courtship involving JGR, Toyota and Edwards resulted in the marriage in 2011, a deal yr for Edwards, Kenseth’s lifetime is fairly numerous today.
http://www.stuteriveterinarerna.se/sendmeil.asp?p=102 http://www.stuteriveterinarerna.se/sendmeil.asp?p=102
http://www.stuteriveterinarerna.se/sendmeil.asp?p=102
November 25, 2013 at 6:00 am
Hey, you’re the goto expert. Thanks for hanging out here.
insurtipsonline.com
March 7, 2014 at 8:39 am