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Canada - Constitutional Superpower
An article in yesterday's NYT identifies Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms as being now more influential in the world than the US constitution, "a source of inspiration for many countries around the world". Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg (US Supreme Court justice) recently recommended it over the US constitution for anyone writing a constitution in
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Only those who attended English schools in another jurisdiction within Canada. If you moved to Montreal from Plattsburgh, sorry, but your kids are gonna have to parlez-vous.
It's ludicrous to deny access to schools and teachers that are already funded and already exist to English-speakers in the province, even if that's only the case for a small sliver of English-speakers.
Do those English-speakers not pay taxes that support those schools?
More importantly, though, anglophones can get around the few existing hurdles by learning French, while under the culture which was in place at the time the law was introduced and passed, a francophone who learned English was still a francophone who had learned English rather than someone truly counted as a member of both communities.
Have you ever lived in Quebec, or are you just spitballing here? Honest question.
What gets me is seeing how anglos are treated in Quebec (I was one for 10 years) versus how francophones are treated across the rest of the country. I live in Yukon now. I realize it's a special case because territories are governed differently from provinces, but, man, there is an entire government department here dedicated to helping the territorial government serve French-speakers in the territory (of which there are slightly more than 1,000).
Stop and think about that for a second: The French Language Services Directorate. Can you imagine the Quebec government announcing the creation of, say, a Direction des services en anglais?
And because of the Charter, we have a judge who has ordered the government to build a new French high school for a handful of students.
It just doesn't make any sense to me that the French language should be better protected in Whitehorse than the English language should be in, say, Sherbrooke.
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It isn't even a question of protecting English within Quebec. It's a question of NOT ACTIVELY SUPPRESSING IT.
I don't mind that French speakers get extra support in Whitehorse or wherever. I just wish that we English speakers here in Quebec didn't get our lives made artificially more difficult by xenophobic ethnic nationalists who claim it's justified because during the 19th century the British used to eat their babies.
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Stop and think about that for a second: The French Language Services Directorate. Can you imagine the Quebec government announcing the creation of, say, a Direction des services en anglais?
Stop and think about that for a second: is there any part of the Government of Quebec which is inaccessible to anglophones? Is there any component or organization which, due to language barriers, anglophones cannot access, at all? It may be the case that not every employee of every government agency speaks English, but in these situations it's just a matter of moving to the next counter at the licensing office, not whole-scale exclusion from use of a government service.
In the Yukon, low population density and low overall population dictate quite the opposite: it is actually very common for people to be unable to access government services because of language issues, and without some sort of intervention, within minority-language communities it becomes necessary to hire a translator in order to conduct comparatively mundane activities. (Need a marriage license? If you're Francophone and the town clerk only does English, you're kind of fucked.)
Having a central office to handle these situations is both an economical response to a real problem and a de-facto constitutional requirement.
And because of the Charter, we have a judge who has ordered the government to build a new French high school for a handful of students.
And it sounds like the judge is personally-involved in the case, and it sounds like we should be waiting for an appeal rather than launching straight into POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAAAAAAAAAAD.
It just doesn't make any sense to me that the French language should be better protected in Whitehorse than the English language should be in, say, Sherbrooke.
I'm not sure you've demonstrated that it is.
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Maybe in Montreal it's not that hard to be served by the Quebec government in English, but maybe in certain other parts of the province, it is. Maybe if you live in Matapedia, though, you're fucked because the Town Clerk only speaks one language and it isn't yours.
I'm not one of these people getting crude with you. If you want to have a conversation, we can have a conversation. And if you have experiences in these matters that you wanna talk about, I'm willing to listen and learn. But only if that's a two-way street. Right now, it feels like you're in Toronto (or wherever) telling people who have lived these experiences in Quebec how it really is.
is there any part of the Government of Quebec which is inaccessible to anglophones? Is there any component or organization which, due to language barriers, anglophones cannot access, at all?
Not exactly what you're asking about, but I'd say this is relevant: "In other words, 5.3% of the Quebec civil service is made up of people other than French Canadian, while ethnic minorities, anglophones and Aboriginal peoples make up more than 20% of the Quebec population."
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On the other hand, there isn't an "Office of the English Language" that actively cracks down on French use outside Quebec, either.
Which is not to say that French doesn't deserve extra support outside Quebec - you're perfectly correct, it's a lot harder to get French service in BC than English service in downtown Montreal. Still, that doesn't excuse Bill 101: two wrongs don't make a right.
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See, I just feel like these experiences are a product of immigration and multicultural policies that have been adopted across the country. Someone from Toronto or Vancouver might tell you the same story - Bill 101 did not in itself give you the experience of attending diverse schools.
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However, I still don't agree that the language laws "protect" French. I realize that's the justification often used for them - "protection" is the justification that extremists often use for suppressing rights - but it doesn't hold water.
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