http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montre...ane-metro.html

I love you my friend for this post, even if I do call you the reason for Bill 101.

Personally I want to know where my francophriends are. I know they all think of the PQ in general as the annoying uncle at the party always going on about something, but whom they love anyway, because he doesn't really mean that he thinks darkies should live on that side of town... but dude he totally just said that... and they said nothing. The PQ IS them, and they aren't fighting to change it. wtf?

Some of the measures taken in the roC to eliminate the francophony are documented there : http://www.republiquelibre.org/cousture/PROV.HTM

It`s only when Québec enforced bill 101 and the federal needed a legal background to fight that - in the 1980s - that it forced other provinces to get clean with their language regulations e.g. ; Let french education be legal again and finance it fairly.

Do you mean that more than one hundred years of anti-Canadien apartheid regulations in the roC to eradicate French from there was wrong?

I'm not familiar enough with the history of language-related regulations in the rest of Canada to determine whether your apartheid comparison is fair or not, but yes, I believe Canada's respect for its two official languages has grown immensely over the past century.

We, in Québec, are a large French speaking majority, we want to live, learn, work, shop and get services in our language and we need regulations to achieve that.

No one questions the right of people in Quebec to be able to get services in French.

Do you mean that more than one hundred years of anti-Canadien apartheid regulations in the roC to eradicate French from there was wrong ? Its so easy to say ''let the market decide'' now that the francophonie has almost completely disappeared...

We, in Québec, are a large French speaking majority, we want to live, learn, work, shop and get services in our language and we need regulations to achieve that. Do you say that it is wrong ? If so, demonstrate that.

Steve, why don't you ask Pauline Marois to tone down HER rhetoric?

Obviously you didn't read Steve's piece fully. He asked for everyone on all sides to tone it down.

This is why we like big government: we don’t trust the "market" one little bit.

One problem we have here in Quebec, we tend to turn everything and anything into a language issue. Not all of our problems are related to it. Student protest/strike for example. Does it really have anything to do with it? Is it really necessary to drag the language issue in this story? Of course not. Sure more French students are on strike. That makes senses for the simple fact there are more French universities. But some people seem to think otherwise..oh well, off the subject now. (I used this example as I was recently criticized by some students for this exact comment and was rewarded with a colourful array of "your English" comments)

Going around the links provided in this blog post, it's pretty clear (in my opinion <-key phrase here) that many didn't get the message. The "language issue" in Quebec is one of passion that is past down from generation to generation. Mothers and fathers tell their kids how "the English" did this and that. The reverse also applies I must add. Doing what you suggest will be, and is, hard to accomplish. When you are passionate about something, be it right or wrong, one cannot but use emotion to convey their message. I think the comments written on Mme Sophie Derocher's blog can attest to this. What astonishes me is the amount of hateful comments, from both sides, in the comments section of that blog. Hateful comments about a blog post asking people not to use hateful comments... o_0

So yes, being civil toward each other, especially when speaking about "the issue", is a must for our collective sanity. I truly believe once we can remove the hateful comments and absurd comparisons we can solve this. Once this can be accomplished, Quebec will be able to resolve some of the other pressing issues such as our provincial debt (or national debt depending on how you want to look at it) for example.

I'm going to stop now, as I feel I'm no longer making any sense. Another thing we should all learn: Know when to stop talking.

Now before anyone criticizes my point of view on all this, I'm a bilingual Francophone with a very English last name. So English in fact (well actually Irish), most Anglophones have troubles pronouncing it correctly. So you can imagine how difficult it is for the French community. For this since childhood I've been categorized as an Anglophone. No one believes me, many still think I was born somewhere in Ontario. Although funny at times, hard not to feel rejection from your own community when they consider you an outsider. If anyone has a unique understanding of the situation, it's people like me. People that truly share both cultures. My father is an English Canadian and my mum is a French Canadian from the Province of Quebec.

A woman who, with her husband, owns a La Belle Province restaurant in Montreal North, where the entire menu is in French and the staff talk to the customers in French, reported that when she began talking to her husband in English, a French customer lost it and yelled at her to stop talking in that ugly language.

I remember that story. It's a bit silly. But I'm not going to judge all francophones based on the actions of one. And when I talk about toning things down, I'm including that customer.

have you looked at any PQ visual campaigns? All I see are white, blond, blue-eyed people.

I don't know too many blond PQ candidates. As for white, the party doesn't lack for non-whites. You could argue they're tokens, but you could also argue that about the other parties too.

Même si Hérouxtiville n’était qu’un canular idiot, rien dans leur «normes de conduite» ne disait que les étrangers n’étaient pas bienvenus; seulement qu’on n’accepterait pas qu’ils «importent» leurs coutumes les plus discutables…

I am not free to order in french in a restaurant in Toronto. Maybe in theory I am but in practice I won't be able to get served.

This is exactly the argument, though. People are against government regulation of language, and would rather let the market decide.

http://www.cjad.com/blog/TommySchnurmacherShow/blogentry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10372942

I have had a lack of English service in everything from a Tim Hortons on up - especially in the Quebec government offices, where there seems to be a particular bent towards telling Anglos to get lost.

"This, and a lot of other examples you give, sound more like annoyances or inconveniences than "suffering"."

If I am forced to not be myself, to not be free, and to have to toe the line on thought (because in the end, it's what the language laws are about) then there is naturally suffering caused.

"According to a La Presse article from last year, allophone children in Montreal do about the same in school as native French speakers."

Yes, it's proof that the french school system isn't doing very at all with anyone. I wouldn't be shocked if the presence of allophones in the system is too much of a burden on the system. Immigrants in schools across Canada would likely do well because (a) the school systems are doing better than Quebec, and (b) english is an easier language to be fluent in, and many are already somewhat fluent when they arrive in Canada (english is a common second language taught and used in many countries that don't natively speak english. None of this of course can excuse the Quebec school systems, where so many fail to get a high school diploma in the normal time frame.

"I would think people leave the province after university more for economic reasons than anything else."

I think you have a disconnect here. For my view, much of the economic problems of Quebec (or the economic advantages of other parts of Canada) is that the Quebec government pays a ton of money for programs it cannot support, for duplication of Federal services, and so on. The social benefits of Quebec are incredibly high, but are also very unrealistic when you look at the costs involved. The Quebec tax rates are way too high, that is for sure, and the new PQ government wants to raise them more. You can see what happened when the liberals tries to touch the school tuition sacred cow, Jean Charest is now enjoying retirement as a result.

So the economics are caused very much by the language issue that attempts by successful PQ governments to bribe the people with their own money. There is no sane reason that, once trained to be a doctor, as an example, that you would want to stay in Quebec. You can go elsewhere, work less, not be pressured to take jobs in the far north, not have to deal with the crumbling Quebec infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals and the like), and not have to pay anywhere near the taxes you do here. Yes, it's economic, but you have to look at why.