Friday, July 23, 2010

Supreme Court Under Assault

The recent court decision (A victory for religious freedom) overturning the Quebec Minister of Education and her department's decision to force private religious schools to teach the infamous ERC (Ethics and Religious Culture) course according to government standards has underlined the fact that the courts have become the last line of defence in the relentless war on personal freedoms waged by successive Quebec governments.
(Barbara Kay in the National Post offers an excellent explanation and analysis of the ERC if you'd like to know more.)

The fury displayed by those elected and unelected officials at the 'impertinent' court's audacity to overturn a government policy that violates not only our constitution, but the general principles of freedom that has been the hallmark of our society for generations is telling.  It is a dangerous sign that the assault on personal choice is going hand in had with an assault on the last line of defence of our freedoms- the courts.

An angry Minister of education, Michelle Courchesne, called the decision "excessive" in response to the court ruling that backed the school, one in which she was subject to a serious dressing down by Justice Gérard Dugré.

The minister reacted quickly, telling reporters that the decision would be appealed, a position that was quickly supported by opposition leader Pauline Marois who also holds that our courts are nothing more than pesky meddlers.

Let me refresh readers with the issue concerned,  it isn't that complicated.

Several years ago the government removed the teaching of religion from  public schools and replaced it with a generalized course in ethics and religious culture (ERC), one that taught students about the structure and beliefs of most major religions from a neutral or secular standpoint. Some commentators were uncomfortable with the Ethics side of the course, claiming that it was nothing more than political indoctrination, citing the example of the insufferable Francoise David the dogmatic separatist leader of the Quebec Soldaire political party who is portrayed in the course material as a shining example of feminism. That being said, the real bug bear was the teaching of religions from a secular standpoint.

Some parents both in the public and private school systems objected to exposing their children to the tenets of other religions and the sanitized secular views being imposed on them, claiming that it was confusing and undermining the family's inherent right to be responsible for religious instruction.

A group of parents in Drummondville sued to exempt their children from the course, but lost in court. That case is currently winding itself up to the Supreme Court

A private religious school in Montreal, Loyola High School, sued as well, when its request to teach the ERC course from a Catholic perspective was denied by the eduction department, which told the school it must teach the course in the prescribed manner, from a neutral point of view.

 The judge hearing the case came down hard on the Minister and the Education Department's policy, saying;
“The obligation imposed on Loyola to teach the ethics and religious culture course in a lay fashion assumes a totalitarian character essentially equivalent to Galileo’s being ordered by the Inquisition to deny the Copernican universe.” -Justice Gérard Dugré.
Wow, he didn't mince words!
Essentially his decision was that while the Education department may impose a neutral view of the religious world in public schools, the department may not tell private religious schools to do the same.
The judge made eminently good sense in saying that as long as religious private schools are legal, they may teach religion in their schools.

Of course this makes no sense to the government and other secularists who demand that their view on language, culture and religion be imposed on all students, like it or not.

Now the government has decided that it will appeal the court's decision, a foolish move that will just delay the inevitable defeat in the Supreme Court, a move cynically calculated to shift the blame for the defeat to the 'dastardly Anglo' Supreme Court.
This strategy was used successfully to take the heat off the Quebec government for having passed Bill 104, a law clearly unconstitutional.
But unlike the Bill 104 case, where the application of the decision was set aside for a year, Loyola can immediately modify the ECR course to suit itself. In an effort to show good faith, the school continues to argue for dialogue and cooperation with the education department. To allay fears that the school is teaching some form of extremism, Loyola published some of it's course material on the web. If you have a chance, I highly recommend that you take a look at what the school is teaching, it shames the public version.

Picking up on the decision, Josée Legault the ultra-nationalist separatist journalist has proposed a simple way to get around those irritable Supreme Court decisions.

She suggests that each time a law is ruled illegal, a new law, similar to the last, be passed  by the government. Any further contestation would take years and years to wind up the legal system and when that law is ultimately overturned, the process could be started all over again.  She has labelled this as legal terrorism.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the course of action the government is adopting with the proposal of Bill 103, a law created to replace that which was thrown out by the Supreme Court. That law is even more coercive than what it replaced.

Of course there's the old NOTWITHSTANDING CLAUSE, a shameful device created to appease provincial governments to sign on to the Constitution in 1982. It actually allows a provincial government to override a Supreme Court ruling for a period up to five years, in order, ostensibly, to maintain the British tradition of giving Parliament the ultimate say and so, as a last resort the government can always opt out of a decision after losing in court, a situation that makes suing the government even riskier.
It's hard to undertake a long legal challenge, knowing that even if you win in the highest court in the land, you can still be deprived of the benefits of your victory.


All of this means that the power of our courts, the last bastion of defence of our freedoms is being systematically eroded.

Sovereignist and nationalist groups have undertaken an organized assault to denigrate the Supreme Court, portraying it as an unelected Anglo preserve of Quebec-bashers.

Mario Beaulieu of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste and a group of his cohorts, have taken to Montreal's metro dressed in Supreme court garb to lampoon and trash the institution, blaming the court for taking Bill 101 apart one small piece at a time.

What they fail to remind Quebeckers is that every time a case is 'lost' in the Supreme Court of Canada, it has already been lost in Quebec's highest court. This inconvenient truth is never mentioned at all.

So the fantasy is woven that it is the Anglos who are denying Quebec their due. It's a dangerous concept considering that in most of these language cases, it is the government that drags the case to the Supreme Court after finding no remedy in Quebec.

The hypocrisy is infuriating and should be denounced.

The fact that both Quebec jurists and Ottawa jurists, both agree that these language laws are unconstitutional is not the narrative that militants want to spread and so the Supreme court alone is targeted in the most cynical and dishonest fashion.

34 comments:

  1. This is nothing new. Our Supreme Court is a kangaroo court, and Quebec keeps these kangaroos hopping all the time. So Quebec is bitching that it's an Anglo bastion? There are nine judges, and by some stupid law of laws, three have to be from Quebec. Since Quebec only has about 22% of the population, they should have only two judges max from Quebec, yet those nationalist morons bitch about it being Anglo!

    Then again, Quebec bellyaches at Canada over rainy skies and all the birds that drop dead falling from them. This is, as that fascist bitch Josée Legault puts it, legal terrorism. Worse yet, the rulings of the Quebec Superior Court should be best able to determine what is right for Quebec, and even THEY often bash the repressive language laws! The Kangaroo Court is only used to buy time until they say "no". Bourassa, the late self-described federalist invoked the notwithstanding clause (Bill 178) when it suited him to rule against English on commercial signs and now the living self-described federalist (my ass) Premier Goldilocks comes up with a law even more repressive and reprehensible than the one that was just defeated months ago.

    On a recent trip to Montreal with my girlfriend, we went to a store in Decarie Square, a predominantly English-speaking community in the Snowdon area. She became indignant when the store clerk at the Homesense could not speak English, but I obliged and spoke to her in French. She was from the French Caribbean and didn't strike me as a nationalist. I also remember my days at the now defunct Pascal Hardware empire and most customers switched to English when they heard me struggle in French. I was paying it forward, and I reminded my girlfriend that the language laws protect the Francophones, they do not protect us (Anglophones). I reminded her why she loves Ontario after living here just over a year.

    These are now more reasons why I support Quebec being thrown out of Canada if they don't vote themselves out first. Quebec is taxing the federal system far too much and what sickens me the most is how Premier Goldilocks, a one-time Captain Canada during the 1995 Referendum rally, is just as reprehensive in his attacks on the federal system as Parasite was in the 90s.

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  2. Why didn't you swap store clerks? I concede that person might not be working in the best area to be unilingual francophone but, on the other hand, nobody forces you to not seek someone else's assistance.

    Being unilingual sounds a bit retarded to me in 2010, and I've got barely enough of 5 languages, but who am I to force someone at do something they don't want?

    Anglos complain that Francos don't speak English and vice-versa. What a deaf dialogue.

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  3. Unilinguals are genetically and biologically impaired, since you CAN'T be unilingual in 2010. The problem is that Québécois (not French from France, who are two different entities, because Québécois are Québécois, not French) are proud of being unilingual and want their children to be proudly unilingual, defending this sub-cultural, low-class, awful, poverty-stricken dialect called joual, which has nothing to do with the real French from France. Ah, I forgot: real French call Québécois "les cousins de province"...

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  4. British called Canada : the Colony ! english canadian is not the real english from England !What is your slang, kind of joual too ! You're unilingual ! Keep your venom for you ! Francophones de tous les pays ! Unissez-vous !:)

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  5. The only problem is that Canadian English, though different from British and Australian one, is an official recognized language. YOUR joual is neither a language nor even a recognized one. French is a language, that's for sure.

    Désolé de vous décevoir, Mr. Pepsi, mais je parle et j'écris couramment quatre langues, dont le français de France est une...

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  6. Canadian English hasn't changed very much from British English...some linguists think that Canadian English is an improvement. But Quebec joual has become very bastardized from Parisian French.

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  7. Reply to anon at 12:57 am:

    You make some good points about how the Quebec Liberal party doesn't care about the province's Anglophones. So why do the Anglos continue to vote for them?

    On another point, has anyone grasped the significance of the recent ruling by the United Nations supreme court that Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence and secession from Serbia is completely legal and valid? The court took the view that no international laws are violated by an U.D.I. A great many countries are now expected to recognize Kosovo and assume diplomatic relations with her. This may have serious implications for Canada. The Toronto guy.

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  8. Anonymous said...
    British called Canada : the Colony ! english canadian is not the real english from England !What is your slang, kind of joual too ! You're unilingual ! Keep your venom for you ! Francophones de tous les pays ! Unissez-vous !:)

    Go! away! with! your! hotile! comments! you! freaken! imbecile!. You! never! have! anything! constructive! to! say! and! just! come! here! to! agitate! and! spread! your! ethnocentric! Quebecois! separatist! hate-filled! fanatasism!

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  9. To Anon July 23, 2010 12:16 PM ''Canadian English hasn't changed very much from British English...some linguists think that Canadian English is an improvement'' Who think that ? English Canadian ? Linguists from Queen's, Mc Gill ? I don't who you move in but all people in Québec speak french ! I never study joual that is identical to your Slang ! You can spit venom ! It's not serious !

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  10. I've been lived in what I call the deep english Canada. I can't say it was more edifying ! Québec, langue officielle: le français pas le joual ! ''Dites-moi qui vous fréquentez, je vous dirai qui vous êtes '' In your case, you're simply a Anglo Canadian Zealot ! Great for Kosovo ! Now Québec !

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  11. ''Il ne faut plus confondre l’ouverture à l’autre avec le reniement de soi.'' Bienvenue à tous au Québec, n'oubliez pas la langue commune c'est le français !

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  12. To EyeWitness July 23, 2010 5:20 PM: What's constructive in YOUR comments ? Just bashing the Québécois ? Spread false facts ? You can think what you want ! I'll do the same ! But for me, when all your comments is about bashing the French and the Québécois, you are blinded by your political views, not me ! For proof, you stole the last referendum illegaly

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  13. From Gérard Bouchard:''le multiculturalisme canadien postule qu'il n'existe pas de culture nationale ou majoritaire au Canada; or, il se trouve qu'au Québec, il y en a une et que c'est à partir de cette donnée fondamentale qu'il faut penser ici la diversité ethnoculturelle.'' p.122 Rapport Commission Bouchard-Taylor

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  14. @July 23rd 8:35

    I generally avoid people who are proud to not speak English as this implies fanatism. For the others, if I take my family for example, they're rather sorry for it but have and push their kids to not end up like them.

    You say unilinguals are genetically and biologically impaired, are you ready to say this about your friend who couldn't speak French?

    Plus, if she doesn't have more reason to learn French than my grand-mother English, then how is she impaired? There is nothing political in not learning/forgetting a language you never use.

    As long as someone doesn't use politics to stick to one language, a reason I just don't accept, they're free to do whatever they want if they're ok with their situation.

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  15. Toronto Guy, 2:44pm: To respond to your question "So why do the Anglos continue to vote for them?" That is the $64.000 question! I left Quebec half my life ago once I finished my cheap education at Concordia U going back to kindergarten. Concordia had a good Commerce program, my area of interest, so why not study there? I graduated debt-free. Tuition was peanuts, even compared to my big bro who studied at McGill. Being six years older, tuitions absolutely did not keep up with inflation (in fact, my education, not taking inflation into account, cost less in nominal dollars than it did in real inflationary dollars). His yearly tuition in the early 70s was about $750, mine was $550 per year six years and lots of inflation later. Anyway, I digress.

    My plan for the last eight years leading to my graduation from Concordia was to bide my time, study cheap and leave the Quebec that heavily subsidized my education. Then again, my parents paid more than enough taxes over their lifetimes to justify the subsidies, and so did my bro who last year retired at age 57 on a fully indexed government pension. He worked for Social Affairs for 32 years, and he's set for life between his retirement savings and that super generous superannuation plan known as RREGOP. I should be so lucky in the private sector!

    Good for my bro, though. He chose to stay, spoke and wrote French well enough for the Quebec Government, aced the OQLF exam, as the examiner put it, "with flying colours" and worked his way up to a pretty high position.

    I chose to leave as I did not see myself being able to function at the level of French expected, and I myself am not French. Now I live in Mississauga and speak my proficient French about 2/3 of each working day. Nevertheless, I feel more comfortable with my mediocre French in Ontario than I ever would in Quebec, but I'm not sorry I get the opportunity to keep it sharp enough to effectively communicate. There are great cerebral benefits to knowing a second language. Does that make me selfish in the reasons I think French is good for me? When it's all said and done, I think more people in Canada speak a second language than those who don't, but I can be wrong. Just an observation. My South African ex speaks Afrikaans, one of her mother's boyfriends spoke Slovakian, and I work with a slew of people who speak Chinese, the Filipino language (its proper name slips my mind), Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Farci and other languages, too!

    Sadly, Quebec is forcing it in unappetizing ways. In the early 1980s, the Quebec Government (OQLF) came up with a palatable way of promoting French with the slogan "Knowing French in Quebec is a plus". Unfortunately, the message was lost on all those who pushed French upon the minorities with excessive zeal. Anyway, 26 years after my move out of Laval and my view haven't changed.

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  16. To Anonymous!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

    Ya dude, I understand; you’re a hardcore ethnocentric nationalist. Nothing will ever change that, not even logic. You’ve been successfully indoctrinated, you’re very emotional about your beliefs, and now you’re ready and willing to deny ‘the others’ their rights, and take billions of dollar every year from ‘the others’ to pay for your failing ethnocentric social policies. But the one thing you will NOT take from ‘the others’ is criticism. Oh well, you better get used to it, because the internet has come to town, and the word is SO getting out about how Quebec is on the road to economic ruin with an unsustainable social system (day care, massive public sector, militant nationalistic unions, high taxes, low productivity, lack of investment, draconian language laws, nationalistic policies, etc.) all heavily funded by Canadians. It won’t last dude, so good luck to you. If you do separate have fun with that cash flow problem you’re going to have.

    “The trouble now is that Canada is subsidizing a province that is not only in financial trouble, but not all that interested in fixing itself. We have a large amount of money coming from the rest of Canada and also a pass to spend a lot of money on social programs that others pay in large part for us. So why do we have to change until we hit the wall? And that's coming."

    Claude Montmarquette, signatory of the Bouchard manifesto.

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  17. EyeWitness July 23, 2010 11:12 PM: You're a hardcore federalist zealot nationalist ! All I read about you is bashing on the Francophones and all Québec doing ! You kind of ''You're with us or against us '' And for your information, there's big difference between critics and insults ! For your information, I'm immigrant from Latin America, where the spanish just assimilate (or try) the first nations ! I choose to stay in Québec ! I don't feel what you say ''the others'' ! Maybe it's your personnal feeling ? You just don't want to take part of the Québec society ? But always throw oil on the fire with your insults on the political choice and the linguistic problem ! It's not a right to put commercial signs in other languages ! I've never see a group of store put their commercial signs in japanese or dutch in Colombia ? Why doing that if majority of the people speak spanish or first nations language ? For freedom ? Get serious !

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  18. @ Anonymous at 8:13 AM:

    You're living proof that we need to raise the standards for the immigrants that we are allowing into the country. We shouldn't be bringing in troublemakers who later advocate for the destruction of the country. We should consider making all new immigrants swear an oath of allegiance to Canada.

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  19. Anonymous said...
    Reply to anon at 12:57 am:

    ‘You make some good points about how the Quebec Liberal party doesn't care about the province's Anglophones. So why do the Anglos continue to vote for them?’

    I find it odd that so many people outside of Quebec wonder why Anglos continue to vote for the Quebec Liberal party, because the answer seems so obvious to me. What other choice do Anglos have? What is an Anglos to do, vote for the PQ and the blindingly hideous Pauline Marois? That’s like wondering why an Israeli Jew doesn’t vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the mayor of Jerusalem. All Quebec political parties are either subtly or blatantly anti-Anglophone, but the Liberal pretend to be a ‘softer’, so they give the appearance of being the best of all evils. Not much to go on really, but that’s all Anglos got. Pathetic you say? No doubt, but contemplating the alternatives can be very depressing and pointless for many an Anglo. Or maybe people are really wondering why we vote at all.

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  20. RE: Article SCC and
    Anonymous
    July 24, 2010 8:13 AM
    July 23, 2010 9:22 PM

    If our Supreme Court of Canada, our entire government and justice system are just fraudulent con-artists going through the motions to appease the peasants with a semblance of justice, when the ongoing Quebec injustice & violation of human rights is so blatant that the betrayal of societies trust in any type of government is shattered, as a society we need to take away the power of the arrogant elite in power, who have lost their way, their direction, mission and purpose as our leaders, who are no longer effective. Our government & electoral system is no longer working. The manipulations of the law to bypass common sense democracy, justice and fairness are twisted into mind boggling, convoluted, legalese leaving most non-lawyers peasants totally discombobulated. Legal manipulations, smoke screens, snake oil politicians weave their slippery slope of justice to suit their selfish power grab, while the common folk suffer endless injustice in the bowels of Quebec’s political sewer endlessly for decades on end. Until there is justice, there can be no peace. The venom spewed through out many of these posts reveal the futility of the on-going Quebec saga.
    Our Supreme Court of Canada is suppose to be the last bastion of hope for justice, when our government manipulates the laws for continued kangaroo courts to never resolve any issues such as Bill 103, then justice is delayed and denied. Our children and families suffer from kangaroo justice and snake oil politicians. We pay taxes to have a government system that works. When we have a corrupt government that no longer works for the justice of all the people, then it is time to reevaluate how we pay our taxes because they are not serving justice for all the citizens paying their wage. There needs to be a new way to vote on the issues, to get people elected, to limit the legal manipulations that only keep the lawyers employed. We need to figure out a way to use the internet to be a great equalizer to knock the power elite off their pedestal to bring justice to all the citizens and not just a select group of supposed “primacy”. There is no primacy of the human race. We are all humans. We are all citizens. We all deserve our basic human rights and Quebec does not have any right to take our rights away. The extremists feel self important, special and entitled to take our rights away, but they do not have that right. I don’t care how special the extremists think they are. We have basic human rights: United Declaration of human rights, Canadian Charter of Rights and more. Until Quebec is officially, no longer a part of Canada, then the Canadian laws and the laws of the United Nations should safe guard our human rights from the injustice of Quebec politicians.

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  21. Anonymous 8:35AM: “dialect called joual, which has nothing to do with the real French from France. Ah, I forgot: real French call Québécois "les cousins de province"...

    Anonymous 12:06 PM: “YOUR joual is neither a language nor even a recognized one. French is a language, that's for sure.”

    You’re right. I just got back from Europe, and I watched a little TV5 in Amsterdam. The Quebecois shows that TV5 airs are subtitled for the European French audience because to them, Joual is not even understandable. My gf lived in Brussels for 5 years, and she told me that Belgian French-language channels subtitle Quebec shows as well.

    I took a couple of pictures and posted them here. You will notice that the guy in the skit is Marc Labrèche, a “famous” Quebec “star”.

    http://adski77.blogspot.com/2010/07/tv5monde-subtitles-quebec-french.html

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  22. To adski July 25, 2010 10:29 AM : Québécois speak french, don't try to separate them from the Francophonie !

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  23. ''Until Quebec is officially, no longer a part of Canada, then the Canadian laws and the laws of the United Nations should safe guard our human rights from the injustice of Quebec politicians. '' Ok superman, commence par rapatrier Omar Khadr au lieu de penser que le Canada est la vertu du monde !

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  24. Funny when i read your comment: “dialect called joual, which has nothing to do with the real French from France. Ah, I forgot: real French call Québécois "les cousins de province"...

    I equate it as the same as those enationalist morons, hate filled no and lacking in respect. In the same vein are you snooty towards Scotland's way of speaking english, how about Wales, or if you happen to have a cockney accent?
    Diversity and different way of speaking is fine IMO. Our way of speaking french evolved, we absorbed from english and other languages, of course bigots like you and the SSJB deserve each other, maybe if put the english bigots and french zealots/bigots in a room with baseball bats we could solve our language issue :)
    Instead of hate, try discovering and opening your mind, what SSJB and you share is a close hatefilled world, i refuse to share it.
    Eric L

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  25. Hey Anonymous Kadhr est un extrémiste qui est allez outremer combattre le complot judéo chrétien (selon leur termionologie), il mérite sont sort, ciao.

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  26. @anonymous 11:45am

    It’s not me that you have to convince. I don’t “separate” you from the Francophonie, for I don’t care for the Francophonie or Quebec’s place in it. It’s the French themselves and channel TV5 that are distancing themselves from you. By subtitling Quebec shows, they are sending a clear message: “you Quebecois speak some sort of a dialect, something that sounds like French but we do NOT understand it”. So it’s them that you have to convince that you DO actually speak French. So convince them, or simply drop your Joual and start speaking proper French so they don’t have to close caption your TV shows.

    @anonymous 12:41pm

    I actually remember watching a Scottish movie on ShowTime once, and it was subtitled. There was a disclaimer during commercial breaks that said: “Subtitles provided for North American audience”. And trust me, the subtitles were necessary. Noone in North America would have been able to understand anything in that movie.

    Is there a difference between the Scots and the Quebeckers? I think so. I think the Scots grasp that their version of English isn’t universal, and that it’s the American English that is best understood worldwide. Same for the Welsh, Irish, and speakers of London dialects like Cockney. Quebeckers, on the other hand, seem to delude themselves that they speak French, while in fact they speak a dialect of it. I met French immigrants to Montreal that told me that it took them months to get used to Joual. A friend of mine from Congo spend the first two months of his stay in Montreal speaking English to his Quebecois roommate because he didn’t understand his roommate’s French. And that’s despite the fact that French was the Congolese guy’s first language.

    As far as instituting that some comments on this blog are a reflection of SSJB, I wouldn’t go that far. First of all, it’s the SSJB that usually starts this nonsense. Second of all, SSJB is a semi-political organization that tries to influence government decisions in regards to language. Blog posters simply express their opinions and have no intention of hounding store owners or public officials for posting signs in a “forbidden” language.

    Instead of picking on "militant" Anglos, I would suggest that Francophones first sort out organizations like SSJB, IF, MMF, RRQ. Because this is where all this nonsense originates. Everything else is just a reaction to it.

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  27. To Anonymous (alias Juan Valdez or the Manic Hispanic) at 11:45 AM:

    If you have obtained Canadian citizenship, you should be stripped of it and deported back to buttfuck Colombia!

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  28. Anonymous said...

    '' Ok superman, commence par rapatrier Omar Khadr au lieu de penser que le Canada est la vertu du monde ! “

    What are talking about? Your response is completely obtuse and unrelated. However, judging from your other posts (which can be identified by your absurd over use of the exclamation mark [!] to indicate how emphatic and indignant you are when challenged) you haven’t made an intelligent response to any of the valid points other people have raised. You don’t even make reference to the editor’s post. I think I see a pattern here; if a particular point overwhelms your limited intellect, you insult, rattle of random anti-Anglo falsehoods, and change the subject. Sounds familiar, I bet the nationalists couldn’t wait to get their hands on you, such an impressionable and lost soul. Anyway, you represent well…carry on.

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  29. Anonymous said:
    Instead of picking on "militant" Anglos, I would suggest that Francophones first sort out organizations like SSJB, IF, MMF, RRQ. Because this is where all this nonsense originates. Everything else is just a reaction to i

    Instead of defending morons on either side, how about stating the obvious... they are morons and should not be driving the agenda of any policy of this province. I see no difference of a hater of english and a hater of french, they are the same and deserve each other. any moronic action from one does not justify the moronic response from the other. The entire french-canadian chip on their shoulder is based on that... and it is wrong. So are you.
    2 wrong do not make a right.
    Quebec has it's own dialects, la beauce has one, Gaspé has one, les acadiens have one. I enjoy all of them. God forbid the scots lose theirs,or the welsh, we would be poorer for it.
    Eric L

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  30. Again, if you put up a commercial sign in French only, no Anglo will pick on you. If an Anglo were to put up a sign in English only, there could be a picket of RRQ/SSJB/IF/MMF zealots outside of his establishment. Not to mention the legal recourse the protesters would have: a tax-funded OQLF empowered by law to act on these idiotic complaints. And not to mention the fact that no Francophone newspaper, no news channel, no politician would denounce the idiotic picket and defend the store owner.

    So you're comparing apples and oranges. "Militant" Anglos are defending their rights, militant Francos are defending laws that deprive a group of people of basic rights. There is a huge difference between the two. And I'm not even an Anglo and I'm saying it.

    Again, sort out SSJB, IF, MMF, RRQ first. I want to see an article in a major French newspaper denouncing these organizations. I want to see a reportage on a French channel denouncing them. I want to hear a Quebec politician denouncing them. Having some anonymous poster denouncing them is not enough, especially if it's an apologetic denunciation with "Anglos are the same" attached to it.

    Nope, in THIS particular case, Anglos aren't the same.

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  31. adski makes a good arguement. I totally agree with this statement and find it maddening that others avoid this obvious point:

    "Militant" Anglos are defending their rights, militant Francos are defending laws that deprive a group of people of basic rights. There is a huge difference between the two."

    Me too, I wait for the day when the French media/politicians etc. publically denounce the belligerent language bullies. But after decades of waiting, I've become pessimistic and now suspect that this will never happen because the RRQ/SSJB/IF/MMF zealots are doing the 'dirty work' that all Quebecois want done. The zealots keep things tidy for the rest who give their tacit support and then turn their backs on reality and say 'don't look at me, I'm not one of them, I'm actually open and tolerant'. Enablers all; remind you of anyone?

    Eric L, I think you need to grasp this important distinction and stop dismissing and labeling upset and vocal Anglos (who have legitimate grievances) as intolerant morons. You add insult to injury, by lumping them together with the hostile Franco-supremacists, who have an organized, nefarious agenda. Anglos don't begin to compare (in words or action) and to say they do, is beyond all reason and add fuel to the fire.

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  32. ''Quand je parle de la Loi 101 avec des anglophones, ils me prennent pour un séparatiste. Ils prétendent apprécier le fait français, mais ne veulent ni le reconnaître, ni le protéger.'' Neil Bissoondath

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  33. Anonymous said...
    ''Quand je parle de la Loi 101 avec des anglophones, ils me prennent pour un séparatiste. Ils prétendent apprécier le fait français, mais ne veulent ni le reconnaître, ni le protéger.'' Neil Bissoondath
    Anglos do recognize the French language; they can't help it, successive Quebec governments have been ramming the language down everyone's throat for decades. However, it's not the responsibility of one language group to forgo their rights to protect another language group rights, at least not in a democratic society. Quebec language laws suspend the rights of Anglos to allegedly protect the rights of Francophone’s. The Quebecois have created a two tier society where Anglophones are second class citizens who don't have equal access to jobs, can’t openly express their selves or advertize their businesses in English, are denounced publicly by language zealots, and are ridiculed for speaking English, even in supposedly English friendly locals like ENGLISH HOPTIALS. Get a clue for fuck sake, if you want Anglos to respect and help protect the French language, you need to FIRST show some respect and consideration for their language and rights in Quebec. Don’t tell them to ‘get the fuck out if you don’t like it’. Don’t tell them their culture sucks or that they don’t have one. Don’t tell them they are imperialist bastards from another time. Don’t silently endorse racist’s language groups that target and abuse Anglos. Don’t tell Quebec Anglos that they should go live in Canada (because we do live in Canada). If Francophones had worked with Anglos all along instead of against them, we would all be better off today. As long as the so called moderate Quebecois remain silent and compliant, the radical language groups will drive the agenda and presume to speak for all Quebecois. I guess the majority likes it that way.

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