Immigrant Threat to French Language Just More Fear-Mongering

Immigrant hordes threatening Quebec...bah humbug!

Every good salesperson needs a good 'spiel,' a well rehearsed story or pitch, which can engage and hook a potential client.
Of course, it doesn't mean that it needs to be true, just convincing enough, agreeable enough or plain frightening enough to manipulate.

My favorite example is the 1957 Broadway musical production of "The Music Man" wherein a con man comes to a naïve small-time, mid-west American town and frightens the locals with talk of impending doom. He frightens the elders by playing up the dangerous influence of the town's new pool hall on local teenagers and offers an alternative, a marching band that could otherwise keep them occupied.
Of course it is the flimflam artist himself who will supply the instruments and the uniforms, the whole affair a device to swindle the town out of their hard-earned money.

♫ ♬ "Ya got trouble, my friend, right here,
I say, trouble right here in River City. ....♩ ♪ ♫

And so the fear of the local children succumbing to the scourge of the evil corrupting influence of pool frightens the townsfolk into paying the snake-oil salesman for a solution to a problem that never existed.

If you have a few minutes, watch the video below and marvel at the talent of an expert manipulator.
Substitute 'pool' for 'English,' and tell me this cynical con artist doesn't remind you of Mario Beaulieu.

It's a premise so stupid that its hard to believe the exact same thing is going on here in Quebec where French language militants like Mr. Beaulieu, are frightening francophone Quebecers over language, in order to create a panic that can only be assuaged by sovereignty.

According to the latest iteration of the separatist spiel, the mongrel horde of immigrants coming to Quebec threatens the very nature of Quebec society because they are adopting English at an alarming rate.
It's important to note that sometimes Mr. Beaulieu complains about the high ratio of immigrants adopting English and sometimes he complains about immigrants in general, touching base with those who are fearful of assimilation as well as xenophobes in general.

In this radio interview, two hostile interviewers scoff at Beaulieu's contention that Quebec is in danger of anglicization with one actually calling him a 'loser.'
In reaction Beaulieu, loses his cool and warns the interviewer and listeners that over the next 10 years, the province will be invaded by 500,000 immigrants, as many people as presently live in Quebec City! Link{fr}

Before I deconstruct the current separatist immigrant scare story, I'd like to remind readers that this spiel is an evolution, in the past, the separatist mantra was that Quebecers were exploited economically by the English and needed sovereignty to prosper. That argument fell by the wayside and into disfavor as Quebecers assumed the levers of their own economic prosperity.

The next spiel offered by language militants was that learning English was in and of itself an act of assimilation, and the only way to protect Quebec from  the scourge of bilingualism was Independence.
But that argument too has been rendered ineffective as most Quebecers have decided, that in a shrinking world of interdependence, English is not only desirable but vitally necessary, at least for themselves and their own families.

And so the evolution of the spiel continues where now it is the immigrants and their propensity towards English that is sending Quebec careening wildly down the inevitable road of linguistic destruction.

Put simply, the new message is that because immigrants are choosing to assimilate into the English community, within a few short years, Quebec will become anglicized.
This is the new Bonhomme sept-heures, the linguistic bogeyman that is supposed to frighten francophone Quebecers towards linguistic intolerance, leading to sovereignty.

So let's crack the numbers and take a look at reality, do the immigrants really threaten the nature of Quebec's French society?
As usual, a cold hearted look at the facts tells a remarkably different story.

We first have to get the numbers straight, Quebec has a population of about eight million people, 87% of whom are on the francophone side of the language equation. It includes those whose mother tongue is French and those who have adopted French as their language of daily use. The 13% balance includes English native speakers and those who have adopted English as their language of daily use.

That is the linguistic reality of Quebec, notwithstanding what separatist and language militants peddle about mother tongue, historical English, blah. blah..blah.

Each year Quebec greets about 49,000 immigrants, but also loses 10,000 to 12,000 immigrants, who abandon Quebec for the greener pastures in the ROC.
Why they leave is the great unanswered question, nobody has dared to stir that pot, but I have my own suspicions where family, language difficulties and better employment opportunities are the principal reasons.

So the statement by Mario Beaulieu that we are being invaded by half a million immigrants over ten years is dishonest right off the bat, the number is under 400,000.

Mr Beaulieu's contention that twenty years ago, 90% of these immigrants assimilated into the English side of the language equation, doesn't reflect today's reality where the majority, or about 55% become part of the French-speaking majority,

So of the 39,000 net immigrants that come to Quebec each year, about 22,000 assimilate into the francophone majority. The 17,000 net immigrants per year that assimilate into the English side is what, according to militants, will transform Quebec into an Anglophone empire.

Now in order to maintain the present linguist lines of 87% French / 13% English, the number of those immigrants choosing English should be should be about 7,000.
In other words, the English community is growing by about 10,000 per year in relation to the French community.
This only holds true if the present trend is frozen and is perhaps unrealistic considering that over the years the number of immigrants choosing French is rising. As I mentioned before, over the last twenty years the percentage of immigrants choosing French has risen from 10% to 55%.

At any rate, this massive Anglicization, even in the worst case scenario will likely amount to about no more than 100,000 new Anglos over ten years.

This in a province of 8 million.

It means a linguistic shift of about 1 to 1½ percent, certainly not an Earth shattering change.

But to Mario Beaulieu and his merry men of Chicken Littles it is enough to make hay.

Like the flimflam artist in the Broadway play, Mario Beaulieu doesn't really have to believe in the spiel, he just has to sell it.

He isn't a necessarily racist, he isn't necessarily a xenophobe, he's just a cheap huckster trying to sell sovereignty like band instruments, by any means he can.