She's Baaaaackkk...... and She's Out to Change your Religion

There's little doubt that Louise Beaudoin is the poster doll of French language militants who believe in the philosophy that the citizens exist to serve the state and that individual rights are subservient to perceived societal objectives.

 Thirty-five years ago, she along with Camille Laurin, the father of Bill 101 were the two personalities that became notorious not only for their militancy, but for the absolute delight that they hardly masked in taking down the English community a peg.

Perhaps Terry Mosher (drawing under the pen named "AISLIN") the famed Montreal Gazette political cartoonist summed up the collective feeling of the English community's opinion of her in depicting the bogey-woman Beaudoin in a Nazi-like dominatrix outfit, ready to crack the whip on unrepentant Anglos. Incidentally, this caricature is considered one of the finest ever produced by a Canadian political cartoonist.

There is no political radical, religious fanatic or cultist, so dangerous as those who believe in their divine right to dictate their view on a captive community. Smug, arrogant and superior, these Quebec ideologues consider the great unwashed unworthy of making their own decisions and believe that there is a certain noble calling in forcing people to do the 'right thing.'

Now Madame Beaudoin is back, preaching more limits on personal freedom. The latest assault is the so-called 'Charter of Secularism', a project that would remove religion from public life and render the government officially neutral when it comes to all matters pertaining to the divine.

"We need to draw a line in the sand, that will separate politics and religion in order to have a totally secular Quebec" Louise Beaudoin

 Madame Beaudoin and friends are using the debate over Bill 94 (outlawing the veil in various degrees) to push the Province towards a radical extreme, removing all religion from Quebec society.

Madame Beaudoin has been vocal in warning that she intends on pursuing an agenda that is much more serious than just banning the burqa. For that reason the Premier has back pedalled furiously and delayed hearings into the matter until the Fall. The hearings are fast looking to become a xenophobic repeat of the Bouchard/Taylor commission.

Beaudoin makes no bones about the fact that she is preparing a comprehensive and all-out assault on religion with the goal to removing all vestiges of religion from public life.

On the immediate agenda;

• the de-subsidization of private religious schools.
• the de-subsidization of religious day-care.
• the banning of any religious clothing or jewelry in any public institution, including schools, hospitals government offices and the courts by both employees and users.
• the banning of any type of religious accommodation at all.
• the total removal of religious affiliation in public institutions (think-Jewish General Hospital and its Kosher food)
• The banning of Kosher or Halal designations on widely distributed food. (Only specialty stores would be allowed to sell these items.

Later on

• Banning private religious schools.
• Banning private religious day-cares.
• Banning religious garb in public
• Banning private Sunday school classes
• Removing tax status of religious organizations
• Banning all religious clothing and medallions in public.

Too much? Already we are hearing from within the ranks of radical atheists that teaching children religion is akin to indoctrination and child abuse. Some groups are calling for religious institutions to be held accountable for the unequal treatment women are subjected to by the various organized religions.
If you read French, here is one example of a bitter attack on organized religion. LINK

Louise Beaudoin is a radical secularist, as well as a radical separatist. She is showing her teeth again like the nasty old pit bull that she is.

The evil bitch is back ...... and she wants your God.

Lack of Representation Nothing New for Anglo Quebeckers

In light of recent events surrounding Bill 103, (the Quebec Liberal party's reaction to the rejection by the Supreme court of Bill 104, a law enacted by the separatist Parti Quebecois back in 2002 to ostensibly close a loophole where ineligible students could gain entry into English schools,) a lot of readers have fulminated (well a few, anyway) in the comment section over the sad fact that Anglophone Quebeckers, have virtually no influence in the Liberal  party and that perhaps its time to give rebirth to an Anglo rights party again similar to the Equality Party of way back when.
The handful of Liberal MNAs who are English or Ethnic and who represent predominantly Anglo ridings appear to be co-opted to parrot the anti-English line that the Liberals, as well as all the other parties in the National Assembly adhere to. It's particularly galling to see them forced to bite their tongues on language issues like Bill 103 in order to keep their jobs.

Before I discuss the idea of a English rights party, lets review our Anglo and Ethnic talent in the National Assembly.
At first glance, it appears that Quebec is the only place in North America where not only bees, but WASPS are also endangered species, at least in Quebec's National Assembly.

By my count there is only one male and one female that can qualify as White, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant, a situation that vastly under represents the 400,0000 Quebec citizens that can be classified as such.

Dividing Quebec's population by the 125 Parliamentary seats available yields approximately 70,000 people per constituency, notwithstanding that  urban ridings contain more voters than suburban ones (this is how the PQ gets disproportionately more seats  than votes.)
These numbers would indicate that in a perfect world Anglos would hold about 12 seats and Ethnics the same.

When it comes to overall representation it's clear that Anglos and ethnics are underrepresented across the board. With twenty percent of the population one would hope that Anglos and Ethnics would hold about 25 Parliamentary seats. Here's a rundown of the twelve that they do occupy. As it stands, Anglos hold just two seats and Ethnics ten. It can be argued that there is some crossover, but the basic facts remain.

It appears that when the Liberals designate someone to run in a safe English riding, the candidate is chosen using a formula whereby two birds can be killed with one stone. These 'safe' Anglo ridings are vehicles whereby ethnics who can double as Anglos are chosen.
 
An important element to Anglo/Ethnics Liberal representation in Parliament is the distinct lack of 'weight' that they bring. Only Sam Hadad can be said to exercise any real influence. The two Anglos rookies who were inserted into cabinet were unfortunately, mere tokens (and I hate to use the term) and represent nothing more than Jean Charest proxies, chosen for their docility and willingness to obey their master. Behind the scene, it's Jean Charest runs the Justice and Immigration departments using Yolande James and Kathleen Weil like a Charlie McCarthy marionette. As for Laurence Bergman, the designated Jew of the Assembly, it seems that with all that talent in Hebrew community, the Liberal opted for the nebbish. Perhaps Russel Copeman, one of the few competent Liberal Anglo politicians of late, read the writing on the wall and left politics.

It's painfully clear that when it comes to  representing Anglos, no party is really interested and protecting Anglo rights is actually perceived as a drawback by all.

Even the conservative ADQ is publicly against any accommodation that would allow English schools any device that would allow them to pinch non-eligible students.

Tym Machine in his blog reminds us that Mario Dumont favours a mixed health care system, one where a private option augments the public health system.
Yet Dumont expresses outrage at the idea that several hundred families can 'buy' their children an English education.
Apparently it's fine to jump the queue and purchase a hip replacement operation, but buying an English education is an affront to every Quebecker.

So it isn't surprising that none of our political parties are at all interested in protecting or boosting access to English schools. It's just bad politics, so many frustrated Anglos are suggesting a return to the days of the Equality Party, where Anglos forgoe voting the traditional Liberal way and elect English rights activists.

I remember the last time this happened, back in 1989 when the Equality Party manged to get almost 5% of the Provincial vote and elected four members to the National Assembly. At that time Anglos were furious over the provisions of Bill 101. I guess nothing has changed....

But the sad reality was that the party was marginally competent, sadly dysfunctional and grossly ineffective.
I've known Robert Libman (the leader of the party) professionally and as a friend for many years and have nothing but the highest respect for his abilities, competence and honesty. That being said, the other members of the party could only be described as accidental politicians.
The late Gordon Atkinson was also a great friend of mine and a mentor and teacher. He was honourable and  as refined  a gentleman as you could find. As soldier by training, he viewed issues in black and white and as you can guess was ill-suited to politics. He never fit in at the National Assembly and quickly lost interest in the whole political thing.

Neil Cameron was a well meaning academic, but was also not prepared for life in the political fast lane. He also turned out to be a disappointing bust, his background made him wholly unsuitable for the rough and tumble world of politics.
As for the last member of the quartet, Richard Holden was the joker in the deck. Clearly unbalanced when elected, he was soon kicked out of the party and spited his former colleagues by crossing the floor and sitting as a member of the Parti Quebecois, something that sent his Westmount constituents into a state of apoplexy. After his defeat in the next election, he was rewarded with a patronage job by his separatist masters but remained seriously unbalanced and committed suicide by jumping out of his Atwater condo.

After the Equality party imploded, it was a signal to the Anglo community that the 'independent' experiment was a bust.
Like the Bloc Quebecois of today, the influence of the Equality party was negligible and in fact made it easier for mainstream Quebeckers to ignore the constituency.

Sometimes there are no good options and sadly Anglos face the sad truth that they will never be adequately represented, no matter which route they pick.

For those wishing for an independent Anglo representation, it will never happen again and perhaps the only role of our Anglo and Ethnic members of the Liberal caucus is to remain, their presence a reminder that we persevere.

Sad....I know.....

Bill 101- A Francophone Prison

We'd all like to believe that we all stand equally before the law and are imbued with commensurate rights guaranteed and afforded by  the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Quebeckers get a double dose of protection with the Quebec Human Rights Charter.  Both acts created to ostensibly protect our basic human rights, regardless of who or what we are.
But with all the glorious prose and good intentions of both those Charters, it isn't quite true.

You see, If you are an immigrant or are born to a Francophone family in Quebec, your rights differ from those of someone born to an Anglophone family.

That's right, Anglophones and others don't share equality before the law, not in Quebec, anyways.

If you are an Anglophone, you are born with the inherent right to receive a public education in either French or in English, your choice. For everyone else, it's tough nougies, French and French alone is your only education option, thanks to Bill 101 the language law passed by the separatist PQ government back in 1977.

In other words Francophones and Allophones are discriminated against because of language,there's really no other way to look at it, unless you're a constitutional lawyer.

Here's what the Quebec Charter of Rights says about all discrimination. Notice that language is specifically cited;

CHAPTER I.1

RIGHT TO EQUAL RECOGNITION AND EXERCISE OF RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS

Discrimination forbidden.

10. Every person has a right to full and equal recognition and exercise of his human rights and freedoms, without distinction, exclusion or preference based on race, colour, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, civil status, age except as provided by law, religion, political convictions, language, ethnic or national origin, social condition, a handicap or the use of any means to palliate a handicap.

Now I'm no lawyer, but clearly language may not be used to discriminate against anybody. Notice that there is no proviso that limits this protection, as there is the after the word 'age', which adds the proviso-"except as provided by law." It seems to me that this proviso needs to be added to the 'language' reference, if Bill 101 is to be legal.

No matter, the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled in this matter at least three times and has come to the conclusion that language discrimination is permissible. So much for the concept that we have any real real Charter rights in Canada. At any rate, even if the Supreme Court found the practice illegal, there is an escape clause (Notwithstanding Clause) that permits provinces to bypass inconvenient decisions. How very Canadian!

As an Anglophone Quebecker, I don't think much about the Bill 101, it hardly affects me or my family.

We are the privileged class.

Aside from compulsory French signs in public, which don't offend me at all, the world turns nicely for me and my fellow Anglos.
We are educated in English, enjoy unlimited television, radio and press in our language and we can live in communities that are just about as English as we want. We can receive services from the government and our towns and cities in English and can be treated in hospitals run almost completely in English. English entertainment, be it movies, theater or music, is widely available, as is service in most  stores and restaurants.  Our children and their children are also guaranteed these same rights.
Like I said, life is good.

For Francophones, despite all the moaning and groaning by nationalists, life is also good, everything, but everything, in the Province is offered in French and one can easily get by speaking no English, which most Francophones don't..

But for some Francophones, it's not enough. Speaking French in Quebec is fine, but not so much when one leaves the province. Some parents want their children to become bilingual and that's where they come into conflict with their own government, which has a different view.

For the government and French language nationalists, bilingual Francophones are not in the best interest of the preservation of the French language and so Bill 101 was enacted not only to force ethnics into French schools, but to keep Francophones out of English schools. This, coupled with the fact that English language instruction in French schools is kept at the most rudimentary level, leaves Francophone students functionally unilingual. There is hardly a high school graduate from a Francophone institution who can order breakfast in Toronto.

Ever since Bill 101was enacted, Quebeckers have become less bilingual, a happy result for nationalists who wish to to impose the "barefoot and pregnant" syndrome, where people are deliberately starved of a skill in order to control them from leaving home.
Nationalists remind us that Quebec is surrounded by a sea of English and that French speakers make up just 2% of the North American population, yet just 35% of Quebeckers can carry on a conversation in English.
In Europe, where English is native only in Great Britain and Ireland, the rate of bilingualism reaches up to 90% in some countries.

A good comparison to Quebec, is the country of Denmark, whose 6 million inhabitants speak a language that is shared only in Greenland and one part of Germany. But the numbers are small, less than 100,000 speak Danish outside the country.  If Quebeckers think French is in danger then Danish must be on its death bed.
But in Denmark English is embraced as the language of internationalism and schools teach the language early and successfully. 90% of Danes can speak English and they speak it very well.
Graduate school classes throughout the country teach business courses exclusively in English to prepare students for the real world. Danes don't seem to be particularly afraid of becoming Anglophones or having their culture destroyed by English.

The all-encompassing fear and the major argument among Quebec proponents of the ban on English is the premise that bilingualism leads to assimilation, a false assumption if you'd  ask the Danes.

While the entire world sees the benefit of learning English, Quebec stands with countries like Islamist Somalia that forbid the teaching of English.

Not all Francophones  in Quebec are pleased with being dictated to. Last week the leader of the small conservative party the Action démocratique (ADQ)  demanded that English actually be taught in schools with the goal of getting students to become bilingual. Gérard Deltell, the leader, expressed his distress at the low rate of bilingualism among the young.
This brought out the traditional naysayers who actually used the excuse that making children bilingual was too expensive and that there is a profound lack of qualified teachers.

Switching an additional class or two into English from French has no added costs and as for teachers, here's some advice. Hire ANGLOPHONES! They are already bilingual. When I went to English high school in Montreal, most of my French teachers were Francophones who spoke almost no English!

How does the PQ react to all of this?
By announcing that they will extend the language ban to English Cegeps (junior college) where Francophones are enrolling after high school, in order to learn English.

And so the language nationalist propaganda machine drones on and on, repeating the message that English is dangerous and that bilingualism leads to assimilation. 
After forty years of getting this message hammered home, most Quebeckers (but not all) accept it as Gospel.
Those who are brave enough to break out of the language prison are seen as having betrayed the 'collectivity.' Francophones in English colleges and universities make language nationalists ill. 

Pauline Marois' quote this week, says it all.

"It is not acceptable to send this message, that it is possible to have free choice."

And that is the essential question.

Do citizens have an obligation to serve to state, or does the state have the obligation to serve its citizens?

In banning free choice, it obvious what the answer is in Quebec.

NDP -'Happy' Jack and 'Oncle' Thom Sell out Anglos

In politics, expediency trumps principles most of the time. All political parties face moral dilemmas between sticking to the values and principles that define their party or bending to public opinion in order to gain the votes that will keep them in business.

While no party is immune to public opinion (save the Greens,) there's no doubt that the NDP is the champion at selling out their ideals in the sad and often futile pursuit of votes. While the Liberals and the Conservatives flop around on occasion, at least they have some semblance of a cohesive national policy.

The NDP currently faces such a dilemma in relation to the scrapping of the long-gun registry. It would seem natural that ideologically the party would  be in favour of keeping the registry going, but many of its elected members from rural ridings are going to vote with the Conservatives to scrap the registry. In fact the Liberals, who have nothing to protect in rural Canada and whose constituency clearly support the registry, are trying to humiliate the NDP for its unprincipled stance with a nasty poster campaign. LINK

So the NDP, remains all things to all people.
In British Columbia they are a light imitation of the Greens, espousing a policy of environmentalism and sustainability. They appeal to the upper middle-class Yuppies, who are just a tad afraid of the radical greens.
In Ontario they are the union party, manning the barricades for the working man.

Between these two provinces lies the NDP constituency, the rest of the country provides a seat or two here and there but nothing sustainable. Most members outside the traditional power base have won their seats on the strength of their own candidacy or other quirks such as a constituency that is on the outs with both major parties.

Nothing hurts the credibility of the NDP as a national party as the almost complete lack of representation in the province of Quebec. And so back-stopping the NDP's lone member in Quebec,  'Oncle' Thomas Mulcair, in his Outremont riding remains of paramount importance.

Outremont is a strange riding that combines upper income Francophones with a hodgepodge of well-off English and ethnics including Canada's biggest congregation of Hasidic Jews. The riding has traditionally gone Liberal, but with the sponsorship scandal and the Liberals at the nadir of their popularity in 2007, Mulcair was able to eke out a protest vote victory, when Liberal Jean Lapierre abandoned politics in a huff. Within a year of his by-election win a federal election was called where he managed to hold onto his seat - barely.
He is by no means safe next time around, so tailoring a platform that appeals to the yuppie Francophones in the riding, who represent his major constituency is of critical importance to the NDP.

But more important than that, the NDP is now looking forward to a possible coalition with the Liberals in the next federal election. Layton and the NDP are carving out a position that will make them a popular second choice in Quebec, representing a suitable dancing partner for a coalition. Since the Bloc Quebcois has demonstrated itself wholly unacceptable to Canadians, it befalls the NDP to take up the mantle of Quebec radicalism. 

That is why the NDP has become the second national Canadian political party to espouse an anti-English/pro-Quebec nationalist platform and have been front and center promoting a French nationalist agenda. It is a NDP member who proposed that Supreme Court judges be bilingual, a wildly popular concept in Quebec, not so much outside.

Uncle Thom and Happy Jack are careful to  speak in French when denouncing Bill 103 and avoid any talk of language issues when talking to reporters in English. When the Francophone press appears, it's back to Anglo-bashing.

The latest outrage is the NDP lending its name and support to a rainbow coalition of Separatist, Nationalist and semi-violent radical organizations that have banded together to do battle against the 'nefarious' Bill 103.

Here's a press release put out by the Saint Jean Baptist Society, Quebec's leading separatist organization, who proudly welcome the NDP into its ranks of a coalation formed to fight Bill 103.

Des représentants de plusieurs autres organismes appuyant la Coalition seront présents. Ces organismes sont : Québec Solidaire, le Nouveau Parti démocratique, les syndicats FTQ, SFPQ et FAE, le Mouvement national des Québécoises et des Québécois (MNQ), le Mouvement Montréal français (MMF), le Mouvement Montérégie français, le Mouvement Laurentide français, Impératif français, le Réseau de Résistance québécoise (RRQ), le Rassemblement pour un pays souverain (RPS), les Jeunes Patriotes du Québec (JPQ) et le Mouvement Pacifique pour l'Indépendance du Québec (MPIQ) et plusieurs autres.

Welcome aboard, boys, you're in good company!

It is utterly unbelievable that the NDP's pandering to the Quebec radical movement goes unreported in English Canada. Try any Google search coupling 'Bill 103' and 'NDP' together and you'll get nothing in English. Do a French search using 'NPD' plus 'Loi 101' and you'll get a flood a flood of stories about the NDP joining forces with a coalition of radical French separatist organizations. Try it...

Bill 103- A Dog's Beakfast

If Premier Charest was trying to find some sort of middle ground with Bill 103, it a pretty safe bet that he failed miserably. Perhaps I was right when I said a few days ago that it was a plan to create language controversy so that the heat could be taken off the corruption debate.

The new law replaces the old Bill 104, which was rejected by the Supreme Court, eliminating a loophole whereby children, not eligible for English schooling, could win that right by attending a private English school for as little as one year and then switching to a public English school.

The replacement law, Bill 103, is different from its predecessor in that it extends the required period of private English instruction to three years, as well as making students and their families jump through additional hoops to qualify for public English education.
Convoluted as it is, it might just pass muster with the Supreme Court.

The original law, Bill 104, passed by the separatist Parti Quebecois back in 2002, was enacted in reaction to the approximately 500 students a year that availed themselves of this 'secret passage' to get into English public school. The English school boards, desperate for students, turned a blind eye to what was and remains an underhanded way of getting around the law. Not only French language radicals, but the average Joe is displeased that these students are essentially buying their way into English school.
While polls indicate the majority of Quebeckers believe in free educational choice, the idea of rich people circumventing Bill 101 or any other law with money is unacceptable to almost everyone.

All of this wouldn't be necessary if the government had listened and reacted fairly to the English school boards complaint that falling birthrates coupled with the effects of Bill 101 have contributed to a precipitous decline in enrolment in English schools.

Quebeckers (both Anglophone and Francophone) don't produce enough babies to keep the population stable and so immigrants are required to stave off population decline.

But if all these immigrants are forced into French schools only, it means that English school enrolment is bound to decline. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out, despite of all the phony-baloney statistics produced to the contrary, by language extremists like Mario Beaulieu.
It is a simple and incontrovertible fact, something that even blockheads in government should be able to grasp.

Anglo school boards need more students or they will die, it's as simple as that. If the government is okay with that scenario, than the government should say so.

If the government believes that the English community has a right to a viable school system, it needs to provide a way to top up enrolment. Not drastically, just enough to maintain the system as it is.

The government could have avoided all this unpleasantness by negotiating a deal with the English school boards that would stop this back door practice voluntarily, in exchange for allowing other students to fill the void and keep the English student population stable.
It would have avoided a humiliating loss in the Supreme court.

One of the simplest and fairest ways to do this would be to give a Bill 101 exemption to all immigrant children who come from English-speaking countries like the USA, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and English speaking island nations of the Caribbean. These students already speak English as their first language and forcing them into French schools doesn't make much sense anyways. There aren't that many immigrants in this category to begin with, less than 400 English families immigrate to Quebec each year from these countries. They would probably produce roughly 500 potential students, a neat compromise! It might also open the door to more Anglos immigrating to Quebec. As of now Anglophones avoid Quebec as a destination of choice like the plague.

To French language militants this solution is likely less acceptable than drinking a glass of poison, but the majority of Quebeckers would probably see it as fair.

The new Bill 103 will probably cut the number of back door entries into the English school system by half, to less than 300, but for the militants, it is 300 too many. Get ready to see demonstrations and parades, as separatist and language militant leaders wax rhapsodic over the injustice and inhumanity of it all.

A general call to arms.... all over a paltry 300 students in a Province of almost eight million people.

Of course 'Uncle' Thom Mulcair  and 'Smiling' Jack Layton of the NDP are front and center, joining a coalition composed of separatist and radical French groups formed to oppose the law. And so they are joining such ignoble groups as the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Conseil de la souveraineté, Parti québécois, Québec solidaire, Bloc québécois, Syndicalistes et progressistes pour un Québec libre plus the always threateningly popular Réseau de Résistance québécoise and Jeunes Patriotes du Québec.

'Smiling' Jack and 'Uncle' Thom have no interest in seeing the Quebec English school system remaining viable. Not enough votes in that, so better to join forces with the radical separatists and hope some votes will rub off. Ecch!   LINK

Meanwhile, lost in all this, is the fact that at any given time there are over 10,000 students, eligible for English schooling, who are attending French schools voluntarily. Ahem.....


How ridiculous is Bill 103? Very....

As you may know the law creates a point system, with 15 as the minimum required to gain entry to English school.

A reader sent me an email detailing how the point system works. The document is in French and for those of you who can read it, have a go. It is as stupid as it looks. Check out the last pages even if you don't speak French. It lists point values. Argghhh!!!!!!!!!!

Bill 103-Point System

It's hard to believe that so much effort went into this!