Pierre Curzi -Quebec's Most Dangerous Fool

Many years ago a senior civil servant in the Ontario government told me the story of how a government minister whilst on a whistle stop speaking tour through several towns in northern Ontario, reached into the wrong pocket and gave the wrong speech in the wrong town, much to the consternation of his political minders, who cringed in abject horror at the gaffe.

Making matters worse, the minister's speech included a promise of several million dollars for the construction of a library or some such affair, an undertaking meant for the next town over.
When shocked handlers insisted that the minister correct his mistake, he was having no part of it.

"We'll just have to build two!"

 
"In 1983 Marc Lalonde, the then finance minister, accidentally allowed a cameraman to film parts of his budget that indicated a deficit. It's a Parliamentary tradition that the budget is to remain top secret until tabled in Parliament and any leak is automatic grounds for the Minister's resignation. 

"To deflect charges that his deficit forecast has been leaked, Lalonde decides to boost spending in the final budget document, which allows him to claim that the correct deficit figure hadn't really been leaked.."Link

The reaction to these gaffes highlights the problem of foolish politicians unleashed.

The lengths certain politicians will go to save their own skin or salvage their image can only be categorized as criminal when it means the abject waste of taxpayer resources.

Even worse than these idiots, are the politicians who advance flawed or capricious policies based only on a 'gut' feeling and an overclocked sense of importance.

These are the politicians that cause even more damage than the above-mentioned idiots.

Major Jean Drapeau of Montreal was one such self-important fool, who knew better than all the advisers around him. There was no stopping his unbending and ill-conceived vision of a self financing Olympic games, which saddled the city of Montreal with a billion dollar deficit and a monstrously ugly and dysfunctional Olympic stadium, a monument to self-aggrandizement and uncontrollable ego.

Such is the character of Quebec's most dangerous politician, Pierre Curzi, the under-educated, unilingual, Peeqiss Anglophobe who passes himself off as some sort of language and cultural expert.

Mr. Curzi, although born in bilingual Montreal, never bothered to learn a lick of English and just like many French language militants, his frustrating unilingualism is the basis of his loathing for everything English.

Back in 2007, Curzi intimated in a radio interview that anglos could be stripped of their voting rights in a sovereign Quebec.

"We can't take away their right to vote because that is a right we cannot control because we are still a province within the federation. Obviously, the day when the country is there, we will control citizenship, which will have more teeth, if I can dare to say so."  

Read the Montreal Gazette Story

Of course, he later backtracked, once informed of the racist implication of his pronouncement, but the incident highlights the grave concern minorities must share with the very real possibility that this type of fanatic can get his hands on the levers of power.

Mr. Curzi is famous for quoting self-serving studies and reports that he himself (or his militant friends) prepare to advance his special brand of language eugenics.

It's about as honest as asking a group of priests (or alternately, agnostics) to prepare a report as to whether religion is a positive benefit to society.
It is the very definition of a foregone conclusion.

These so-called 'scholarly' works should be roundly denounced by a skeptical press, but they are generally accepted as gospel by a compliant and complacent media as anxious as Mr Curzi, to prove that the sky is falling in relation to the protection of the French language.

Mr. Curzi, through a complete lack of understanding or alternately through cynical design, ignores the fundamental difference between 'causation' and 'correlation' to reach the most asinine conclusions, such as this beauty;

"Since Francophone students who attend English cegep are more likely to accept an English job in the future, English cegeps are responsible for their anglicization."

See: Correlation does not imply causation

It is these types of pearls of wisdom that should frighten us all.

Hear no English, See no English, Speak no English!

Mr. Curzi has displayed a deep and unabiding disdain for English, so much so that he objected to Paul McCartney singing at a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec, because he was representative of English and Canadian culture.
Mocked by the public and after being reproached by Pauline Marois, he once again was forced to excuse himself.

“Last fall, he suggested the lack of French players on the Canadiens hockey team was a deliberate move on the part of federalists to starve Quebecers of a powerful “symbol of identity.”  Link

 "He has also called for policies to stop francophones from moving from Montreal to off-island suburbs, in order to preserve a majority of the population whose mother tongue is French. The fewer francophones on the island, he warned, the greater the chance recent immigrants would form families with anglophones." LINK

Of course none of this passes for racism in Quebec, where bashing fellow anglo or ethnic citizens is par for the course to 'defenders of the faith' like Mr. Curzi, who continue to characterize anglophones and English as a disease with nary a compunction.

Here's an old clip of the ill-prepared and clearly over-matched Curzi making a fool of himself in front of a parliamentary committee charged with discussing access to to English schools.



Mr. Curzi is trying to demonize the French private school for having such a large English component to its curriculum.
First, he complains that the school can't provide figures as to how many of its grade school graduates abandon their French roots and go on to English high school, to which the surprised school official points out  that the school has indeed provided the information to the committee and that furthermore, 132 of the 136 graduates, went on to French high school. Ouch!

Then after much stuttering, hemming and hawing, Curzi warns the representative indignantly, that nothing is stopping those graduates from going on to English high school, if they so choose.
The school representative delivers a priceless and deadpan put down by telling Mr. Curzi that everyone in Quebec has that same right! PRICELESS!!

And this idiot is the man who might one day create linguistic policy.

Today, Mr. Curzi wants to apply Bill 101 to small and micro businesses, a law never intended to regulate small business.

One of the requirements of Bill 101 is that employees communicate to each other in French.

Imagine an anglophone family running a small home-based business being obliged to talk to each other in French during the work day!

Imagine them having to purchase and install on their computer hard drive, a French version of QuickBooks Accounting Software or Microsoft WORD, even if they use the English versions!

Imagine them being forced to leave notes to each other in French!

That is what's required in Bill 101, which was intended to regulate larger businesses.

Even the infamous Doctor Camille Laurin, father of  Bill 101 couldn't conceive of something so stupid.

“There is no question of preventing [non-French-speaking] employees from working together in their own language, provided it is understood that they must serve their French customers in French.”  

Obviously Mr. Curzi doesn't agree, he suggests that Montreal's 46,000 small business be inspected regularly to insure language compliance.


Mr Curzi may seem like a colourful buffoon, but he represents a real danger should the PQ ever achieve power.

His ideas about the promotion of the French language and culture are mutually exclusive to the preservation and respect of English in Quebec.
He is an ideologue imbued with the same sense of misplaced righteousness as a Spanish inquisitor and like most ultra-nationalists, he believes that in order for French to survive, English must die.

Be afraid. . . Be very afraid!

More Language Nonsense from Pierre Curzi

Canada's Most Racist Police Force

When there's no cell phone service and the only reading material is two year old issues of Men's Health Magazine, sitting in a doctors waiting room can be a colossal bore.

And so last week, as I twiddled my thumbs and occupied the time by studying the other patients in the room who were waiting patiently for their their name to be called, my eyes fell upon a strapping young man sitting diagonally across from me.
He must have been six-foot two and weighed a muscular 200 hundred pounds and I couldn't help thinking that he'd be a scary person to meet in a dark alley.

He was of course, Black.

And so embarrassed, I chased the racist thought from my mind and reminded myself that stereotyping people was evil, especially when based on race, colour, creed or ethnicity.

I'm far from a racist, quite the opposite, but we are all conditioned by television and the news media which emphasizes and attributes a disproportionate level of crime and violence to the Black community.

A few minutes later the young man reached into a beaten up Loblaw's re-usable shopping bag and pulled out a college-level calculus text book as well as a well-thumbed Hilroy-type notebook in which he started in on his homework, which included adding some complicated data points to an X/Y axis grid, which was incidentally quite out of my mathematical league.

Oh, the shame...How perceptions change!

As I daydreamed I couldn't help thinking that this fine young student was likely to have suffered  his whole life, from a society that is predisposed to think the worst of him.

I especially wondered how many times this young man had been rousted by Montreal's infamously racist police force, for absolutely no other reason other than the colour of his skin.

Police will tell us that there is a disproportionate amount of criminality in the Black community and I've no doubt it's true. There is also that same disproportionate level in the Latino community and every other underprivileged class.

Like pavlov's dog, our society has been conditioned to attribute the phenomenon of crime with the colour of skin or ethnicity, instead of the socio-economic conditions that these communities find themselves living in, which remains the real causal element related to a higher incidence of crime.

And so police tell us it is fair to target Blacks because as a community they are more likely to be involved with crime. Seems reasonable, right?

Now I wasn't acquainted with this young black man in the waiting room at all, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that he's been stopped and hassled by the Montreal cops , more than once, for no other reason than because he's Black.
I'll bet that  for every 'routine' traffic check' a white person is subjected to, a Black person will likely suffer the process ten times over.

" ... nearly 40 per cent of black youths in the boroughs of Montreal-North and St-Michel were stopped at least once and asked for identification between 2006 and 2007, relative to 6 per cent for their white peers...

"....a black motorist filed complaints to Quebec’s Human Rights Commission and police ethics commissioner, alleging he was needlessly pulled over by a suburban police force four times in a week last summer   Link

Notwithstanding what the police tell us, the majority of Blacks are honest, even if there is an elevated percentage of criminals in the community.

Racial profiling, unfair targeting and mistreatment of Blacks by the Montreal police is legendary.
The long list of abuse is public record and nobody, but nobody can dare to deny the self-evident truth of racism. Nobody except the police.

And so every time we hear a story of a Black person objecting to being subjected to 'special treatment,' invariably the police will lie and tell use that the Black person was uncooperative and that they the police were just doing their job.

The flimsy cover stories provided by the police almost never stand up to scrutiny, as highlighted by this story of a Black high school teacher who was accosted by cops while waiting in the passenger's seat of a friend's car while he picked up a pizza.

"Police say they were justified in questioning Charles because there is drug activity in the neighbourhood, and the car in which Charles was sitting had no license plate." Read the disturbing story 

This of course was a blatant lie. The car had a perfectly legitimate paper temporary tag that was pasted in the rear window as is required by law. It seems that the police are so arrogant that they don't even bother to come up with plausible stories. More

It's gotten to the point that when we hear two versions of events, it's more than likely that the police officers are lying.

Of course, we only hear the stories when the police abuse Black people who aren't afraid to complain as with the case of two Montreal Alouettes who were stopped for the notorious crime of "Driving a nice car while being Black."

"Montreal police Sgt. Yan Lafrenière said Thursday his officers were not using racial profiling when they stopped the vehicle; they were stopping what they saw as potential criminals."  Read another nightmare of Montreal police racism

In decision after decision, the Quebec Human Rights tribunal have found that the police acted improperly, something that doesn't sit well with the police.

A typical case is one like that of a complaint filed by Gemma Raeburn, a respected black-community organizer, who asked a couple of friends to help clean her garage in a Montreal west island suburb, when six police officers, weapons drawn pulled up to the house assuming a robbery was in progress. 

"Given relations between the police and the black community, given that multiple unarmed black citizens have been shot by the police, it's clear that police bullets have been shot according to skin colour," explains Raeburn. "Clearly the findings [from the Quebec Human Rights Commission] are warranted. It is without a doubt that the police were actively practising racial discrimination outside my home."

"It was so, so humiliating," Raeburn, 57, recalled yesterday. "We're the only black family that lives on this street.
I had to go to all my neighbours and tell them that it wasn't a drug bust." Story

It seems that the Human rights commission agrees that the police are racist;

The head of Quebec's human rights and youth commission says the Montreal police force needs to put an end to its "systemic" practice of racial profiling.
Commission head Gaetan Cousineau said that for the better part of two years police have denied accusations they routinely stop young black men without cause, dismissing each complaint brought to their attention as an exception to standard procedure.

The Montreal police have tried to bury a report that they themselves commissioned, that concluded that the force was racist.

"Written by a psychologist with expertise in conflict and crisis management, it’s blunt in its assessment of policing in Montreal North, site of the 2008 riots sparked by the death of an unarmed Villanueva at the hands of a young officer.
“The youths say that the police officers say things they wouldn’t dare say in any other sector of the city,” writes the psychologist, Martin Courcy, who met with about 60 young people from the area and observed police operations there following the riots.
Some examples cited in the report: To a youth from North Africa, an officer allegedly said, “Why don’t you blow yourself up?” To another, “If you’re not happy, why not go back to your country?”
And even this: “We prefer to be colonizers than slaves.”
This isn’t racial profiling, Courcy explains, “but racism pure and simple.” Read the article

Montreal police dismissed Charest's report, saying it used flawed methodology.  Ho hum....

All this is old news, but the latest shocking revelation is that police have embarked on a campaign of organizational stonewalling. Instead of facing up to their conduct and accept responsibility, the police are trying to bury the truth.


Another racist attack involving a Laval couple has brought these unfortunate facts to light.

"The Quebec Human Rights Commission has recommended that the city award $20,000 to a Laval couple for an alleged racial-profiling incident in which their car was towed away, stranding them downtown with their 2-month-old son." Read the story

It seems that the police are going to appeal the decision and all others like it, at a cost of untold tens of thousands of dollars, all in an attempt to punish and render the process of complaining against the police long and debilitating. It will be many years, if not ever, before the Laval couple see their money.

Incredibly, since 2009 police have made it a policy to no longer testify before the Human Rights Commission, thus destroying the judicial process. Sixty cases of alleged police racism before the commission are being held in abeyance as the commission pushes for the police to appear. It seems the police have cynically decided that since they don't win in court it's better to queer the system! Outrageous!

The judicial stonewalling is a device fit for mobsters and other criminals who use every legal trick to thwart the inevitable hand of justice, not for an organization sworn to uphold the law!

As a community we shouldn't tolerate a police force that is out of touch with modern police methods. Other police forces in Canada face the same challenges of elevated crime in minority communities and although we hear stories of intolerance elsewhere, nothing compares to the breadth and scope of the problem in Montreal.

More Abuses;
BLACK MAN ABUSIVELY ASSAULTED AND ARRESTED BY MONTREAL POLICE ACQUITTED OF CRIMINAL CHARGES
 Death of man stopped by police brings suspicion from Montreal's black community
Metro security guards allege selection Racist for Montreal Police Force

The  Center for Research-Action on Race Relations  has a long list of abuses on it's website. It is an excellent resource for combating racism and provides a how-to primer on lodging complaints.


It's time for the police and public officials to stop living in denial.

It's time for the public to stop living in denial as well and it's time that the public demand change and accountability.

Earl Jones and Other Nonsense

Earl Jones to get his very own Statute

The master con artist may very well become famous for something other than his notorious fraud, he is the inspiration for a soon to be made change in the law that allows first-time, non-violent criminals to be released on parole after serving just one-sixth of their sentence. Read about Jones' sentence

The present law will allow our friend Earl to walk out of jail sometime around Christmas, this year. Wonderful! 

Of course this is not sitting well with his victims, the public and even politicians of all stripes.

The Bloc Quebecois has been holding up the Conservative government's crime bill that would eliminate this practice. The Bloc had other issues with the bill and so the delay allowed Quebec's most famous fraudster, Vincent Lacroix to be freed after a very short stay in prison, a fact that annoyed Gilles Duceppe to no end. It seems the Bloc and the Conservatives both have put a little water in their wine to make sure that this won't happen in the future.

"The Harper government has agreed to split up one of its crime bills to obtain the support of the Bloc Québécois and scrap the law that allows non-violent offenders to serve only one-sixth of their prison sentence." LINK

But alas, it's not likely that even with the passage of the new law, which might very well become known as "EARL'S LAW" that Mr. Jones will be subject to its provisions, having been convicted under the old statute. Try as the government might, it's well nigh impossible to impose new conditions on an old sentence.
That being said, Earl Jones can take some credit for being the inspiration for a some much needed reform!

Blog authorities have been advised!

Those who read the comments section of this blog have been amused by promises and threats by some angry posters that this blog is being duly reported to authorities as some kind of subversive element.
Since we don't live in North Korea or Iran, I don't much take the threat seriously, after all if vigle.net can publish, so can I!
Anyways, those raging commenters can be satisfied that we are indeed on the radar of those who may very likely rule the future Quebec. One of those anonymous posters sent along an email telling me that our material is not only being monitored and archived, but being republished as well!

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Link
  

Jacques Duchesneau cleared

I am glad to hear that a report to be published soon by the Directeur général des élections (DGE) will  clear my friend Jacques Duchesneau of any wrong doing. Mr Duchesneau was accused of election irregularities in his campaign for mayor, many years back. At the time of the accusations he was heading a task force looking into corruption in the construction industry and took a leave of absence while under investigation. The accusations against him mysteriously appeared ten years after the fact and it's fair to ask if those behind the 'campagne de salissage' weren't trying to derail his inquiry.

When the charges first surfaced, the media took a hammer to him and treated him rather shabbily. The Journal de Montreal included his picture in a rogues gallery and the lynch mob had their sport with him.

Not many were prepared to defend him, even those who knew him personally, and who should have known better. For me that fact is a little sad.
Jacques is the least corruptible person I know, and I'm proud that I was perhaps one of the very few (maybe the only one) willing to step up and defend him publicly.

The Assassination of Jacques Duchesneau -November 23, 2010

Concordia shells out big compensation, again.

As I predicted in an article last month;

"Her (ex Chancellor Judith Woodsworth) decision to fire two senior members of the audit staff, Ted Nowak and Saad Zubair over a wrongly expensed $250 restaurant bill is going to cost the school hundreds of thousands of dollars." No Dogs or Anglophones January 11, 2011

And so it comes to pass. The two men recently settled out of court for substantial sums, but in keeping with Concordia's history of secrecy, the poor taxpayers who are on the hook for the money are kept in the dark. In addition to the cash, the University had to eat humble pie;

"In a written statement, the university depicts Nowak and Zubair as honest, loyal employees they would happily take back into the university." LINK

Antisemtic apology laughable

Martin Raymond , a coach for a minor league team associated with the NHL Anaheim Ducks in California, in a letter of apology for a slew on antisemitic remarks he made towards one of his players, pulled out the old chestnut that he too suffered from racism having been called a "FROG"

The Bakersfield coach was forced to write a letter of apology for having harassed and humiliated  a player mercilessly, taunting him over being Jewish.

In that letter, Mr. Raymond said that he was only joking and was trying to have some fun. Hmm....

It's obvious the team didn't ask the coach to put much effort into the letter in which he casts himself as a French-Canadian victim!

"It was not my intention to offend you. The intent was to have a jovial moment. Please understand that prior to this incident, I was not trained to handle such a sensitive matter as a coach. As a French-Canadian, I too have come face-to-face with bigotry and understand how such remarks can negatively affect lives. I can certainly relate to you as I have repeatedly been called 'frog' through my playing and coaching career. This has affected me on and off the ice. Now that I understand that you were offended, I will no longer engage in this type of behavior nor condone it. I look forward to moving on and making a run for the playoffs as a team."

"Not trained to handle such a sensitive matter"  WHAAAT!!!!!!

I guess to this Drummondville native, having a Jewish player on the team rates as a extremely sensitive matter!

The player, Ottawa native Jason Bailey, who has since moved to another team, was not impressed with the apology and is suing the organization. If you want to read the sordid details, read this story

Ironically the Anaheim Ducks are owned by a Jewish owner.

Montreal Canadiens a bargain at $550 mil.

There was a collective gasp in the media when the Molson family shelled out a whopping $550 million for the Canadiens and the downtown arena in Montreal, considering that George Gillett paid less than half that just eight years earlier. Forbes magazine who assessed the value of the Canadiens at just $408 million, accused the purchasers of overpaying LINK

But the Molsons seem to be doing okay by that deal and have already paid back $100 million that they borrowed for the transaction, less than two years after the purchase. If the new owners continue to pay off the loan with profits, they will likely be debt free less than tens years after purchasing the team!

All this brings me to wonder about the price for a potential team in Quebec City. The price of $400 million has been bandied about as the cost for a new arena. Coupled with the purchase price of a NHL franchise of about $150 million, the total package will be similar to that paid for the Canadians.

The question begs-
Who'd you rather own for $550  million, the Canadiens or the Nordiques?

Maxime Bernier and Quebec's Sacred Cow

Everyday I wake up and take a measure of cynical satisfaction that I as a Quebec Anglophone am imbued with special rights that my Francophone brethren are denied.

The reality of Quebec society is that there are three distinct levels of citizen status, each providing special privileges (or lack thereof.)

Of course, first and foremost, is Quebec's Native population, who are provided extra-special rights and privileges, too numerous to describe, rights that non-natives in the province are denied.

Most of us begrudge the natives these rights as it seems a bit unfair to us that they can flit between the treaty world, chock full of entitlements, and our regular society, as it suits their fancy.

But Canadian Anglophones living in Quebec are also accorded a special status, one that the majority of Quebeckers are denied, based solely on language and birth, something that logic would tell us that the Charter of Rights, be it the Canadian or the Quebec version would preclude.

Of course we're talking about the right to attend English schools, a benefit that remains exclusive to those born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth, an English-educated parent born in Canada.

Most Francophones don't seem overly perturbed by the notion that as the majority, they enjoy the fewest rights of all Quebeckers.
In fact, most will say that while they'd like to preserve choice in education, Bill 101, the law that restricts access to English school, is a sacrosanct piece of legislation that is bedrock to the preservation of the Quebec 'nation'

It's a bit of a paradox, but no matter, Bill 101 is as holy to Quebeckers as is the U.S. Constitution is to Americans. A document worthy of biblical reverence, never to be questioned or disputed.

And so Maxime Bernier's rather flippant remark during an interview last week on Halifax-based radio is rocking the world of Quebec's language defenders.

“It’s like in Quebec — we don’t need Bill 101 to protect the French language over there,” Bernier is quoted as saying. “They know we speak French in Quebec and we will speak French for a long time, I believe it.” Read more in the Montreal Gazette

Mr. Bernier's statement will likely change nothing nor move even one person to the other side of the debate. Many journos are commenting that Bernier said what he said to establish his bona fides as a "conservative Canadian' and to position himself as a legitimate successor to Stephen Harper, a francophone acceptable to Anglos out West.

Hmmmm....Dunno...

I'm not going to discuss the veracity or validity of Mr. Bernier's statement on Bill 101, we've all got our opinion and it's a subject that's been flogged to death. It's about as useful a discussion as the debate whether God is real or not. There's nowhere to go, no road that hasn't been travelled.

But the ongoing reaction from Quebec's linguistic 'Defenders of the Faith' is at least fun to follow. 

I'm sitting back and watching for the most outrageous or angry reaction that will surely follow what can only be perceived as a blasphemous provocation by the militant language zealots.

So far it's Pauline Marois who has unleashed the biggest stupidity by inviting Mr. Bernier to Montreal to see what's going on language-wise.  Madame Marois has subtly voiced what so many of her backers believe, that Montreal has become a modern Tower of Babel, or perhaps a Sodom and Gomorrah, where the infidels are fiddling with the purity of the Quebec ideal.

“Mr. Bernier should come to Montreal more often, where we can see there is an anglicization now,” Ms. Marois told reporters at the party's regional convention in the city.

How one can "SEE"  'language anglicization' is beyond me. 

Perhaps Madame Marois was referring to the many black and brown faces, the many hijabs, yarmulkes, saris, turbans and wide-brimmed Hasidic hats as proof of anglicization.

Freudian Slip, perhaps?

The instantaneous reaction of militants to Mr. Bernier's statement reminds me of my dog's Pavlovian reaction to the doorbell--

RUFF! RUFF! RUFF!.........RUFF! RUFF! RUFF!......RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! 

It's hilarious to see how extraordinarily easy it is to trigger such an overwhelming reaction, like banging on the cage of a sleeping lion at the circus to see him roar, all for our amusement!

Other Bon Mots;

Francoise David, leader of Quebec solidaire;

“The fight for French in Quebec is not won. In fact, it will never be won,”

Keep them coming!

By the way, Bernier isn't backing down. Read his reply to those attacking him, on his blog.

"Why should francophone parents not be allowed to send their children to an English or bilingual school for parts of their studies, so that they become completely fluent in both languages? English is the language of 350 million people surrounding us. It is also the most important international language all over the world. Mastering it is a major asset.

Not only this, but there has been an important English-speaking population in Quebec for 250 years. Unless we believe that Quebec today is simply an extension of New France, and that only descendants of the French settlers are real Quebecers, then English too is part of Quebec’s identity." LINK {eng}

I'm so happy I can't resist a little poem... (with apologies to St. Nick!)

With a handsome young driver, so hip and extreme,
I knew in a moment it must be Maxime
More rapid than eagles his haters alit,
They whistled, and shouted, and addled with spit!

"Now Curzi! Now Jacko! Now, Gilles and Pauline!

Stand up and be counted, pray call me obscene!
And rage from of the hill top, Your message transmit!
Now dash away all, cuz' I don't GIVE A SHIT! 

FURTHER READING:  
Bill 101- A Francophone Prison

Maxime Bernier Burns His Bridges

Canada Racing Towards English

The ongoing debate over the so-called assimilation of Francophone Quebeckers to the English side of the language equation through access to English cegep is nothing more than a desperate attempt by French language militants to make some sort of sense of the deteriorating position of the French fact in Quebec and to a much larger extent in Canada.

And so talk of extending Bill 101 to cover post-high school education is a sad and misguided attempt to somehow staunch what appears to be the inevitable and inexorable decline of traditional French society.

But for all the discussions over what's to be done and who's to be blamed for this decline, the rather simple and rather painful truth is hard to face.

The decline has nothing to do with anglophones or access to English cegep and it has nothing to do with francophones 'switching' sides.

It has everything to do with immigration and nothing else.

Canada (including Quebec) has the highest immigration level of any country in the western world. 

The rate of immigration to Canada is twice that of the United States and six times larger than France's. Strangely there is no policy or rationale that can explain this.

 See: Quebec's Immigration Dilemma- Part 2 Why So Many Immigrants?

Each year Quebec accepts 50,000 immigrants of which only 40,000 end up staying permanently (the others leave to other provinces.)

Of the remaining 40,000, half assimilate to the anglophone community and half to the francophone community. This is the key to the small, but inexorable diminution of the French proportion of Quebec's population. To maintain linguistic balance around 32,000 of the 40,000 would have to  assimilate in French.
Over a decade it means that over 110,000 people have shifted disproportionately to the English side and this and this alone accounts for the decline in the Francophone element from 81% to 79% over the last two decades.

The same is true of immigration in Canada where the difference is much more startling.

Each year 250,000 newcomers are welcomed to Canada, (this number keeps growing) 50,000 in Quebec and 200,000 in the other provinces. But Quebec bleeds 10,000 of these immigrants to other provinces, changing the numbers to 210,000 immigrants to other provinces against just 40,000 in Quebec.

Of course, all the immigrants that settle in the rest of Canada assimilate to the English community while only half of those immigrating to Quebec assimilate to the French community.

The final numbers end up looking like this;

Of the 250,000 immigrants who come to Canada (including Quebec) 230,000 become anglophones and only 20,000 become francophones.

Wow! It's rather shocking.

That's right, only about 9% of immigrants coming to Canada are assimilated into the French side of the language equation. This wouldn't be a huge problem if the number of immigrants was modest, but Canada enjoys the highest immigration rate among leading western democracies.

Canada increases it's population by a million people every four years by way of immigrants, yet only 95,000 become members of the French community.

In Quebec the changes are not so dramatic, but while the demographic shift is small, it is ongoing  and cumulative, as long as immigrants are welcomed in such large numbers and assimilation patterns remain as they are.

As for Canada, the French/English demographic change caused by immigration is monumental. 

The francophone element in Canada is dropping by a rate of over 1% per decade!
Within 20 to 25 years, the Francophone element to Canada will fall below the 20% threshold, while at Confederation in 1867, it was 33%.

In 1971, one  in four Canadians (25.7 per cent) spoke French at home. By 2001, thirty years later, the proportion had gone down to 22 per cent.

All this has to do with immigration.

It has NOTHING to do with Anglophones in Quebec.

If Quebec wants to reverse this trend, it has to find a way to convince immigrating families to adopt French, right away.

Assimilation takes place within the first few years of arrival, not ten to fifteen years later in cegep.

If the government believes that changing access to English cegeps will change this in any way, they are sadly mistaken.

For French Canada to maintain demographic weight or at least to slow down the bleed, it will have to convince the Federal government to slash immigration and to find a way to francize immigrants much earlier.

Both tasks are rather daunting......