French versus English Volume 41

More English schools to close
At the same time that French-language militants ratchet up the hysterics, proclaiming that the sky is falling in on the French language, the English Montreal School Board started hearings on Monday at its head office to determine which schools it will close or merge in the coming years. Because of the effects of Bill101 and Bill 103 enrolment is down 20% in the last ten years.

"Starting Monday night, the English Montreal School Board (EMSB) will hear from school communities as it decides whether to close, relocate, or merge them.
Seven schools are facing closure or merger and a handful more could be relocated.
The EMSB has said it must close several schools because of declining enrolment, which has dropped by 20 per cent in the last decade. "
 Read the rest of the story

Here's the sad list of prospective closure and relocations.

Monday, Dec. 5
Nesbitt School (closure)
Perspectives II High School (relocation)
St. Brendan School (closure)
St. Pius X Adult Education Centre (relocation)
Vincent Massey Collegiate (relocation)

Tuesday, Dec. 6
Carlyle School (closure)
Marymount Adult Education Centre (relocation)
Royal Vale School (relocation)
St. Raphaël School (relocation)

Wednesday, Dec. 7
James Lyng High School (closure)
Programme Mile-End High School (relocation)
St. Gabriel/St. John Bosco School (closure)
Vezina High School (relocation)

Thursday, Dec. 8
Advisory Committee on Special Education Services
Central Parents' Committee
Fraser Academy (closure)
Westmount Park district boundary

All this week, the scene at the EMSB headquarters was incredibly sad, with parent and teachers making presentations as to why their school shouldn't close, competing with other parents from other schools trying to do the same..

New assault on Christmas
The province of Quebec continues its assault on religion across the board and despite the Conservative government in Ottawa ordering SERVICE CANADA  to rescind an order to ban Christmas decorations, the writing seems to be on the wall. A senior member of Montreal's ruling party, proclaimed that decorations would be limited to 'generic' types of displays and so while the Christmas tree is out, the identical 'Holiday' tree is permissible Ugh!
The Montreal suburb of Town of Mont-Royal decided to pull it's Christmas and Hanukkah decorations in front of city hall after it received a complaint by a Muslim. The town should have called his bluff and offered to display a likeness of Mohamed (which actually is strictly verboten under Islamic law.) In fact, the Islamic faith has a ban on all physical representations of faith and so actually nothing can be displayed! Ha!

"The tree in front of City Hall will remain decorated. "We make a distinction between religious symbols and Christmas decorations, says Philippe Roy(the mayor). Christmas is religious for some, but for others it's cultural. There are non-Christians who have a Christmas tree. "  Really, is he kidding?    Link{FR}

Decor ban reversed for Service Canada in Quebec

TMR latest to refrain from religious decorations

Too much English at Urgences Santé
The union is complaining that  too much English is being used in the transmission of information between paramedics and dispatchers. A new protocol insists that if a patient calls the ambulance service and complains of 'chest pains,' that the paramedic be informed by the dispatcher that the condition is 'Chest pains' and not "douleur thoracique," a French translation. The rationale is to avoid translation errors.
Anybody see a problem here?

The l'Office québécois de la langue française, is looking to put and end to this practice.

Interestingly the article denotes that over one third of calls received by the ambulance service in Montreal and Laval are made IN ENGLISH. Link{Fr}
The head of the union of ambulance attendants  told a CTV reporter that almost HALF the calls made in this region are in ENGLISH! 

Strangely, this may be the most definitive proof that  the percentage of English speakers in Montreal and Laval is really much, much higher than we are led to believe! 

It backs up what I've always maintained, that if you count the territory west of Saint Lawrence Boulevard in Montreal, English is the majority language and this includes the downtown core! 

Short stuff

A mob of language militants demonstrated in front of a government office complaining that too many services were being offered in English to companies, contrary to Bill 101.
As most government agencies are withdrawing English services and removing their bilingual websites, one agency stubbornly refuses.... the Tax department.
Readers, can anyone venture a reason why?

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In a story interestingly similar to that of KIF KIF IMPORT, a new Sherbrooke junior hockey team has been named the "PHOENIX " which immediately brought down the wrath French language supremacists who demanded the team be called the "PHENIX"
While the word "Phoenix" does appear in the French dictionary, according to the militants, it doesn't refer to the mythical bird and so they accused the team of choosing an English name.

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Franz Schuller, artistic director of the record company and a member of Indica Grimskunk, rock legend independent Quebec, is launching a division, whose mandate is to promote young French rock bands with a young audience. In conducting an informal survey of the musical tastes of high school students he became aware of the gap between them and the French-speaking artists.
When asked to list their favourite 10 francophone artists, they often mentioned only one name, the popular singer Marie-Mai. Sometimes the name 'Les Trois Accords'  made the list, but most of the time, eight or nine of the ten boxes remained empty. Ouch!
Readers....do I hear government subsidy?

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At a forum discussing the financing of this year's annual Fête nationale celebrations in Quebec city, the president of the organization that is in charge of putting on the show, Chantale Trottier of the Mouvement national des Québécois, reminded everyone that Anglophone artists would be welcome.....as long as they sang in French and addressed the audience in French. Link{Fr}

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Here's some insightful reporting from the Montreal Gazette's Pat Hickey;
Headline  December 2- Montreal Canadiens' Markov's comeback imminent
Headline  December 3-  Markov's return delayed

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I don't know if Jean-Marc Fournier, the Quebec justice minister, is reacting to his not so successful visit to Ottawa to plead for changes in the Conservatives new crime bill, but his chief of staff, Helene Menard, confirmed yesterday that he will cease to give bilingual press conferences and answer questions only in French from here on in. Link

 **************

"Two prominent Montreal politicians are defending their French language skills after a popular radio host said their level of French is insulting.

On his radio show and on Twitter, Benoît Dutrizac took aim at Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce mayor Michael Applebaum and city councillor Marvin Rotrund.    Link    

 **************

New Brunswick drunk aquitted because cop didn't speak French

"The New Brunswick Court of Appeal has ruled that police officers must follow the province's Official Languages Act when they arrest people.   The three-judge panel unanimously upheld a decision by a Court of Queen's Bench judge confirming the acquittal of Serge Alain Losier on two drunk driving charges because the arresting officer did not speak French.

Losier was arrested Sept. 4, 2008, by a Fredericton police officer after being stopped at a checkpoint. The arresting officer did not speak French, and Losier's English skills were poor." Read the rest of the story

vigile.net supports Syrian repression

It's always useful to hear opinions differing from what mainstream society generally accepts, it's an essential elementary that makes democracy work. 

Good to see that vigile.net is upholding this principle and is promoting the murdering Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad 

Here are a bunch of stories appearing om vigile.net in the past month, all are written in French.

Readers, I haven't cherry-picked just stories supporting the Assad regime, you can see a Google search of all stories concerning Syria on vigile.net Here..

...or view vigile.net's own collection of mostly pro-Syrian regime stories Here including these pearls;

Syrie : le génocide de l’OTAN approche (NATO genocide approaching)

Mensonges et vérités sur la Syrie   (Lies and truth about Syria )

Les disciples de Goebbels à l’œuvre contre la Syrie   (Disciples of Goebbels at work against Syria)

Menacer l’Iran et préparer l’invasion de la Syrie   (Threaten Iran and prepare to invade Syria)
La Syrie, Terre d’asile et de culture (Syria, land of asylum and culture)

Well Done!!

How about some support for Kim Jong-il? 
Quote of the Week

"....But when I saw and heard the commercial for Les Habits  St-Eustache on the V televison network, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. (because of English background music-ed.) This shop is located opposite the church, where our patriots were brutally killed by the English, now part of global conspiracy by Canadians and others whose mission is to make us disappear. I will never buy clothes in this store. -Daniel Roy C.A.

Weekend Viewing & Reading

For those who speak French here are three special treats.
Read a fantastic piece that is causing a stir; Doléances pour un Québec dépassé
Read a fantastic rant inspired by the first; J’aimerais être fier de ma nation

Here's an interview of Mario Beaulieu getting pulverized on a French language television show, Face a Face, by hosts Caroline Proulx and Stéphane Gendron. It's a jewel!
I found the link to the interview on the separtist website Mouvement Québec français, but can't for the life of me understand why they would link to such a humiliation.

Click to watch video

Here's a wonderful documentary in three parts on Anglos who left Montreal, which I found cruising the website of    Michel Patrice. 
Check it out, it's worth the visit.

"This first part is seen through the eyes of 6 friends who left Montreal in the 70's, after the separatist Parti Quebecois first came to power in the province, and the threat of separation for them became very real. They talk about the October crisis, feeling alienated and as they saw it, the limited opportunities for English speakers in Montreal." Phil Carpenter

Moving On; A Documentary in 3 Parts. Pt1: The First Wave from Phil Carpenter on Vimeo.

"This second part is seen through the eyes of 3 professionals including well-know radio personality Terry DiMonte, who left Montreal in the 90's, and later after the second provincial referendum on Quebec's place in Canada. They talk about feeling alienated and as they saw it, the limited opportunities for English speakers in Montreal."  Phil Carpenter

Moving On; A Documentary in 3 Parts. Pt2: The Second Wave from Phil Carpenter on Vimeo.

"This final part tells how people who left, feel about Montreal and Quebec since the last provincial referendum on Quebec's place in Canada. They talk about how the politics has changed, and how the desire for separation among young people in 2008 might not be as strong as it was in previous years."- Phil Carpenter

Moving On; A Documentary in 3 Parts: Montreal Reborn from Phil Carpenter on Vimeo.

Some Goood News!

Listen to the perfect voice of the very talented Marc Martel a bilingual Anglo, who hit the jackpot, scoring a gig as the "Freddy Mercury" lead in the Queen tribute band tour next year!

"Montreal-born vocalist Marc Martel, Quebec City bass player François Olivier Doyon and Toronto guitarist Tristan Avakian are among the winners announced Thursday in the Queen Extravaganza contest.
They auditioned via video before flying to Los Angeles earlier this week for a live audition in front of Queen drummer/songwriter Roger Taylor. The winners will tour next year in a Queen tribute band, recreating the Queen arena experience with songs such as Bohemian Rhapsody and We are the Champions."

Watch and enjoy!

 

BRAVO!!!!      Want more: Marc Martel does Bohemian Rhapsody

Monday's post;

Quebec Anglophobia, a Cautionary Tale for Head Offices...

What Makes Pauline Marois Tick?

Over these last years of blogging, I've refrained from writing much about Pauline Marois largely because I didn't believe I could bring much insight. Aside from crossing her in the hall a couple of times, she, like other peekists remain largely a mystery to me.

But events surrounding her these last months have been nothing short of extraordinary and even as an uniformed observer I'd like to make some general observations.
At least it will allow readers a platform to sound off in the comments section.

First things first.
If you are a federalist like myself, you cannot help but hope Madame Marois hangs on as long as she can. The destructive forces surrounding her leadership serve to discredit the entire sovereignty movement and realistically, as long as she is leader, the PQ isn't going to win any elections.

The utter lack of faith in her within her own caucus and the very public displays of disrespect, is an unheralded situation that leaves the electorate convinced that the party is unfit to govern, sovereignty or federalism aside.
Could you imagine how you'd feel if the door to the cockpit of a plane you've just boarded was left open and you heard the pilot and co-pilot screaming at each other before takeoff? LEMME OFF!!

Readers, I'd like you to consider the situation in the Quebec Liberal party, where scandal after scandal has ripped through the party, yet Premier Charest endures, untouched by insurrection among the party faithful.
Solidarity is just about the only thing the Liberals have left and perhaps the PQ could take a lesson, but as I said, as a federalist, I hope not!
Every political party in Canada understands that without solidarity and loyalty towards the leader, a party cannot expect to win the confidence of the people. Everybody except the Peekists, that is and so it is no surprise they are paying the price in the opinion polls.

One thing I've discovered about Pauline of late is that she's made of sterner stuff than her predecessors, the PQ leaders before her, who abandoned the job rather abruptly, either pushed or in a fit of pique.

The PQ caucus has always been a hotbed of discontent, with every member seeming to have leadership aspirations which they hope to enhance by backstabbing the leader.

And so, it's been a PQ tradition to dump their leaders rather unceremoniously and without much respect.
The fact that Levesque, Parizeau, Boisclair, Bouchard and Landry went so quietly and without a fuss belied the fact that the PQ is a political party steeped in the tradition of patricide and perhaps soon to be, matricide.

But Marois' fall from grace has little to do with her leadership skills as is claimed by the backstabbers. She is, simply put, the fall girl for the political fortunes of sovereignty, which seems to have fallen out of favour with Quebecers, who cringe at the thought of another losing referendum.

Like a cellar dwelling hockey team, it's the coach who gets the blame and subsequently the axe for poor performance.
For the PQ, blaming Pauline is just about the only choice they can make, the other option is to admit that the party platform which is based on sovereignty just doesn't resonate with Quebecers any more. That scenario is unthinkable and so Pauline must be the problem.

But Marois isn't going quietly, something PQ veterans seem to be astounded at.

By sticking around in the face of so much adversity and hostility Madame Marois displays an utter 'sang froid,' and stubbornness that I never knew she had. Her capacity to soldier on in the face of so much back-stabbing, is simply amazing.

Madame et Messier PaulineMarois

Madame Marois has always been an expert political 'operator' cut from the same cloth as Jean Charest. She has survived her own scandals with barely a scratch.
Her detestable husband, Claude Blanchet, is wealthy in his own right. While Marois was a cabinet minister in the PQ government of Jacques Parizeau, her husband was appointed, as director of a new Quebec government investment agency, the Société générale de financement du Québec but was eventually forced out over charges of gross incompetence. During his five year tenure at the helm of the agency, it lost over $800 million, during which time, he and senior management paid themselves generous bonuses, year after losing year!' When he was finally ousted, he negotiated himself an $80,000 pension for life, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance!
I've been told off the record, by businessmen who know him professionally, that he's the type of guy that you count your fingers after shaking hands with him.

The power couple live in a controversial eight million mansion on Île Bizard, which was the subject of considerable controversy at one point. It was alleged in the Montreal Gazette that the couple paid off someone in order to legitimize a zoning change for the property. Read: How estate was built on public, farm lands.
See breathtaking pictures of the chateau Here
The couple sued the Gazette for $2 million over the article, but when the controversy petered out as expected, they settled out of court with the newspaper. The Gazette in the strangest of settlements, admitted that the story could have caused the couple harm, but was in fact true...Huh?  Link{Fr}

So  Madame Marois is not any stranger to being attacked over personal ethics and like Premier Charest is an expert at the political game of shuck and jive.

Like the Energizer bunny, Madame Marois just keeps going and going, but at this point it's fair to ask, why she is trying so hard to maintain her position, which by all counts appears untenable.

What on earth is a girl to do?

While I hope she stays, the Christmas recess might give Pauline the quiet time necessary to decide that it might be time to give up the ghost.

The loss of the by-election on Monday, in Bonaventure, while expected(it's a Liberal stronghold,) is still frustrating for Peekists. Watching the hated Premier Charest hold a riding while being so unpopular must be galling and even though PQ support actually rose, it remains little consolation to hardliners in the caucus, a third of whom need another term in the National assembly to become eligible for a pension.
Now with polls indicating that the PQ can do better with Gilles Duceppe at the helm, perhaps even winning, the pressure on Marois to leave is enormous.

If she does leave, I hope she blows up the party as a parting gift.
How?
She could either give a speech wherein she buries the sovereignty option or worse still stay on long enough to put a referendum back on the front burner.

If she publicly commits to a referendum within six months of taking power, come Hell or high water, it would satisfy the militants, but destroy any chance of electoral success at the polls.

As Christmas approaches, I can't think of a better present for federalists.
Ah....to dream!

Living in Montreal Unilingualy

One of the most annoying Francophone columnists I know is the insufferable Jean-François Lisée, whose stock in trade are articles bashing anglos or articles defending or in fact extolling the virtues of the Quebec 'model'

Mr. Lisée is the favourite target of conservative bloggers who regularly rip apart his voodoo calculations or cherry-picked statistics.

In one of his most memorable pieces, he quotes a study that concludes that Quebecers don't really pay a heavy price for their very generous social services.
The study calculates the federal and provincial taxes paid by Quebecers in addition to payroll charges and levies and compares that to the value of the social services received in return.
Sounds great, until you realize that the study fails to include federal and provincial sales taxes, gas tax, school taxes, liquor tax etc.etc.
Hilariously the study actually puts a PST and GST credit in the benefits column without ever applying the actual PST and GST taxes in the taxes paid column! See the chart Here
Read the wonderful rebuttal to his nonsense entitled,  Les temps sont durs pour Jean-François Lisée

Another one of my preferred bloggers, is the always entertaining 'DAVID" over on antagonist.net who regularly skewers Mr. Lisée in articles like  "Arguing with Idiots"

In one particular piece DAVID critiques a piece wherein Mr. Lisée disparages the United States over the inequities of income distribution.
In that piece, Mr. Lisée  tells us (quite rightly) that between 1979 and 2007, income for the top 20% of American earners went up 95%, while income for the bottom 20% went up only 16%, quite a disparity!

Our industrious blogger David, added in some data comparing Quebec to the United States and found that during this same period, income for the top 20% of Quebecers earners went up an anemic 10%, while income for the bottom 20% went up only 4%.

In fact, DAVID points out, income for the poorest Americans went up four times faster than in Quebec. Ha!

When not offering a rosy economic picture of  Quebec, Mr. Lisée is busy bashing Anglo Quebecers or Canadians in general.

In a recent blog piece Mr. Lisée complains that there are too many Anglophone Montrealers who refuse to learn French.
It all started with a radio interview on the Montreal CBC's Daybreak show where the subject was just that- unilingual Montreal Anglos who don't learn French.
The moderator Mike Finnerty, talked with  Sherwin Tjia, an artist who moved here from Toronto a decade ago and never learned French. Worse still he remains unapologetic. Listen to the Interview

“I’ve been to parties and met Francophones and they say, “You don’t speak French? How long have you been here?” They ask that question with an agenda. They aren’t really interested in how long I’ve been here. [...] the agenda isn’t subtle – they want to be able to come to some kind of conclusion about you, and by extension, tell you how you should be.

In their mind, there’s some kind of Language Statute of Limitations. If I’ve been in Quebec longer than like, two years, and don’t know French – that’s too long. In their opinion, everyone in Quebec should be bilingual, or working towards it. At these parties, they say to me, “You should learn,” almost like a threat.”- Sherwin Tjia

Of course, the interview brought down a storm of criticism, tinged with rage, by the usual suspects of French language supremacists.

"This hostile indifference to our culture is the consequence of the undermining in recent years of the French language in Quebec, as was noted by columnist Jean-François Lisée in an article entitled "Is the Unilingue anglais back" which appeared on his blog. Alas! All this is only too true. For my part I would add that the least assimilable immigrants, the most arrogant, often come from the Commonwealth and serve as a spearhead for the eternal red necks, that ever since our conquest, refuse to accept that French is a language spoken in Montreal."-  Read more of this rant by Gilles Proulx  Link{Fr}

Read a subsequent  interview with Mr. Tjia over the furious reaction his radio appearance engendered in the Francophone press. LINK

Mr Proulx and Mr Lisée both make their assertion that Anglos must learn French to be good citizens, based on a false premise which holds that Quebec is an independent country, not a province in a majorly English country.
The idea that all public discourse in Montreal must be in French, is based on this fruit of a poisonous premise.

I have maintained all along that Montreal is not a French city, but rather a bilingual city. Perhaps it's time to reassess that appraisal and admit that Montreal is actually three cities, a bilingual one, a French one and an English one.
There are those who live bilingually in Montreal while others live unilingually, either in French or English.
That's the way it is.
For Mr. Proulx and Mr. Lisée to pretend that Montreal is a French city because 79% of the province of Quebec is French is just another case of cherry-picked statistics.
There is a block of English speakers, over 500,000, that make Montreal their home. Putting a finer point on it, almost all of these Anglos  live west of St. Lawrence boulevard(which neatly divides the city in two), wherein they likely form the majority!

Insufferable anglophobes like Proulx and Lisée continue to propagate the myth that Montreal is French because the province is 79% francophone.
And they continue to believe that the English live in Quebec by the benevolent good grace of the francophone majority and that furthermore, Anglos should be thankful and respectful for being tolerated.

It is an indisputable fact that one can get along quite nicely in Montreal without French, something that outrages the Proulxs, the Lisées and other French language supremacists.
And so it also follows, that in Montreal, there are people who speak only English, just as it is natural that in Pointe-aux-Trembles there are people who speak only French.

Living in English in Montreal...YESSIR!

Let's see.
My wife has a friend who came to this province many decades ago and married an Anglo Montrealer.
She settled in one of those English town that boasts more than 70% English residents. Everyone on the street where she lived was English. She raised a family, sent her kids to English school and shopped in stores where the clerks were all English, including downtown Montreal.
Television, newspapers, entertainment and dining out....all in English.
Even the repairman who came to fix her washer or stove spoke English, even if he was French.

In forty odd years she hasn't learnt one word of French and still doesn't speak anything but English.
She couldn't tell you who Beau Dommage is or VLB or what Loft Story or Occupation Double represents. She couldn't recognize a picture of Ginette Reno or Roch Voisine.
Ironically she does know who Celine Dion is....
She never in life turned her television onto a French channel or listened to the likes of Gilles Proulx on the radio. As far a she is concerned La Presse may as well be written in Greek, it is of no import to her.
As for missing out on French culture, she along with 330 million north Americans get on quite nicely without it, she isn't really deprived.

Unlike what Mr. Lisée and Mr Proulx would have us believe, she committed no great crime, no bigger than a unilingual francophone who spent her whole life in Montreal speaking only French.

Years ago I made a road trip with a francophone employee, a senior member of management, who astonished me by asking me the name of the musical group playing on the radio. When I told him it was the Barenaked Ladies, he shrugged his shoulders and admitted he never heard of them.
When I forced a lunch stop (I was the boss) at Smoked Meat Pete's out in Pincourt, he asked for mayonnaise for his smoked meat sandwich and ordered a glass of milk. Eccch.....
Not a word of English, not a clue about smoked meat and he lived in Montreal all his life. Egad!

So what....

Yes, you can live in Montreal never speaking a word of French, just as you can live in Montreal never speaking a word of English. You can safely ignore the 'other culture' if you so choose and get along quite well, thank you very much.

To each his own.... Speak French, speak English, speak both. It's your choice.
Absorb the culture of others or don't, it's your choice.

In the world of Proulx and Lisee 'choice' is not an option, it is in fact, a dirty word.

These two dinosaurs remain what they are, arrogant language supremacists and Anglophobes extrodinaire.

Do I support being unilingual in a society of two languages?
No, I've made my choice to speak French and am happy with that decision.
But I will not choose for others or force my opinion on them, either. No.

And so my advice to Sherwin Tjia is that you've got nothing to apologize for.
To those who dislike the fact that you live in the Mile End and speak only English,  tell them what they've been telling us Anglos for years;

'If you don't like it,  move away.'

Language War - Part Deux

In my last post, I promised a blog piece today, entitled "The Coming Language War," but alas, it seems that events have trumped that prediction and the opening salvo has already been fired.

In both Monday's and Wednesday's posts, I warned both francophones and anglophones that the addition of 26 more employees at the Office québécois de la langue française and the subsequent fielding of many more language inspectors would be the proverbial ill wind that brings nobody any good.
And so it seems that my prediction has unfolded much more quickly than I anticipated!

Montreal sign war hinges on whether 'import' is a French word 

It is a modest sign hanging outside an equally modest fair-trade furniture store in Montreal, yet it has become a matter of great import to Quebec’s language guardians.

Kif-Kif Import, a family-run business that sells furniture and decor knick-knacks from around the world, has run afoul of Quebec’s French-language protection agency over its sign. The problem is not so much with Kif-Kif. It’s the word “import,” which officials from the Office québécois de la langue française insist is not French.

And that, storeowner Elie Bendavid says, is simply off-base.

Mr. Bendavid’s store on Montreal’s bustling Mont Royal Avenue sits next to a Subway restaurant and kitty corner from a Canada Trust, which both affix their English names in large letters on their signs. His establishment is a negligible player in a city whose commercial landscape is dominated by chains like Best Buy, Banana Republic, Home Depot, American Eagle Outfitters – and Pier 1 Imports.

Not only does Mr. Bendavid say he is being unfairly targeted, but he consulted a linguist who insists that the word “import” is, in fact, French; it’s in the dictionary.

“I believe the Office didn’t do its homework,” said Mr. Bendavid, whose mother tongue is French, and who teaches at the French-language Université du Québec à Montréal.                                        Read the rest of the story in the Globe and Mail

And there it is readers, the perfect language storm!

An OQLF inspector harassing a small ethnic merchant over the vagueries of one French English contentious word.. HOW SWEET!

The higher-ups at the OQLF must be sitting around the conference table, banging their heads on the table, agonizing over the shear lunacy and poor decision-making of an over-zealous language inspector picking this type of a fight.
Lost on the OQLF is the ironic fact that KIF-KIF IMPORT is sandwiched(pardon the pun) between SUBWAY and a CANADA TRUST!

While most francophones believe in supporting the French language, most would agree that going after a pipsqueak over one disputed word is the height of stupidity or stupidité, if you will.

As the story goes viral, it becomes more and more an utter humiliation to mainstream francophones.

And of course, the only beneficiaries is the small cadre of language fanatics who embrace this type of confrontation as a desperate strategy meant to poison English/French relations and thus raise the chances of building enough support for sovereignty.

Are we to return to the bad old days of confrontation with language inspectors and clogged courtrooms with recalcitrant Anglos refusing to capitulate?
Will we see a return to scenes of OQLF inspectors being accosted as was the case in Shawville where in 1999, a posse of militant English-speakers chased an OQLF inspector out of town during a showdown over French on business signs?

Methinks, YES.
The addition of so many more inspectors can only be a recipe for disaster.

One thing is for sure. Anglos are not frightened. With social media, outing and humiliating language cops will become the preferred method of defence.
Mr. Bendavid has clearly shown the OQLF what they are in store for.

I'll have a lot more to say about this subject in the future.

Meanwhile I'd like to comment on a newspaper story written by the  insufferable blowhard Jean-François Lisée,

Bank prez tells language militants to buzz off
Whenever companies or government organizations come under attack by French-language militants for being lax in the application of French in the workplace, the usual scenario is for the company to grovel publicly and promise to do better in the future.
That's what happened over at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, when the government agency, charged with investing the public pension plan's nest egg, was found to have in its employ two highly-placed unilingual anglophones.
This set off a short-lived witch hunt which resulted with the outing of one more such boss over at the National Bank, where not only was the head of the IT department discovered to be unilingually English, but also that the whole department operated in English.

The story was the object of a column written by separatist columnist Jean-François Lisée, who called the bank to task for not supporting French in the workplace and living up to its moral obligation to operate in French. As you know, the bank as a federally chartered institution is not subject to the application of Bill 101.

Where the story takes an unfamiliar turn is in the reaction of the bank president, Louis Vachon who  remained uncharacteristically unapologetic and promised only halfheartedly to do better.
To the criticism levelled against the bank, Mr. Vachon remained stoic, diplomatically lecturing those who complained, on the realities of the business world.

"Our business model is highly centralized. We serve our customers from outside of Quebec and internationally from Montreal. We created these jobs in Montreal. Yes, we operate partly in English, but we will not apologize for having created 500 jobs in Montreal! Other companies have branch offices in Toronto. I'm not sure that is to Montreal's benefit " LINK{Fr}

I'm not sure Mr. Vachon was blunt enough, what he was saying is that while other banks shipped off English departments to a Toronto branch office, the National Bank preferred to keep the jobs in its Montreal head office, even if it meant running an English department. He then questions which scenario best serves Montreal's interest, English jobs in Toronto or English jobs in Montreal.

Converting these English jobs into French jobs, as Mr, Lisée demanded, was off the table, in that respect Mr. Vachon was clear, the bank had made a business decision to run the IT department in English, either in Montreal or Toronto, take your pick.

In response to this explanation Mr. Lisée went onto a prolonged done-me-wrong whine, lecturing the bank president why it was a poor business decision to move jobs to Toronto. (because Toronto is too expensive a city)
As if he understood nothing Mr.Vachon said, he went on to advise the president that those who work in Montreal in English and refuse to learn French after a reasonable period, should not have their contracts renewed.
It seems that Mr. Lisée didn't get the memo written by the bank president. Perhaps it was in English.

Maybe this is what Mr. Lisée prefers, its been going on for thirty-five years;

Oct 29, 2011"Air Canada confirmed Friday it will move 130 flight crew scheduling jobs from its Montreal headquarters to a new main operations centre in Toronto due to open in 2014" Link.

Mr. Lisée's prescription to force French upon all head-offices operating in Quebec fails to account for free will.
He, along with his separatist confreres, fail to understand or care, that companies who don't like the arrangements, are apt to move operations to friendlier environs.

Readers how many thousands upon thousands of well-paying jobs have been shipped out of Quebec?

It all started in 1977 when Sun Life, the province's biggest employer of Anglophones, announced that it was moving out of Quebec because of Bill 101, after 110 years of continuous operation in Quebec.
It was the start of a corporate exodus that shifted the financial center of Canada from Montreal to Toronto. In the four months after the imposition of Bill 101, 91 companies moved out of Quebec. Link

While institutions like the Royal Bank and Bank of Montreal officially remain based in Montreal, the reality is that they are empty shells, the real operational center moved to Toronto surreptitiously, just like Air Canada and hundreds of others.

To this, how do French militants like Mr. Lisée react?
With nary a sigh, wishing good riddance to those who won't conform, telling all who will listen that Quebec is better off without these arrogant English bastard companies.

After all, wealth creation and jobs are not a priority in Quebec as long as the bills are paid for by deficit spending and equalization payments from the rest of Canada.

As for the proposed boycott of the bank called for by the separatist Guy A. Lepage, television host of the popular television talk show "Tout le monde en parle," I imagine it would be as ineffective as a call to boycott his show.

By the way, the hoity-toity separatist makes his living on the backs of federalists in the ROC who pay the bulk of his salary at the CBC's French division, Radio-Canada, which is vastly over-funded.


At any rate, Quebeckers are NOT from the big boycotters and have remarkably short memories.
Think I'm kidding?
To Francophones of all political persuasions, Sun Life was the embodiment of a bad corporate citizen for moving out of Quebec so publicly back in the day.

Venomous calls for boycotts of all manner were announced by unions and all manner of associations.
The bad blood engendered seemed to doom the company's operation in Quebec forever.

But forever is a long time. Today Sun Life is back again in the public's good grace.
Without any complaints from the separatist peanut gallery, Sun Life announced last week it would sponsor a project to rehabilitate the vast concrete plaza in front of the moribund Olympic Stadium, to be named... you guessed it...
"l'Esplanade Financière Sun Life"

OQLF Campaign is Based On a Statistical Lie.

The current campaign to force English stores to adopt French names, as well as other coercive language initiatives are not really meant to raise the profile of the French language in Quebec, as we are assured by those promoting the new measures, but rather a program designed to make English invisible, giving renewed meaning to the old proverb "Out of Sight, Out of Mind"
In order to justify the assault on minority language rights and more recently on English signage specifically, the government has been manipulated by language extremists via scurrilous fear-mongering and phony and manipulated statistics.

Over the last couple of weeks I've tried to convey the message that statistics can be manoeuvred in the most egregious manner, spindled, twisted and interpreted to conform to any particular political view.

I don't put much stock in statistics offered by tobacco companies that tell us cigarettes aren't linked to cancer and I don't believe in statistics spouted by Pierre Curzi, Jack Jedwab, Mario Beaulieu, the L’Institut de recherche sur le français en Amérique or the B'nai Brith, who all have a particular axe to grind.
When it comes to interpreting statistical data, I'll stick to Statistics Canada and the Institut de la statistique du Québec, two government agencies dedicated to unbiased research.

The most fearful aspect of 'Statistication' is that the promulgator doesn't have to lie, and so cannot be easily exposed as a fraud. Instead subtle interpretations, twisted and manipulated treatments of data give a completely false impression of reality while the appearance of fairness is maintained.  Here is an illustrative example;

I don't know if you can read the explanation in little print under the graph, but the gist of it says that when you display a particular section of the graph (75%-100%) instead of the whole graph (0%-100%) a completely different perception evolves. Both graphs are true representations of reality, the one on the right giving the appearance that there's a large gap between the 'Our' brand, the 'Competitor's' brand and the 'Control' brand.
The graph on the left shows that the difference is actually slight.

One graph shows a slight difference, one graph a big difference, yet both are true.
One statistically correct and honest, the other statistically correct, but misleading.
This is the world of separatist statistics... deception.

By the way, I've actually seen the Journal de Montreal use the above device.

And so in Quebec we have been sold a bill of goods that says that the only data set that counts is the one that tells us that the province of Quebec is 80% French and 20% everything else. Like the deceptive graph above, the ratios are correct, but don't represent the true linguistic story.

If the 80/20 ratio played out in a general manner throughout Quebec, we would be inclined to accept it as a fair statistical base from which to make policy, but it isn't.

The 80/20 ratio does not play out on the island of Montreal, containing almost one third of the province's population.
In fact, of the 13% of Anglophones that live in Quebec, most live in the western neighbourhoods of Montreal, creating an enormous bubble.

In the town of Montreal West, the 80/20 ratio is actually reversed, where 80% of its citizens are English.
Policies and laws based on the preponderance of the French language in the province, have little relevancy here.
In fact, the entire western portion of the island of Montreal, is as far removed from this 80/20 data set as can be, with Anglos and English ethnics actually outnumbering French speakers.
In this part of Quebec, the majority doesn't rule.

Let's visit a mythical sports bar in Montreal West where 100 people have gathered to watch a hockey game. The bartender asks for a show of hands to determine whether the English or French language television broadcast should be shown on the big screen.
When asked who prefers the French language telecast, about 15 hands go up while about 80 hands go up for the English broadcast.

"Then it's settled" says the barkeeper, "We'll watch in French!"

Readers, this is Quebec..

While you may smile at the burlesque example above, most French-language militants will argue that it's completely reasonable, because French is the majority language of Quebec... and besides, it's threatened. (the old chestnut)

And so, because there is an overabundance of French-speakers in  Quebec City, Abitibi, the Saguenay and Monteregie regions, towns that have enormous English majorities in Montreal are forced to treat their majority language as second class.

Here's a list of the English percentage of selected Montreal towns.

The great campaign to impose French signs over English Montreal is an underhanded attempt by language militants to promote the fiction that in Quebec, French is in the majority everywhere.

Like a child covering her eyes and shouting,  "I can't see you,  I can't see you," language militants believe that by eliminating English signs, somehow the English won't be there.

The worst of it all is that they drape themselves in the cloth of righteous indignation, crusaders battling the scourge of the heathens, when in reality, they are nothing but ethnic cleansers, bound and determined to 'disappear' the English from Montreal.

Everyday, more people speak French in Quebec than the day before. The fiction that Quebec is in danger of losing its French is the mantra that is repeated daily to justify discrimination.
Demographers tell us that Quebec has long surpassed the critical threshold required to maintain its language and culture.

Portraying itself as a society under attack from foreign influence is the same device demagogues around the world have used to discriminate against minorities to sell an unpopular agenda.

Here in Quebec the tradition lives on, where the agenda is sovereignty and where the  English are the scapegoats.

By promoting the fiction that French is on the cusp of annihilation, all manner of restrictive and discriminatory practices can be justified and made more palatable to a public frightened by lies and misinformation.

Let me be as clear as possible.  Montreal is not a French city and never was, despite the propaganda.

Montreal is a bilingual English/French city and always was.

Great swaths of the island of Montreal are so English, aside from signs one would think they are in Ontario. This is the reality that militants want to obliterate.

Demanding that French signage be adopted in the Montreal on a superior basis, is a question of unfairly imposing ones will on another, because one can.


And so language militants, now with the blessing of the government, are hell bent on pursuing confrontation, hoping that it will be a positive step towards sovereingty.

But times have changed, Montreal Anglos are unafraid and when challenged will push back with a vengeance.

To French militants, I repeat what I warned my English brethren in my last post;

Be afraid, be very afraid.....

Friday: The Coming Language War.