Sorry for the nasty tone this letter will take but like so many Anglos and ethnics in Quebec, we are utterly fed up with the nasty and cruel assault on our communities. It behooves me to point out the obvious painful truth in a rather frank and perhaps unkind manner in response to the unacceptable scapegoating that we have borne with too much silence, dignity and sadly, acquiescence.
Once again, for political reasons, the harping has been raised over language and sadly, the feds are jumping over hoops to see how high each party can reach to placate the unplacatable.
While your demand that living and working in French in Canada be an established right, you continue to argue that living in English in Quebec is but a privilege, one accorded, as we are constantly reminded, by the grace and generosity of the benevolent francophone majority.
While you demand that every airplane flying between Vancouver and Victoria have a French-speaking cabin crew member with francophone passengers but a rarity, you defend as reasonable and fair, the right of a bus driver in West Island Montreal not to answer a passenger's question in English even though the makeup of the riders may be 70% English. It is the same mean-spirited policy that posts a police resource officer who cannot speak English to serve in a 1,500 student English language high school in Laval. This in a police force of 800 officers.
Let me blunt.
It isn't the job of Anglos and ethnics to protect the French language in Quebec while Quebec francophones make zero effort to protect their own language. It is that simple.
Every proposal to safeguard the French language in Quebec that has been enacted or proposed is targeted at our community, giving life to the lie that we are responsible for the fictitious demise of the French language in Quebec.
If francophones want to protect their language they can do so themselves. We are not the cause of its perceived and sadly exaggerated demise. We have become a political football no different from other minorities in other countries scapegoated and blamed for the failings of the majority.
It is a convenient political lie that must be denounced. So let me get to the point.
Fix your own language problems within your own community before knocking on our door.
If you don't want immigrants and especially French-speaking Muslim immigrants because they won't 'assimilate' and adopt Quebec cultural practices, then stop immigration.
Let every 'pur laine' family adopt a policy of three children instead of the under two that is presently the case. I know that it is an effort and perhaps an imposition in this modern world but if protecting French is so important, I'm sure the effort is merited.
Instead of consuming English culture, how about absorbing Quebec French artists and television programs instead of Netflix and English artists. As it is, the under-watched French version of the CBC, Radio-Canada, is over-funded by English Canada, all without a thank-you very much. How about stopping the practice of dubbing Anglophone shows like Brokenwood, Grantchester, Downton Abbey and a myriad of others in favour of French-language shows from Belgium and France. Hmmm. Not interested?
The Quebec film industry consists of but a handful of decent films a year, despite a robust subsidy program with Quebecers seemingly more attuned to Hollywood blockbusters. STOP GOING!!
Unlike the dozens of anglophone artists who perform successfully in Quebec City and Montreal to mostly francophone audiences, the same is not the case for Quebecois francophone artists who struggle to attract paying customers. No Quebec Francophone artist can sell out the Bell Centre in Montreal except perhaps Celine Dion, who in reality ceased being a francophone artist when she consciously removed the accent on her name (Céline) and embraced English music as her mainstay.
As the organizers readily admit, the annual summertime Quebec music festival would not be able to sell a fraction of the tickets were it not for the headline English artists who actually draw the patrons. And these patrons are almost all francophone.
As for English CEGEPS and universities drawing too many francophone students, another red-herring complaint, I couldn't care less if francophones were banned, but the government won't adopt this measure because francophone families would rebel. Preserving the French language seems less important when it is francophones who need to make the effort and sacrifice. The absurd debate in Quebec as to the danger of teaching English in Quebec public schools is a sad testament of how out of touch with reality language militants are In fact, North Korea understands better the importance of English and does a better job of teaching it in public schools than francophone schools in Quebec. Can you think of anything sadder?
And lastly, if the French language is in such dire straits and if it is so important, just call another referendum and convince 63% of francophones to vote to leave Canada. It isn't a magical percentage that is absurd, but alas, it is easier to blame 'les autres' for sovereignty's unattainability.
How is it that every language militant, sovereigntist organization and whinging journalist never propose that Francophones make any real effort or sacrifice to save their so-called endangered language? Is it because they know they'll get no support because the issue is actually just phony or is it because francophones don't really care and prefer to pay lip service by blaming and scapegoating us, the anglophone and ethnic community.
The great language lie is not that French is in danger, (which it is not,) but rather the lie that Anglos and Ethnics are responsible to fix someone else's mess.
Crunching numbers is something I enjoy doing and I sometimes, just sometimes, uncover interesting facts that the media and the government ignore because it doesn't fit the narrative which they wish to disseminate.
Now that a vaccine or two are available the question begs as to how fast it can make a real difference and how many of us need to be vaccinated in order to end or severely limit the impact of the pandemic and eliminate the disastrous lockdowns.
Let's analyze the numbers in the chart here from England which closely resembles ours in terms of the demographics of the virus.
First, the most important statistic is that less than 10% of deaths related to Covid-19 occur in those under 60 years old and of those deaths less than 1% of the total Covid-19 deaths occur in under 60 year-olds with no underlying conditions. This means that the youngest 80% of the population suffer around 15% of the Covid-19 deaths.
The numbers are quite shocking.
They reveal that by inoculating just 15% of the population, those over 70 years old, the effects on the rest of the population can be safely managed.
Let us remember that the average age of a Covid-19 death is around 83 years old and 55% of those hospitalized with the virus are over 70 years old who make up just 13% of Canada's population.
The government is talking about the end of 2021 as the date when all Canadians who want the vaccine can get it, but the worst results of the pandemic can be minimized by the very early Spring by vaccinating the most vulnerable, those over 70 years old. And so the numbers presented here easily demonstrate that if those over 70 years old are removed from danger, Covid-19 is not much more dangerous than the flu for the rest of the population.
Really, I'm not kidding.
Let us compare the nine months of the pandemic and put Covid-19 deaths side by side with flu deaths for the groups under 70 years. In Canada of the 15,000 deaths from Covid-19, 90% occurred in those 70 years-old and older. Doing a little math tells us that only around 1,500 deaths occurred in those under 70 years old and quite shockingly, this matches almost identically to the 1,430 deaths from flu in people under 70 years old reported in Canada in 2018 (for the whole year).
If we innoculate the 13% of us who are over 70 years old and for good measure, another million or so in the over 55 set who have serious underlying conditions like morbid obesity, hypertension or heart disease, we can get the pandemic down to an extremely manageable level.
Those who are still in jeopardy should govern themselves accordingly by masking up when going out and limiting outings to the very bare essential.
The economy could be unlocked and businesses and restaurants reopened. Hospitals would still have Covid-19 cases but the numbers manageable and the fatalities cut by 90-95%.
At the point where we've vaccinated the most vulnerable 15%, a lockdown is infinitely more damaging than the virus. The increase in suicides, conjugal violence and drug and alcohol abuse aggravated by the lockdown would be abated and children would return to the much-needed routine of school.
The early Spring is when this could and should happen, but I get the sense that the government both federal and provincial are enjoying the situation where total control and fear make us dependant.
Way back in the Spring I watched an interview with a young college type who was being chastised by a reporter for ignoring the rules by frolicking with like-minded Spring breakers on a Florida beach. He told the reporter that Covid-19 wasn't much of a danger to him and his fellow collegians and when challenged that he could be spreading the disease, he told the reporter that those in danger should stay home and isolate themselves.
What a Jerk!
That's what I thought then but now have come to believe that he was absolutely right and despite the government and the media exhorting us to shut down our lives, the reality is that the policy of isolating our entire society is deeply flawed, based on erroneous conclusions, desperation and panic.
Now I'm not an anti-masker, anti-vaxxer or a conspiracy nut, just someone with above-average intelligence who enjoys sifting through reams of data to either validate or reject what officials are telling me to do.
If you think that I'm an arrogant Besserwisser, someone who rejects government advice because I have a default right-wing paranoid distrust of authority, you are grossly mistaken. I have shared some conclusions through this blog that time has actually borne me out as often more accurate than what the government has peddled. This is partly based on the fact that I don't have a political agenda like that which forces officials to lie in order to protect what they believe is the greater good or in the worst case, their own greater good. An example of this was the advice that masks were not necessary because of the shortage at the time and the fear that health workers would be deprived. It was perhaps sound public policy but a lie just the same. I myself bought N95 masks on Ali-express (Chinese: Amazon) so that I wouldn't remove any from the supply here and it took a month to get them, but get them I did and I am still wearing them. It is a tiny example of how the government makes decisions mostly in good faith but not always in the individual's best interest.
When we were told back in the early spring by Health Canada and the laughable sadsack Dr. Theresa Tam that Covid-19 wasn't dangerous or likely to have a significant effect on the nation, I read the data coming out of China and concluded that we were going to be slammed. The data was clear to anyone who cared to study it with an open mind and Its logical conclusion that the virus was loosed upon the world and that there was no going back. Our health minister Patty Hadju swore up and down that closing the border was actually counter-productive, an utterly stupid and foolish notion that the World Health Organization was pushing at the time.
Now I'm not saying that if we closed the border earlier, we would have done much better but the Health minister destroyed her credibility in stridently lecturing us about the counter-productive nature of such a border closure, just days before the Prime Minister, following Donald Trump's lead, did exactly that. Hadju and Dr. Thersa Tam embarrassed themselves by disseminating such harmful and irresponsible ideas and both should have been fired or resigned over their incompetence.
Of course, in their defence politicians and defenders tell us that the advice was based on the best science available at the time, which is a crock of bullshit. While the Chinese were remiss in reporting the onset of the disease, once denounced by the rest of the world for harbouring the secret, China decided to open up its data including the genome of the virus which led to the rapid discovery of a vaccine. A trove of statistics related to transmission was made readily available. It was those facts and figures that were the basis of my conclusions, which could and probably was known to health agencies in the western world. I'm actually sure that within Health Canada, there were those who knew the truth, that we'd be in for a monumental catastrophe. The experts and statisticians could analyze the data even better than I, but somewhere a political decision was made to downplay the unfolding disaster.
In a post I wrote on March 13, 2020, at the very onset of the pandemic, I described quite plainly what was coming and offered an opinion on what we should do. Remember, I wrote all this back in March.
"All the experts and all the health professionals know that we cannot
stop Covid-19 dead in its tracks, that ship has sailed or never even was
in port.
Restricting foreigners at airports may stall the propagation somewhat,
but the virus is already here and will work its way through the
population, no matter what.
The shutdown of public gatherings is useful only because it will slow
(but not eliminate) the spread, giving our limited medical resources
more room to react."....
"We must immediately impose a self-quarantine on everybody over 65 years old and those in vulnerable health categories.
Seniors would be obliged to go into home self-quarantine where they would be forced to ride out the storm. Senior residences would be put on lock down with no visitors and employees would be restricted to working in just one senior residence, reducing contamination from one home to another."
Please read that entire post;
The Government is Handling Covid-19 All Wrong...
I took my own advice, arranged my affairs, bought all the disinfectant and personal protective equipment needed for myself and my extended family and battened down the hatches, prepared to go underground for the duration.
So what else can I tell you that the government isn't eager for you to know, facts that I've concluded through painstaking data analysis?
1. The Virus is almost no Threat to the Young
The virus poses a deadly threat to older people, by which I mean those over 80 years old who are particularly susceptible. Remove this demographic from the data and the pandemic is infinitely less dangerous.
In other words, let us as the Springbreaker told us, isolate as best the old and infirm and let the rest of society get on with life.
Here are some readily-available statistics that nobody in government or the media wants to present because the data contradicts the message they are peddling, that Covid is a danger to us all.
As of this date, there have been some 8,000 deaths due to Covid-19 in Quebec, not a number to be scoffed at for sure. But out of all of those deaths, less than 50 deaths occurred in those aged less than fifty years old which is less than 1% of the total, and this includes the obese, hypertensive and otherwise immune-depressed within that group. The under 50 years old demographic makes up almost 60% of our Quebec population and represent over 5 million people out of the 8.5 million living in Quebec. It is a stunning fact that nobody wants to admit publicly.
During the nine months of the pandemic and within this under 50 age group, historic statistics tell that about 250 people would have been killed in car accidents,in the same time period, making death by vehicle 5 times more likely than death by Covid-19.
For those of us under fifty, the measures imposed are causing more harm than good.Children are falling behind in their studies and their socialization is suffering immeasurably. For adults, the economic toll of losing one's livelihood is devastating and mental-health issues related to twiddling our thumbs at home exacerbated with reported conjugal violence, suicide, alcohol and drug abuse increasing. Locking down a group that has limited risk is a policy debacle enacted by panic.
2. The media is guilty of spreading panic The media shoulders much responsibility in panicking the general public over Covid-19 by constantly focusing on the deaths of younger people, fathers, mothers, health workers and first-responders, media attention that is incommensurate with reality. The overwhelming majority of deaths occur in patients over 80 years old, those who are generally uninteresting to the media and so a distorted view is presented to the public. Every time the media airs or prints a story about some unfortunate 40'something who died of Covid-19, they should also air 100 stories about an elderly patient killed by the virus, It is the very definition of a "man bites dog" media event.
The same goes for reporting allergic reactions from the Covid-19 vaccine which serves only to panic those already jittery over the prospect of getting vaccinated. Such disproportional media coverage reinforces the reluctance of trypanophobics and anti-vaxxers to accept getting vaccinated. I suspect that if everyone in the general population were forced to drink a glass of milk the number of anaphylaxis reactions would be higher than with the vaccine
3. The Carnage in the senior residences will endure
The government cannot stop the slaughter in the old people's homes because the cat is out of the bag and remedial action to mitigate the carnage is futile. With seniors living in cramped quarters with personnel travelling between floors and indeed between residences, spread is inevitable and the same goes for any residence where many people are living communally like dorms, hospitals and religious orders. The problem of senior residences is of course the reduced ability to fight the virus.
4. Asymptomatic transmission is simply not true
From the beginning, officials haven't really understood transmissibility and have erred on the side of caution by telling us that the virus can be spread by infected people not showing any fever or outward signs of infection. But since the summer, health professionals, as well as government and even the World Health Organization, have concluded that asymptomatic transmission is simply not a problem, In other words, people who don't demonstrate symptoms, but are infected do not pass on the virus.
"On June 7, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, told a press conference that from the known research, asymptomatic spread was “very rare.” “From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual.” She added for emphasis: “It’s very rare.”
Are you shocked by that analysis?
I certainly was when I read it. It means that if you are infected, yet exhibiting no outward signs of the virus, you are not a danger to others.
5. Mask-wearing in public protects you, not others
Over the course of the pandemic, the government has reversed itself a number of times over mask-wearing, much to the discredit of its reputation. First, they told us not to wear masks because they were unnecessary, then they told us that we should wear masks to protect others and now they tell us that mask-wearing protects everyone. I encourage everyone to wear masks as a defence mechanism against idiots who go out in public knowingly infected. To that end, the government has encouraged us to wear flimsy cloth masks because at the time, they were fearful of a shortage of infinitely more effective N95 masks, essential for health care workers. That shortage has passed and instead of encouraging us now to procure and use the more effective masks (which are now readily available and inexpensive,) the government has stayed criminally silent, likely because reversing itself one more time is a bridge too far vis-a-vis its credibility. It's as foolish as going outside in winter wearing a flimsy Spring jacket when what is needed is a substantial winter coat. If you're going to wear a mask, wear an effective N95 mask and skip the flimsy cloth mask, even if others have adopted it as the norm. Remember, contrary to the foolishness the government is pedalling, wearing a mask is for your safety first.
6. More important than masks, the government should enforce public temperature checks
More important than masks is stopping those who are infected and displaying symptoms from mixing with the general public. We all are aware of the covidiot couple who boarded a plane while the husband was knowingly sick and who promptly died in his seat, infecting many others around him. His wife admitted that her husband was displaying symptoms yet decided to board anyways, underlining the fact that many among just don't give a hoot. Had the airline done a simple temperature check at the gate, the symptomatic traveller would have been denied boarding. Checking temperature with a handheld wireless device is simple and fast. It should be done at the entrance to all public buildings and stores. The guy or gal who makes sure you are wearing a mask at the Loblaws entrance can easily check your temperature and eliminate all the sick and selfish morons who put their convenience ahead of public safety. China adopted this policy early in their pandemic to good effect and it surprises me that such a simple, fast and inexpensive tool is not being put to use.
7. Prompt action by the government over the vaccine would have saved ten of thousands of lives in the western world, including Canada
Once China released details about the genetic makeup of the vaccine, it took just two days to design a vaccine. Yup...two days. The testing phase took months and months instead of years and indeed was rushed according to modern standards. The testing consisted of giving one group of volunteers the real vaccine and another a placebo. All the volunteers were sent home and asked to live their normal lives. After long months and months, researchers compared the data and concluded that the group that got the real vaccine were protected from the virus and contracted the disease up to 95% less than those volunteers who got the control fake vaccine. But all these months-long, people were dropping dead at an alarming rate. In fact, hundreds of thousands died and now many are asking if the government did the right thing in refusing to take the "Challenge" testing route which would actually expose all the who got the real vaccine to the virus and see how they reacted. While exposing young healthy volunteers to the real virus is deemed unethical, given the scale of the disaster it would seem that it was a risk that had to be taken, given that young people are almost never fatally affected by the virus. Had volunteers been given the opportunity, (and perhaps $50,000) the efficacy of the vaccine would have been established in early summer. Yes, there were risks, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
8. Health care workers need to stop carping about their workload and risk
I have enormous respect and admiration for health care workers but cannot abide by their carping about being over-worked and exposed.
We are in a battle against a virus that is as deadly as anything we have seen since an actual war. Whether they wanted to or not, they have been drafted to man the front lines, just as the young men who were sent off without any choice to the killing grounds of Europe in World War II. I couldn't imagine those soldiers complaining about being overworked or missed vacation. In today's feminist world, nurses are being asked to share the burden of service and sacrifice. It is undignified to carp and complain.
With that, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Here's hoping things will turn around quickly and we can get back to normal....
Excited politicians anxious to smack down MP who insulted language dogma
The language Ayatollahs of Quebec were up in arms once again, outraged that federal Liberal MP Emmanuella Lambropoulos called into question whether French was actually in decline in Quebec. The Quebec MP represents a linguistically and ethnically diverse Montreal riding and was roundly chastised for saying out loud what many of us think. Unlike the little boy in the fable of the emperor who wore no clothes, her revelation wasn't exactly embraced, in fact, quite the opposite. Her missive was so toxic that politicians of every single political party ran for cover, distancing themselves from her as if she was radioactive. She was summarily dumped from a Parliamentary language committee for having the temerity of expressing a forbidden opinion, summarily 'cancelled,' in the best tradition of the French revolution where those whose ideologies ran afoul of the mob were burned at the stake.
While we scoff and condemn extremist Muslim societies that persecute apostates, homosexuals, feminists and others who dissent, it is fair to ask if we ourselves are headed in that exact direction?
At any rate, the missive was manna from Heaven for Quebec language militants, another opportunity to display moral outrage and somehow reclaim the high ground in the phoney language and cultural war. The predictable reaction was swift and hysterical, worthy of religious fanatics in dysfunctional Muslim countries who defend Islam as the only true faith.
Blaming Canada in general and Quebec Anglophones, allophones and immigrants in particular for manufactured language slights has been the policy of the defeated sovereigntist movement ever since the last referendum. Carrying on the fight for independence, militants have had to pivot, recognizing that support for the independence option is at its nadir and so they hope to keep the embers of sovereignty alive by fanning the flames of manufactured language discontent.
For the last forty years, sovereigntists have been alluding to an omnipresent evil English world cultural juggernaut which they purport will ultimately destroy Quebec, setting themselves up as David fighting the English Goliath in a game where the ultimate goal is not to win an unwinnable fight but rather to lose as loudly, painfully and humiliatingly as possible in an effort to raise the dormant hackles of Quebec francophones more interested in pursuing their daily lives in peace...and within Canada. This strategy was invented by the infamous Dr. Camille Laurin, father of Bill 101, the language law he designed with built-in anti-constitutional clauses that were meant to engender the inevitable court reversals with the sole idea that these humiliating defeats would provoke outrage in the francophone community, boosting the chances of success in the upcoming referendums.
This victimhood strategy is tiresome and tedious and only persists because Canada indulges the fantasy. Like the Israeli government which is hamstrung by an ultra-religious minority that controls the balance of power with a meagre 10% of the voter base, Quebec leverages its position between Liberal Ontario and Conservative west to its advantage and wrests concessions beyond its demographic weight.
No federal political party dares challenge the fantasy of the supposed dire situation of French in Quebec and so the faulty concept of an imperiled language situation in Quebec has gone unchallenged on pain of cancellation. MissLambropoulos is proof.
I've written before about how Quebec language nationalists absolve themselves from responsibility to protect and promote their own language, preferring to blame everyone else. The Quebec government and the entire political cadre, aided and abetted by the compliant media, continue to offer an utterly false language narrative, a fantasy easy to sell and indeed easy to buy, where 'les Autres' are cast as villains and the 'pur and dur' the protagonists, fighting the good fight.
The current language distortion cast by the sovereignty and language movement 'proving' that Quebec is under attack is the statistic showing French declining as the mother tongue as spoken in the home. With 50,000 new immigrants arriving in Quebec each year, most of all who speak French outside the home but who have another mother tongue, usually Arabic or Spanish, it is inevitable that the statistic about mother tongue declines. But it in no way indicates that French in Quebec is declining, rather it is the 'Quebecois pure stock' component of society that is declining, a fact that really offends militants but something they cannot allude to in public. The French language in Quebec society actually remains stronger than ever despite efforts to disguise the fact through selective and self-serving statistics. Every day more people speak French than the day before and the critical mass required to maintain French as the social language is stronger than ever. For sovereigntists and language militants it is the ultimate inconvenient truth.
The latest language tiff was sprung by an idiotic article in Le Journal de Montreal that had as its premise the idea that getting served in French was harder and harder in downtown Montreal. The reporter offered some very unscientific observations of her visits, failing to disclose exactly how the stores were chosen and whether they were pre-screened, which I imagine they were.
Since the whole idea behind the article was to find fault, the likely faulty unscientific methodology was purposely left undisclosed and so the results are not only unreliable but downright deceptive. But the conclusions were embraced by an eager media which ran the story because it fits neatly into its narrative and helps boost ratings, a useful distraction from the daily litany of bad news vis-a-vis Covid-19. Utter nonsense.
Tell the big lie, rinse and repeat has been the go-to policy of the sovereignty movement for the last forty years. The device invented by Adolf Hitler who in his book Mein Kampf described it as the "use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously".
To our astonishment, we've seen Donald Trump employ the 'big lie' to outrageously distort the truth about his election defeat. It is just stunning to see how many people choose to believe his nonsense in the face of the unbridled truth.
In Quebec, we are living the same phenomenon, a big lie that tells us French is declining in Quebec when nothing could be farther from the truth.
Sadly our politicians and journalists, both French and English, are too weak to denounce the practice and fight for the truth. Where is our Emile Zola to boldly tell the truth when all others shirk away from the responsibility?
Only the most militant language fanatic can abide by the farcical inspection of a restaurant over some flimsy complaint about an English language sign during these desperate and trying of times for the restaurant business.
While most language militants kept silent out of embarrassment, not so Quebec's most enduring xenophobic and Anglophobe, Gilles Proulx, who in a radio interview with Richard Martineau referred to the owner of Kitchen73, Carmine Anoia by name as a "cursed impudent who just got off the boat" ("Un maudit bel effronté qui debarque du bateau") Link{fr}
An insulted Proulx made the reference again just for good measure, again complaining about "those who just got off the boat who don't care about Bill 101" He then issued another racist insult invoking the term Tête carrée" a slur against Anglophones which is akin to Anglophones using the term "Pepsi" to insult French Quebecers.
More than a comical blowhard. Proulx is a sickening racist
It goes to underline the level of Proulx's racism that he made his remark about Mr. Anoia based solely on the Italian sound of his name. In fact, Mr. Anoia assures me that he was actually born here. He was also none-to-pleased by Mr. Proulx's racist remarks over immigrants.
I guess Quebec remains the only jurisdiction in Canada or America where one can use this type of language on the radio without complaint or repercussion. I wonder how it would go over on Montreal radio station CJAD if I as a guest referred to Francophone Quebecers as "Damned Pepsis!" I can imagine the level of rightly-deserved censure that would ensue and this from an outraged Anglophone radio audience. As for Mr. Martineau, he is guilty of racism by allowing these types of remarks on his show with a wink, wink, nod, nod, and nary an objection. Shame on them both.
This in a time when almost all restaurants are on the brink of failure due to the in-house dining room closures as a result of the pandemic. It is indeed a stressful and bewildering time for hitherto successful restaurateurs blindsided by circumstances that can only be described as a "Black Swan" event. Not only is the pandemic a critical financial blow, but it also is wrecking a dastardly psychological toll on everyone in the restaurant business.
The very last thing these people need is an idiot inspector showing up to add insult to injury.
As you probably heard the OQLF conducted an inspection of this restaurant which was actually closed to indoor customers. The exasperated owner of Kitchen 73 unloaded on the sad-sack inspector sending her scurrying away in the best tradition of the Shawville reception afforded the OQLF years ago.
"Aposse of Shawville,
Que., residents, fed up with being harassed about business signs, has
run one of Quebec's language police out of town -- and the residents say
that if they have to, they'll do it again.
"At this point we are taking a stand,
because I'm no longer being made to
feel guilty for being English in
Quebec," says Lynn Wilson, co-owner
of the H&R Block in Shawville, a
predominantly English town of 1,500
about 80 kilometres northwest of
Ottawa.
"Come and take me away -- I don't
care, do what you have to do. I'm not
changing (my signs)." Read the rest of the story
The saddest part of it all is the mindset of the OQLF, completely out of touch with reality, actually insulted at its treatment of its inspector and the support shown the restaurant in the press and in social media.
So aggrieved was the agency that it felt necessary to defend itself on its website, actually playing the victim instead of the bully.
Here's a translation of what the OQLF had to say about the situation;
The Office québécois de la langue française deplores the fact that certain untrue information is currently circulating about the visit of an inspector from the Office to the Kitchen 73 restaurant. personal on social networks. [-]
The Office therefore wishes to point out that it did not issue a fine to the Kitchen 73 restaurant, nor did it request any corrections during its visit. The Office responded to a complaint that involved indoor signage, not the outdoor signage or company name.
The Office is fully aware of the context of COVID-19 and is making all necessary efforts to minimize its impact on its clientele. In addition, he always makes sure to make an appointment before carrying out an inspection. This is what was attempted in this case. Unable to reach the owner, the inspector went to the Kitchen 73 restaurant on the afternoon of Thursday, October 22 in order to carry out the required checks. Link{fr}
First of all, let me point out the utter irony of the OQLF in referring to those restaurants inspected as "clients,' a reference as realistic as lambs being led into the slaughterhouse being referred to as 'customers.'
But the above OQLF defence shows how completely oblivious and insensitive the agency is to the reality of the current pandemic, where inspecting closed restaurants on the verge of catastrophe is deemed perfectly normal and where beleaguered owners are expected to offer business as usual cooperation. It is strictly beyond the pale
The QOLF maintains the fiction that it protects the Province not only from the insidious creep of English but other languages as well. This charade offers the agency the fiction that it is not purely an anti-English tool.
Not having learned its lesson from the infamous pastagate affair, the OQLF was at it again, attacking a Montreal Italian bakery for its use of the word "Granita".
The agency is especially fond of harassing Italian owned businesses, their second favourite target, next to Anglos themselves. Italians are especially despised by the OQLF because although almost all are perfectly bilingual, they like the Jews of Quebec identify with the Anglo community and are staunch federalists.
Ans so the OQLF has a big problem with words like pasta or granita. It's amusing that restaurant words rooted in other languages are considered kosher cacher like egg rolls, dim sum, tacos, tapas, bibimbap, wonton, ceviche, fajitas, queso, chilli con Carne, etc.etc. The OQLF much prefers legitimate French translations of these 'foreign' dishes in the spirit of the famous "OT CHIKEN" sandwich, a staple in rural Quebec dives.
Perhaps the agency would be more sensitive if half of their staff were furloughed and the other half had to work from home at half pay for the duration of the pandemic. It might sensitize them to the reality that is the restaurant business across not only Quebec but the entire western world.
It may be time for opponents of the OQLF to organize and up their game. Up to now we have been bitching and moaning with the few legal challenges led by Brett Tyler largely unsupported by the community both financially and morally.
I want to congratulate Carmine Anoia for showing a little backbone in kicking out the offensive inspector.
Nothing terrible will happen and if his establishment is fined, it will well be worth the publicity. I for one never heard of this restaurant beforehand and now will make it a point to patronize it. A $500 fine is peanuts compared to the publicity.
If all targeted merchants took a stand, the OQLF would be paralyzed.
If we are not willing to take firmer action we deserve what we get.
Perhaps we should take note of the effect that the Black Lives Matter movement wrecked on American society with a few well-aimed acts of civil disobedience.
The Quebec government is painfully sensitive to being publically humiliated over language, especially internationally. The OQLF inspectors have had an easy time harassing merchants and should be confronted in a more meaningful manner.
In other words, it's time for us to put up or shut up.
