Quebec's Language Furor Masks a Deep Ugly Truth

"Panem et Circenses" (Bread and Circuses) extravagant entertainment, offered as an expedient means of pacifying discontent or diverting attention."

The raging language furor over the so-called fragile state of the French language in Quebec dominates the media and is monopolizing political debate conveniently crowding out issues that need to be debated and are fundamental to Quebec's well-being.
Premier Legault and his evil minions continually hammer away at the subject, reminding 'real' Quebecers at every opportunity that they are in the gravest of danger at the hands of an evil barbaric horde of Anglos and Allophones who dangerously breached the gates of fortress francophonia.

Like the Russian media that parrots Putin's mad fantasies about Ukrainian Nazis, so too does Quebec media parrot the fantasy that Quebecois du souche will soon be drinking tea and toasting the Governor-General speaking in the very best Queen's English, whilst their beloved French language and heritage is long-forgotten, consigned to the ash-heap of history, mercilessly drowned in the anglicizing sauce imposed by the overpowering English monolith.

The expression "Panem and Circenses" was coined to denounce the unwillingness of the citizens of Rome to act against their incompetent leaders. The idea was that as long as the distracted population was entertained and had enough to eat, the powerful could do what they wanted.

And so the language debate is a convenient distraction, one that papers over the deeper and more sinister malaise that shrouds the province in collective dysfunction.

Quebec is a province run by pencil-head politicians and a bloated cadre of bureaucratic idiots who overspend, over-govern, over-regulate, under-perform and under-deliver on just about every level.
The truly sad state of an under-performing society is ignored by the media obsessed with language and language alone.
Yes, other provinces have their own faults and problems and managerial messes, but none rise to the level of dysfunction, laziness, incompetence, mean-spirited and financial mismanagement that is Quebec.

J'accuse.
Today the news cycle is filled with two stories that just about sum up the problems of Quebec.

A married couple, both emergency room doctors have decided to call it quits and move to Ontario to continue being doctors because life in Quebec is just so much harder.

"I love Montreal. It's the city I grew up in, and to leave it again for the second time, it's disappointing," Stasiak said.

They are leaving at a time when the Quebec health-care system has been heavily criticized for being fragile.

Montreal alone is short 18,399 health-care workers, according to the government's July 4 health-care system dashboard.

But after all their agonizing, it became clear to the doctors that compared to the hospital system they remember in Toronto, Montreal's working conditions, which they consider to be tough and inflexible, are incompatible with raising a healthy family. They say those conditions are a natural consequence of government rules limiting hiring.

And if they still had doubts about the move, Quebec's new language law, commonly known as Bill 96, sealed the deal for them. Link

 The second sad story is infuriating because not one politician had the guts to answer questions or apologize for the utter failure of Quebec's incompetent and understaffed paramedic service.

A 91-year-old Montreal woman died over the weekend after waiting seven hours for an ambulance and her family is now blaming ongoing staffing shortages within paramedic services.
On Saturday evening, Therese Pardiac injured her leg after a fall and when she couldn’t stand her family called for an ambulance.
Urgences-Santé said Pardiac’s call was re-evaluated multiple times and was considered low priority on each occasion. But by the time it arrived, seven hours later, Pardiac had passed away
On average, Urgences-Santé is short-staffed by around 30 per cent every night due in part to a lack of new recruits and workers absent due to COVID-19..... Read more

This crisis is not new, La Presse reported on the shortage back in February. On some nights Montreal is served by half the necessary units meaning that response time is absurdly long.
Now the part about a lack of recruits is interesting because La Presse also reports that many qualified candidates are being routinely rejected without explanation.

"We regret to inform you that your application has not been accepted", reads a laconic email received in May by Ahmed, the fictitious first name of an ambulance driver who worked for more than 20 years in the region of Laurentians—Lanaudière. Like all the other rejected paramedics who spoke to La Presse for this article, Ahmed requested anonymity so as not to harm his career.“I did the whole process, then I was refused without giving me any explanation,” he says indignantly. A process that spans several weeks and includes two interviews, psychometric tests, a medical examination and a drug test.

"I have no feedback from human resources after multiple attempts by email, by phone, I have no response from them as to why I was not selected," he continues, discouraged.

“There are no details of the reason,” confirms Urgences-santé spokesperson Benoit Garneau. “They have to work through all the things they have to do with the process,” he says, adding that candidates are welcome to reapply within a year . I don't understand how they can't even give at least one reason for the paramedic to improve, correct their shortcomings... 

 And Ahmed is not the only one in this situation. La Presse spoke with three experienced paramedics and a new graduate who were refused a position at Urgences-santé without receiving an explanation. However, Urgences-santé regularly lacks personnel to fill all its shifts, and the situation is particularly acute at night and on weekends. During a weekend at the end of May, La Presse reported that more than half of the scheduled ambulances were missing due to a lack of available employees. The fact that it is so understaffed at night may force Urgences-santé to prioritize urgent calls at the expense of those for whom there does not appear to be an imminent danger to life. 

And this weekend again, almost all shifts will be marked by absences. During the night from Sunday to Monday, no less than 38 paramedics will be missing out of the 98 who should be on duty, according to Mr. Garneau, a situation representative of the last few weeks."Our goal this year is to hire more than 100 paramedics, but I don't think that will be achievable because there is a shortage of people coming out of school,"

Now I don't want to ascribe motives to the writer of the article but in choosing an Arabic-sounding pseudonym for the rejected paramedic candidate is he in fact trying to pass on a message about hiring discrimination?
And so it's easier to let people die waiting for an ambulance because in Quebec nobody will put up much of a stink anyways. The public's lack of concern or forgiving nature is staggering to behold or understand.

Perhaps Urgences-Santé might consider lowering their standards in the face of a crisis, perhaps taking an example from the Russian army in accepting any and all recruits including those cursed ethnics in the face of staggering manpower shortages.
Considering that Quebec paramedics don't offer much advanced medical care on the scene as in other jurisdictions, (the service is disparagingly categorized as a 'scoop and run') how much training is actually required?

This tragic mess is unsurprising in Quebec, where a higher level of failure and dysfunction is to be expected and endured without complaint or consequence. In Quebec, like in ancient Rome, the public has become inured to failure and mediocrity and as long as there is enough to eat and language controversy to distract, life goes on.

60 years ago I was playing street hockey on La Peltrie street in the Snowdon district of Montreal when an unfortunate miscue caused one of the lads to fall and break his leg. With no cell phones, we knocked on the nearest door and the homeowner called the police who managed the ambulance service in that era.
In less than four minutes a police ambulance screeched onto the scene and scooped the injured boy, padding him off to the hospital with sirens blaring.
The cops came back an hour later and told those of us still sitting around nervously that the boy was being treated and having a cast placed on his leg at this very moment. The two cops then presented us with a giant box of fries to assuage our concern.
Have we really made progress since then? 

Like most senior folks, who grew up poor by today's standards, the vast majority of us actually had a family doctor who even made some house calls when necessary.
When my bicycle was stolen back then in the sixties, a detective actually came to my house to take the report.
Progress over the decades in Quebec is not exactly something to brag about as our politicians would lead us to believe and while technology and modernization have made us all richer as the standard of living has risen dramatically, the fact is that the government's performance has deteriorated exponentially.

Hows many hours is the wait today in the emergency room to get stitches or to set a broken bone
compared to pre-Medicare times?
How many weeks or months is the wait for elective or 'non-urgent' surgery compared to the past.
How long a wait is it for an ambulance?
On and on it goes....
The Department of child welfare claims to be too understaffed' to take action when children are abused with sometimes tragic results. Then there is the complaint that 20% of Quebecers cannot find a family doctor. This is in consideration that Quebec has on average more doctors than the national average.

“Though the national average is 230 doctors per 100,000 residents, Quebec boasts 243 for the same number of people 

Theoretically, we should have easier access to doctors,” Dr. Charles Bernard, president and CEO of the Collège des médecins du Québec, told The Canadian Press. “I think there’s an organization aspect,” Link

Today bureaucracy, wasteful spending, and under-performance underpin everything that the government touches.
I read an article about how Quebec's vaunted immigration department is so dysfunctional that french-speaking immigrants are opting to go to Ontario because of the months and years of delay. One fellow from France was refused a visa because he failed a French test, the only language he spoke.
Absurd? This is Quebec.
As for the political and public service, let me offer but one tiny example of how bloated Quebec has evolved in relation to public spending. 

The city of New York with a population of 8.4 million is represented by 51 members of the city council while that of Montreal with a population of 1.5 million is composed of 64 city councillors, which represents six times larger representation.

This bloat and dysfunction are really only half the story, after all the government is just a reflection of the society it represents.

And Quebec society, its people can shoulder much of the blame for what ails Quebec.

QUEBEC'S DISTINCT SOCIETY.
Quebec nationalist elite scoff at Canadian society, from the Premier's wife who disparaged Canadian culture to every nationalist journalist that describes Quebec societal values as kinder and gentler.
This fantasy is utterly false and sadly absurd. Statistics and facts bear out the opposite.

Quebecers work less than the rest of Canadians
The United States averaged 38.7 hours per week, per job, followed by 37.5 hours in Alberta, 36 in Ontario and 35.5 in British Columbia, while Quebec stands last at 35.1 hours.
Defenders will say that working less is a societal choice and it might well be, but Canadians in other provinces who do work longer hours contribute around 10 billion dollars annually to Quebec's budget through the moronically indulgent equalization program.
It's like your layabout brother-in-law telling you that he's making a lifestyle choice of working less while demanding that you augment his income.

As for generosity, Quebecers are notoriously tight-fisted and miserly with charitable hours volunteered, coming in last in both categories compared to other provinces.

Average annual volunteer hours by Canadians 

 

Average charitable donations made by Canadians

Quebec loves to boast that it is different from the rest of North America and goes to lengths to prove the point.
Its universal junior college system known as CEGEP replaces grade 12 and the first year of university with a burdensome extra layer which seems to fulfill no useful purpose. Like a country with a different train track gauge, trains must stop at the border.
It seems that the only function CEGEP fulfills is to keep Quebec students from attending post-secondary education outside the province because high school graduates are missing a year.
In response to Bill 96 and the proposed reduction in admissibility to English CEGEPs, some private high schools decided to offer a grade 12 in order that their students be equipped to seamlessly pursue an English education outside Quebec.
On hearing the proposal, the Quebec government went apeshit and immediately proposed banning any such program lest students find an easier avenue to leave Quebec.

Even Quebec's vaunted subsidized daycare system is so expensive that the service can only be offered to a portion of the population, creating a two and three-tiered system, something that Quebec is dedicated to fighting in the healthcare industry.
And then there's systemic corruption and discrimination that permeates Quebec society, worthy of an entirely different blog post.

Quebec salaries lag behind the Canadian average while being subject to the highest taxation rate in North America, further diminishing spending power. 

Still, nobody complains. 

Prisoners of language, Quebecers accept their lot, buying the nonsense that they are different, persecuted because of language and their supposed higher communal values and morals.

It is nonsense that politicians and nationalists pander in order to keep the masses from complaining.

And so Quebec is mired in mediocrity and dysfunction but as long as there's enough to eat and the English to bash, all is well.

Language Insanity Sweeping Quebec

Back in high school, a million years ago, I learnt a valuable lesson about the human condition, not in the classroom, but in the most unlikely of places.

Over fifty years ago, the scene in Montreal's Northmount High cafeteria of an out-of-control food fight remains indelibly stamped in my mind.
It started out innocently enough but before you knew it, too many otherwise rational and level-headed students were flinging food across the room in an orgy-like scene of mayhem and depravity.
The lunchroom monitors' efforts to intervene and restore a semblance of order proved woefully ineffective and it was abundantly clear that there was no stopping the bedlam as adrenaline coursed through the bodies of the frenzied participants, a scene that would ultimately play out to its exhausted conclusion.
While the majority of students in the cafeteria participated in the pandemonium, a significant minority either fled the scene or sat in utter dumbfounded amazement, taking in the scene in abject disbelief (myself included) wondering what mystical evil force had overtaken these people?

The lesson I took from that scene was that ordinary people can get caught up in the moment and despite their better and rational judgment be swept up by the mob into acting irrationally or otherwise believing commonly held nonsense just because everyone seems to be doing it or believing it.

When the Stanley cup riots occurred in Montreal it explained why normally law-abiding citizens deemed it acceptable to break windows along Ste. Catherine street and loot the stores.
And you'll no doubt remember that aspiring young lawyer who mugged before the camera wearing a thong over her mouth instead of a mask, mocking and insulting sanitary measures as the party aboard a chartered Sunwing jet turned into a drunken debacle. The personal and professional consequences were devastating.
 What on Earth was she thinking?

Collective insanity is even more dangerous when it applies to entire populations as demonstrated by Hitler's successful campaign to convince rational and usually level-headed German people that their misfortunes were all the fault of the Jews.
How could almost the entire nation embrace a patently false, libellous and dangerous concept so gratuitously?

And recently Valdimar Putin demonstrated that even in a modern world, the majority can embrace utter and complete nonsense in believing his concocted nonsense that Ukrainian Nazis posed a threat to Mother Russia, to the point that close to 100,000 Russian casualties have so far been sacrificed over a fantasy with nary a complaint.
And the saddest part is that once in the throws of hysteria there is no reasoning, no convincing, no abating and certainly no useful debate to be had.

Sadly such is the case here in Quebec, where mass hysteria over language has taken root, spurred on by a cynical and evil Premier Legault who channels Putin in callously fomenting rage and disgust over fantasy, the nonsense wherein Quebec is deemed to be under existential threat over language.

Just like a food fight which starts off mildly enough, with one idiot tossing a single plate of food, it inevitably escalates into an orgy of depravity, placing Quebec on the very same path of idiotic and hurtful excess.

Like Hitler's taunts over the dangerous Jews and Putin's taunts over Ukrainian Nazis, Legault's xenophobic and anglophilic missives have gained wide acceptance in the media, the true driver of public opinion.

In Russia, Putin's media sycophants are doing his dirty work, inflaming public opinion with hateful and racist rhetoric, and providing much-needed backing for the tragic Ukrainian war.

It's easy to understand that facts don't matter to these people and debate is a useless exercise in futility. Truth doesn't matter when a popular lie is so convenient and fun.
Like Donald Trump's loyal followers who still believe that the presidential election was stolen, no amount of debate, facts or truth will sway their unshaken faith in the lie.
There's no use in trying to convince them otherwise

Sadly the same is occurring in Quebec with our evil Premier and his racist minister Simon Jolin-Barrette spewing the vilest of untruths about English, anglophone and ethnics aided and abetted by a compliant media of closeted and open separatists eager to push the falsehood in order to promote their dogged pursuance of the twice rejected sovereignty option.
It is in fact the perfect storm of cognitive dissonance.

The Premier is being emboldened by the wide acceptance and media backing of his nonsense, upping the rhetoric with each week, recently offering up  this hateful missive

"It's important that we don't put all cultures on the same level; that's why we oppose multiculturalism," Legault said.

All this to say, that here in Quebec we are well past the nascent stage of collective insanity. 
There can be no debate or discourse with those dedicated to the lie of French fragility.

And the more we complain, the stronger the movement. grows.

No committee, political party, scholarly articles in the Press or any countervailing action or movement can have the slightest effect.

In fact, opposition and dissent to the idea of an existential threat to French in Quebec feeds into the paranoia, further strengthening the idea that Quebec stands alone against the world.

Parroting Putin's and Hitler's paranoiac exhortations that their societies are in mortal danger because of evil outside forces, posing an existential threat, Legault and his evil minions have employed the historically tried and true device of scapegoating and blame to cast anglos and ethnics as the enemies of the state.

Sadly, there is nothing we can do to stop the insanity.

Like those students uninvolved in the food fight, all we can do is observe the depravity and hope it ends soon.

I'm not so sure it will.

Five Lies Separatists Use to Justify Bill 96

Quebec's Language Delusion

That popular political misinformation campaigns, those based on ridiculous and demonstrable lies, can succeed in a modern open society, one blessed with a free, independent and critical press, remains a stunning deception to those with an open and discerning mind, be it left, center or right-leaning.

Take for example the bizarrely successful campaign that Donald Trump led to convince his followers that he actually won the 2020 presidential election. That so many millions of Americans could be wilfully-deceived, where facts and clear evidence are replaced with a manufactured fantasy goes to the power that those elected officials hold over their supporters.

Who of us isn't utterly exasperated by the odious and successful lie that Vladimir Putin continues to pedal that Ukrainian Nazis are a clear and present danger to the existence of Mother Russia.

Even Prime Minister Trudeau stooped to selling the public the nonsense that the 'Freedom Convoy' (the trucker demonstration that paralyzed Ottawa) was led by armed Nazis, a convenient lie used to justify the declaration of the Emergencies Act. 

Don't get me wrong, the declaration of the special powers could have been easily justified by the de facto blockade of the city, but it was just easier to lie to frightened Canadians who were eager for a resolution.

It clearly demonstrates that political leaders have incredible sway over a sadly gullible and largely trusting public and so lies and deceit come easily to dishonest and treacherous politicians when there is so much to gain.

And so too Quebec's Premier Legault has found his convenient lie, the one about French being in mortal danger in Quebec, manufactured to cement his hold on political power and ultimately to pursue the cause of sovereignty. 
It plays well because it is wildly supported by a cadre of dedicated sovereigntists that dominate the media and education system, and who view the lie as a useful tool to promote independence.

Like Putin and Trump, Premier Legault successfully pedals a pernicious lie, unsupported by facts, bolstered by nonsense statistics, fear-mongering and fanciful anecdotal tales of persecution and imminent disaster, boosted by like-minded villains and willfully deceived enablers.

Here are five fantasies proffered by those wishing to frighten Quebecers into believing that their language and culture is on the decline.

1. French is in decline
In the battle of statistics, it is easy to proffer numbers that support just about any position, but I haven't seen anything real that actually supports the decline or threat to French in Quebec.

Like a televangelist who beats his chest proclaiming that the end is nigh, those who are in the business of frightening Quebecers with nonsense statistics about language can be best described by Shakespeare;

"... full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 

The statistic most trotted out by language fanatics as proof that French is in decline is the one that describes French as the 'mother-tongue' or the first language spoken in the home in precipitous decline.

This notion is not only specious but outright xenophobic.
With immigrants pouring into Quebec because of a declining birthrate, it is natural that French, as well as English, is declining as the first language spoken in the home.
So what?
Imagine an African family who immigrates to Quebec, speaking no English and no French.
The children are sent to French school as per Bill 101 and the parents learn French rather quickly. As the family establishes themselves in Quebec, they do so exclusively in French.
Both parents get jobs where the language of the workplace is French. The children are absorbed into the Francophone milieu at school and consume Francophone television, movies and social media. The family remains bilingual, speaking French in all public endeavours and Swahili mixed with French at home.
When the children grow up and have their own children, French is the language primarily used with Swahili fading as the years go by.

For this 'mother tongue' argument to hold sway, this family represents an existential threat to the French language in Quebec.
Not only is the theory demonstrably false but clearly xenophobic and racist as well.

The only relevant statistic is the one that tells us that  94% of Quebecers can carry on a conversation in French while twenty years ago that number was 88%. So much for a decline!
In an article in L'Acualitié, a prominent statistician and demographer at Statistics Canada, Jean-Pierre Corbeil, has demolished the arguments, one by one, that French is in danger in Quebec.

Takeaway;
Donald Trump did not win the 2020 presidential election.
Ukrainian Nazis are not a threat to Russia
French is not in danger in Quebec.

2. Surrounded by a sea of English neighbours, Quebec is under an existential threat.
We've heard this favourite argument for years and years, the one that describes Quebec's geographical neighbours as a horde of English assimilators eager to attack Quebec, relentlessly putting pressure on francophone society to anglicize. 

But this fanciful and romantic notion that Quebec's geography makes it more vulnerable to English assimilation than other similarly-sized, non-English speaking countries and societies is nonsense.
English influence is not transmitted by the physical proximity of borders, but rather by its overwhelming influence and omnipresence on the internet, the business world, the entertainment business, the international science and education world and international relations of all manner.
As the world's lingua franca, English bears down on the civilized world equally and Quebec's situation is no different than countless other small countries and societies which have their own unique indigenous languages. 
Quebec's seven million French-speaking inhabitants are no more in danger of English assimilation than  Swedish-speaking citizens of Sweden (10 million inhabitants), Finnish-speaking citizens of Finland (5.5 million), Danish-speaking citizens of Denmark (5.8 million,) and Norwegian-speaking citizens of Norway (5.4 million), which unlike Quebec have a unique language spoken only within its borders.

The same goes for Estonia (1.33 million inhabitants), Greece (10 million), Israel (6 million) and Portugal (10 million) and countless other countries.

Quebec's situation is actually much better than the above-mentioned countries because French is an official language in at least two-dozen other countries and is supported by the 'francophonie' (a brotherhood of French-speaking nations) which supports and promotes the French language and culture worldwide.

TAKEAWAY:
Language fanatics pretend that Quebec is a unique and special case, which clearly it is not.
Other countries with similar circumstances demonstrate none of the same language paranoia.

3. Anglo-Quebecers are the best-treated minority in Canada
I've always maintained that it is actually francophone Quebecers who are the best-treated minority in Canada, enjoying a disproportionate windfall of the federal government's largess and support as well as over-financing and representation in all manner of federal institutions.

But the canard that anglos are better treated in Quebec than francos in the rest of Canada fails to consider the true nature of why minorities thrive or fail, which really isn't based on the support of government resources and financing.
It comes down to plain numbers, where a minimum number of constituent members in any minority geographical community is necessary, be it English or French. 

'Critical mass' is the minimum amount of something required to start or maintain any project or venture. ... In physics, critical mass is the minimum amount of fissile material that is needed to support a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

Governments do a good job in providing English or French resources for minorities where numbers warrant, in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.
Where numbers are few, the expense to provide language resources is prohibitive and it is here that isolated minorities of Anglos in Quebec and francophones outside Quebec and New Brunswick suffer.
In Quebec where anglos represent a large and vibrant community in and around Montreal, English resources are plentiful, but as one travels out to the far reaches of the province, English services diminish in direct relation to the size of the local community.
The same goes for francophone minorities in Canada, where French services are available where numbers warrant and suffer where the numbers don't add up.
It isn't about government generosity or commitment. When minority language communities are too small to support schools, hospitals and businesses and there isn't the necessary critical mass to maintain a vibrant, functioning community, there's not much the government can do to stave off the inevitable. 
And so, this decline in small, isolated Anglophone communities in Quebec and small isolated Francophone communities outside Quebec and New Brunswick is ongoing and unremitting.

The idea that other provinces are indifferent to francophones is untrue and libellous.
Take for example the case of the pressure put on the Ontario government to open a dedicated French-only university to support the 600,000 francophone community. Ontario argued that the school was un-needed because French degrees were offered in the Ontario universities but pressure and funding from Ottawa and whining from Quebec put the project forward.

But alas, francophones weren't interested

"If there was hope that Franco-Ontarians would quickly embrace Université de l’Ontario Français (UOF) after the institution’s disappointing inaugural year of operation, they were dashed in January when new data showed just 14 Ontario high school students applied for enrolment, down from 19 during the school’s first year."

No, you read that right.

It seems that francophones outside Quebec have different language aspirations than politicians in Quebec would have us believe and where getting a rounded education that includes English instruction is of paramount importance.

TAKEAWAY:
Quebec doesn't do a better job protecting English in Quebec than Canada does in protecting French outside.

4. Studying in post-secondary English schools leads to Anglicization
I have never, ever seen a statistic that describes the number of born francophones who attended French primary and high school and subsequently gave up their language to become anglophone after attending English university or CEGEP.

The simple truth is that Bill 101 has had the desired effect in keeping francophones French and while language transfers remain rare, they are statistically insignificant.
Language militants and politicians whine that education in an English university or CEGEP leads to francophones working in an English milieu after graduation.
But they fail to make a case that a significant number of these abandon their French heritage to become part of the hated anglo society.
There are no statistics that bear out the fear that speaking and working in English leads francophones to abandon their heritage and I defy anyone to show that such is the case.

I would ask the francophones reading this piece if they know of anyone in their own family or circle of friends who have 'switched sides'
It is extremely rare and when it does happen it is usually in francophones who have moved out of Quebec for work or education.

As for the canard that francophone CEGEP and university students who attend English schools are being swooped up by anglicizing anglophone life-partners, it is interesting to note that Quebec anglophone/francophone couples send their children to French schools two-thirds of the time.
 

TAKEAWAY:
Francophones studying in English CEGEPS and universities are not abandoning their francophone roots in any statistical significance

5. Immigrants must be forcibly dissuaded from joining the anglophone community.
One of the very big complaints made by language hawks is that immigrants are being attracted to the English community in too high a number and that higher education in English should be restricted to moderate the phenomenon.

Let us take a step back.
The birthrate in Quebec is such that immigrants are necessary to maintain our numbers and this situation applies to both the English and French elements of Quebec.

But Bill 101 forces these immigrants into the French school system up to the high school in an effort to create francophone citizens.
Language militants want to restrict immigrants from access to higher education in English because too many according to them choose to join the anglophone community.

But if this effort is successful and all immigrants become francophones, Quebec's English community is bound to disappear. 
The language transfer by choice of some immigrants is the only thing that ensures the long-term survival of the Anglophone community in Quebec.
The present 'bleed' of immigrants is barely enough to keep our community alive and to further restrict transfers is nothing but a blatant attempt at ethnic cleansing.

Today about half the immigrants choose English, maintaining the English portion of Quebec society at about 14%, a number that language militants are freaked out about.

TAKEAWAY:
Immigrants choosing to join the Anglophone community in Quebec are just staving off its decline and ultimate disappearance and pose no threat to the francophone majority.

I'll leave with one last observation, a story about a debate I once had with a  francophone sovereignist who posited that my support of Israel was obscene because of Israel's identity as a Jewish state despite about 20% of its population being non-Jewish.

I looked at him with utter astonishment and asked how he could support a similarly racist state of Quebec which declares itself officially "French" despite a significant non-French minority.

Deux poids, deux mesures

While Putin attempts to 'Denazify' Ukraine, Legault Trying to 'de-Anglicize' Quebec

I'll make no apologies for the title of this piece because aside from the violence, the goals of both Putin and Legault are eerily similar.

Both are pedalling a vicious slander for crass political gain and both are heaping blame on a specific people.

They both enlist the media as well as marshalling their vast government resources to sell the nonsense and finally, both are exacting revenge on the falsely accused.

Again, aside from the physical violence, the playbook is the same.

Fallacious scapegoating is a shop-worn device employed by rogues like Hitler who blamed the Jews for Germany's economic woes and Idi Amin who expelled Asians from Uganda because they purportedly robbed natives of the chance to own businesses. The list of historical scapegoaters is prodigious and by the way, the current onslaught on Ukraine by Russia is the second time around because dictator Josef Stalin inflicted the infamous "Holodomor" (man-made famine) that killed millions of Ukrainians, some ninety years ago.

Here in Quebec, as in practically the entire clear-thinking free world, we remain dumbfounded that the Russian people have largely bought into the myth of the Ukrainian Nazi threat.
It seems so utterly far-fetched that such a patently false idea could be so widely accepted and in fact, embraced by an entire nation.
With no credible evidence to support the Ukrainian Nazi threat myth (because none exists,) we shake our heads in disbelief at the utter gullibility and stupidity of the Russian public. It speaks to the power of state-sponsored propaganda with a lesson for us here in Quebec where Francophone Quebecers have largely bought into a similarly ridiculous myth that describes their language and culture as under attack with Quebec's Anglos cast as the villains whose continued use of English represents an existential threat.

Just like the illusory threat of Ukrainian Nazis to Russia, so too is the English threat to the French majority in Quebec.

Those making the claim that the sky is falling on the French language and of the English threat include politicians, educators and media types who share a militant sovereigntist ideology and so, the scapegoating of Anglos and English is nothing more than a devious and underhanded ploy to promote Quebec independence by sowing fear and discord. 
These pot-stirring militants dominate the universities, the government and perhaps most importantly, the media, all promoting the myth of the English threat as skilfully as Russian media dis-informationists attack Ukrainian Nazis.

There was a time when sovereignty was promoted based on the supposed financial disadvantage Quebec faced by remaining in Canada. The mantra was that Canada was oppressing Quebec economically and that independence would bring financial dividends.
Unfortunately for those pedalling the nonsense, the argument was debunked by the economic reality of the billions of dollars in annual equalization payments made to Quebec. Today only the most radical and wilfully-blind sovereigntists cling to the idea that Quebec gets a bad financial deal by remaining in Canada,
So clearly a new angle of attack was needed to sell sovereignty and with the new reality of massive immigration fostered by a declining birthright, a bogeyman was invented, those evil and ungrateful immigrants who came to Quebec and ungratefully integrate into the English community.

The new selling point of sovereignty is that as long as an anglophone community exists in Quebec, no matter how small, immigrants will be attracted to join, thus threatening the long-term viability of French Quebec.
And so more and more laws and regulations are enacted or proposed by a government fostering anti-English sentiment, supported by a biased media and education system.

But the simple truth is that French is not in danger, no more than Russia is threatened by Ukrainian Nazis.
Yes there are some neo-nazis in Ukraine and yes there are English people in Quebec, but neither Russia nor Quebec is threatened.

Simply put, Quebec can offer no viable statistic that points to French in trouble because none exists.

The oft-repeated and ridiculous statistic offered by Chicken Little propagandists like Professor Blowhard" Charles Castonguay notes that French is threatened because those claiming French as their mother tongue in Quebec is falling. This statistic is not only irrelevant but xenophobic as well.
The fact that Quebec is welcoming an unprecedented number of immigrants who naturally have a different mother tongue makes it a certainty that the rate of French as the mother tongue will fall. But how this affects the health of the French language is a question never answered. And by the way, Canada also faces the same phenomenon where immigrants are reducing the percentage of English as a mother tongue.

While the French language isn't in any particular danger of disappearance, what bothers these militants is that the public appearance of the French language is changing from its hitherto lily-white face with a marked increase in brown, black and yellow faces who have gained a larger foothold in Quebec through immigration.
Demands that 'these' people adopt to Quebec 'culture' (which I have dubbed the "poutine & maple syrup challenge") is another gambit by sovereigntists similar to what other persecutors demand.

" 'Russification' is a form of cultural assimilation in which non-Russians, whether involuntarily or voluntarily, give up their culture and language in favour of the Russian culture and the Russian language."

Ha!, sounds worse when others demand that minorities "comply"

But here is the only language statistic that you need to remember. It comes directly from Statscan.

Today 94.45% of Quebecers can carry on a conversation in French as compared to 1971 when only 88.5% could do the same.
So things are actually getting better for the French language!
Statscan also predicts that in 2036 that number will remain stable at around 93-94%

 The myth of the imminent demise of French in Quebec is fuelled by furious tales of dastardly immigrants and anglos spitting on the French language through gratuitous anecdotal tales, most of which are made up  (Eaton's famous "Speak White" myth) and spread through a media as bent as the Russian commentators who regale TV viewers with horrifying stories of Ukrainian Nazi atrocities.

The Journal de Montreal is full of stories like the poor Asian depanneur owner who disrespects the French language by speaking only pigeon English to customers.
Oh, the burn!
Perhaps working 110 hours a week the poor sod hasn't quite made the time yet for French lessons, but no matter.

Here is another typical whine by a francophone cegep teacher decrying the influence of English

“Many of my students don't know any francophone artists, don't read in French, never watch TV in French, and this in a francophone CEGEP! Imagine, then, what place Quebec culture occupies in the education of Francophones and allophones who study in English."

None of the above is true except the part about Francophone artists who are largely shunned because they are as a group, quite mediocre.

As well, I daresay the vast majority of francophone students don't have the language skills to watch English TV or movies and as for the assertion that francophone students are actually reading, no less reading in English is complete fantasy.
In fact, most of Quebec francophones who do speak English don't have the proficiency to consume media in English. It is another myth disproved by ratings for francophone TV channels in Quebec which are astronomically high.

 “The media bubble linked to the decline of French in Quebec is almost entirely created artificially by a whirlwind of rehashed news and chronicles written by people with an interest in fanning the flames of identity nationalism. Link{fr}

The underlying assertion by militants that any contact with English is dangerous because it leads to assimilation is a pernicious lie.
The assertion that French is under threat is also a pernicious lie.

It is time for us to push back by peeling off the skin of this onion of lies.

Myths about Russia You Need to Give Up

Although I wrongly predicted that Russia would not invade Ukraine based on the correct theory that the war would be an unmitigated disaster, I do feel some sense of redemption in having predicted the unfolding calamity that the mainstream media and indeed the Pentagon, NATO, the CIA failed to anticipate.
So in that respect, I feel somewhat vindicated.

Western Military planners and the intelligence services vastly over-estimated Russia's military prowess, basing their analysis on the fact that Russia had developed very modern weapons and has an enormous military.
It also served the military/industrial complex to talk up the threat.

But the west failed to understand that while Russia can develop fancy and modern weapons, it remains a backward and dysfunctional nation unable to financially support nor operate a modern military regardless of the top-end weapons.

Everything that is necessary to win on the modern battlefield is utterly lacking in the Russian military, be it logistics, organization, integrity, secure communication, coordination of forces, equipment maintenance, quality and workmanship of rolling stock, munitions and armour and most importantly motivated and well-trained soldiers.
The west should have understood this.

At any rate, here are six more important misconceptions we share about Russia.

Russia is a Powerful Nation
Russia is a nuclear weapon power and as such can be feared, but that's where its power ends.
For some reason, we have the impression that Russia is a wealthy and powerful adversary, which it is not.
Its 145 million population is just 43% of that of the USA and its economy is about 11 times smaller.
In fact, Russia's economy is half the size of that of California and smaller than that of Texas and New York.
Canada, with 25% of Russia's population has a bigger economy.
The average salary that Americans make is 7 times larger than that in Russia.

Putin is Insane

Putin isn't insane at all.
He started the war based on the utterly false impression that Ukrainians would welcome Russian interference, while vastly overestimating Russia's military prowess. His professional military and intelligence community all fed him a false picture of reality. Putin thought he could win easily.
Sound ridiculous and implausible?
Think back to the war in Iraq waged by America on the utterly false assumption that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The military and intelligence services all fed the President an utterly false view of the situation, all because President Bush wanted to go to war.
Nobody called Bush insane for waging an idiotic war based on nonsense.

The Russian people are not responsible for the war
There is a fundamental misunderstanding in the west that holds that Russians are a people oppressed, yearning to be free of communist control.
Not at all true.
Unlike the rest of eastern Europe which threw off the shackles of communist control to join the west, Russian embrace the myth that they are special and entitled to an empire.
Most Russians wholeheartedly endorse the war because its expansionist goals are roundly supported.
If you are wondering why there is relatively so little protest against the war in Russia, it isn't because of fear of retribution or ignorance.
Russians mostly accept the brutal fantasy that they are destined to conquer other nations and rule by force and terror.

Russia shares western values
Russia's prosecution of war has always been marked by brutality and incompetence with little value placed on human life be it the enemy or their own.
Russian militarily doctrine is to throw into battle enough bodies to tire out the enemy with little regard to its own losses. During the famous Russian/German campaign of World War 2, Russia took seven casualties to every German one. When asked about the horrendous losses Field Marshall Zhukov shrugged off the question with the flippant remark that 'Russian women will make more babies.' He also is quoted as saying;
"If we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks as if it is not there".   ....yup.

Russians don't care about their own, which explains why they are so brutal to others.
Modern Russian military doctrine is the same as in the middle ages where siege weapons including catapults or trebuchets would encircle population centres and lob projectiles.
And so the levelling of the city of Mariupol with artillery is just another example of what Russia did in Georgia, Chechnya and Syria.
Generalizations aside, Russians don't share western values about life.

Getting Rid of Putin will Solve the "Russia Problem"
Sadly, regime change won't change Russia's aggressive attitude and dreams of conquest and empire.
There is a very deep and dark problem in Russian society where even Russian liberals espouse imperialistic policies which largely accept the notion that Ukraine and eastern Europe belongs to Russia by manifest destiny.
There is a deep aversion to democracy and an open acceptance of wars of conquest.

A long war will benefit Russia 
Russia has already lost the war, all they can do is destroy Ukraine. But they will destroy Russia as well.
The goal of conquering Ukraine and installing a puppet government can no longer be achieved regardless of how long the war lasts.
A protracted war will only make things worse for Russia and Ukraine with all parties losing.
But with weapons pouring in from the west and an energized resistance buoyed by Ukrainian victories, the Russians are between a rock and a hard place.
Between decimated armour and personnel and supply lines unable to replenish forces, Russia faces a grim outcome.
Running out of weapons and soldiers as well as crippling sanctions that will bear down on the economy, a long protracted war will destroy Russia.

The real winner in a long protracted war (if there can be any) is NATO, which will see Russia's conventional forces utterly degraded if not destroyed.
All the weapons NATO ships to Ukraine are a bargain because they were meant to be used against Russia anyways. It can be said that Ukraine is doing NATO's dirty work and while NATO didn't choose this scenario, it is certainly enjoying the collateral benefits.

In conclusion, we might want to reconsider our image of Russia as an enemy.

Married to the dogma of entitled manifest destiny via violent conquest, Russia most resembles ISIS in its philosophy and war-mongering.

We owe Russia the same respect and consideration.