Chateauguay to follow Huntingdon example?
"Over sixty English-speaking citizens protested against Bill
101 at the town hall meeting of Châteauguay city council on Monday and got the
support of Mayor Nathalie Simon and every aldermen except one. The demonstration was in reaction to the Office québécois de la langue française's complaint about bilingual communications by the municipality, considered not to be in compliance with the Bill 101.
The "Châteauguay Magazine" is particularly targeted.
For over an hour, citizens urged the board to stay the course, as did Mayor Gendron in Huntingdon."Many of the French support bilingualism," argued one citizen to the elected officials. "I know! I am one.
"It is not I, who called OQLF, "responded the mayor.
When asked if she would sign the petition circulated asking Châteauguay to maintain its bilingual publications, she responded,
"I will sign it," said Nathalie Simon on response to the request. After she had affixed her signature on the document, seven of eight councilors did the same.
Only Alain Cote abstained. "I will not sign. Laws are made to be respected,"said the counselor.
The protesters anticipate filing the petition at the next public meeting of the Board of Châteauguay, scheduled for April 16.
Mayor Simon said that she would present it to the MPP and Châteauguay Quebec Transport Minister Pierre Moreau. "The law is provincial, it is a provincial issue, she insisted. I will say that some of my people will be served in both languages. We are a family different from other cities. We must deal with it. "It also reflects the fact that 26% of residents of Châteauguay have English as their mother tongue.The mayor also argued that to produce separate documents for each language "will cost twice as much" because the city does not currently translate all texts.
The disappearance of bilingualism in the "Châteauguay Magazine" which is in the crosshairs of OQLF is not cast in stone. "According to the OLF, we are respecting the letter, but not the spirit of the law, explained the Mayor.
We'll see according to the Office which may be kept or not. Let's see what the best solution is, but we need to put water in our wine.
If we do not respect the law, there will be fines. "
" Let's pay the fines!" responded the people in the audience.
A bad idea because each subsequent offense would cost more and more, according to Nathalie Simon. But bilingualism in the "Châteauguay Magazine" will not be eliminated anytime soon. The file has been open for two years, said the Mayor. The complaint to the OQLF, originally focused on another publication of the city, which no longer exists."We had a meeting with the OQLF last year. The municipal machine moves slowly. The provincial machine is even slower, "commented Nathalie Simon. Read the original story in French
More OQLF inspectors
The
Quebec government has caved to pressure from French language militants
and added more inspectors to the provincial agency charge with
protecting the French Langaguage."Facing a barrage of linguistic controversies, the Quebec government announced Friday it is planning to give the provincial language watchdog more teeth.
Despite
a hiring freeze across Quebec's public service, the government said it
will hire 43 employees at the agency to fill vacancies left by
departures.
That is on top of 26 who came on board several months ago.
The
government is also asking the Office Quebecois de la Langue Francaise
to bite more often. It is urging inspectors to be more proactive — and
take action not only after they get complaints, but also beforehand.
Quebec
law allows the agency to take legal action and seek fines from
commercial establishments that don't respect rules like French
predominance on signs.
But
recent news reports have offered anecdotes of the laws being ignored in
Montreal, and that has created political headaches for the Charest
Liberals.
The governing party,
heavily supported by Anglos, has faced severe criticism from opponents
who accuse it of being too weak in protecting French.
Language
controversies began ramping up last summer, when the Harper government
announced the hiring of people who can't speak French as Supreme Court
justice, auditor general and senior government spokesman.
Since
then stories about slights against the French language and anecdotes of
people struggling to get served in French are frequent features of news
reports in Quebec." Read the rest of the storyNext on tap?.......Halal inspectors?
Language complaint at the Royal Vic
"A man says his mother hasn't been getting adequate care at the Royal
Victoria Hospital because some of the staff can't speak French.
Royer Harvey, whose Alzheimer's needs constant round-the-clock
care, filed an official complaint. He says that his mother, who only
speaks French, has had great difficulty speaking to orderlies and
nurses.
"There's a lot of staff that speak only English," he wrote in a
letter. "We speak to them in French, and there are some who understand,
but respond in English. There are others who don't understand French at
all, have no idea what we're saying, and respond in English."
The hospital and Quebec's health minister are investigating. Read the rest of the story.
Fresh Attacks on Halal and Kosher food
A story in the Montreal freebie newspaper "24H" is attacking the fact that prisoners are demanding and receiving Kosher or Halal food while incarcerated.The paper complains that the government is paying an extra $114,000 on a whopping 57,000 meals per year.... quite a scandal according to the newspaper.
The Journal de Montreal reports (without quoting figures,) that the Halal meals are so tempting that prisoners are converting to Islam!
But wait a moment, let your editor do some rapid math for the benefit of Le Journal de Montreal and other alarmists......
Each prisoner eats three meal a day and has one snack and this for 365 days a years, for a total of 1,465 meals each. When divided by the scandalous figure of 57,000 Kosker or Halal meals paid for by the government, it means that there are but 39 prisoners in all of Quebec jails demanding this accommodation.
Horrors!!!!!
But it makes a good story. Link{Fr}
NDP speaks with forked tongue
It seems that Thomas Mulcair is off to an inauspicious start as the new leader of the NDP.His less than impressive acceptance speech at the convention had party speechwriters shaking their head at the fact that Mulcair refused their help.
It seems that now that the NDP is the official opposition, it will not be able to play the duplicitous game of telling Ottawa one thing and Quebec another;
"The New Democrats did a very peculiar thing on Thursday afternoon.Canada's official opposition party issued two English-language press releases about the Harper government's budget: one was for Canadians, and the other was for Quebecers.....Interestingly, and perhaps as damage control, the NDP has issued a B.C. specific press release more than 16 hours after the Quebec press release.We're still waiting for press releases for Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario... Read the whole story
Louise Beaudoin returns to PQ fold
With her tail between her legs, Louise Beaudoin has been reintegrated into the caucus of the Parti Quebecois, her adventure in sitting as an independent an abject lesson in marginalization.Don't confuse this re-integration as a magnanimous gesture of solidarity and sisterhood on behalf of Pauline Marois.
Beaudoin was accepted back into the fold under the condition that she will not run in the next election. POW!
Payback's a bitch
Easy to live in Montreal in English
Not exactly Earth-shattering information, but the Journal de Montreal hired a unilingual reporter to live in Montreal and report as to whether she could get along in English only.Doh.....
Shock of all shocks, the newspaper reports that incredibly it is possible to live in Montreal without French!!!
Read the story in French
Montreal an English and French City?
"Hi, You may have come across this but I picked up a recent copy of Fast Company Magazine. It has a 20 page special
advertising section for the city of Montreal. It is sponsered by the Quebec government, Tourisme Montreal, Montreal chambre de commerce,
Laurentian Bank, and the city of Montreal. To my surprise the second paragraph reads as follows:
" Arts and Culture enjoy celebrated prominence by a diverse people with a variety of interests and its bicultural status as a French and English city
strongly sets it apart from other North American cities.
Thanks DAVID!
Another sad day.....
 |
| DEVELOPERS |
By the way I did my first interview on radio this Thursday afternoon on CJAD in Montreal about Bill 101
I was a bit nervous .
Have a Happy Easter!
Have a Happy Passover!
