Friday, November 27, 2020

Quebec's Dangerous Language Fantasyland

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. Miss Lambropoulos 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?

6 comments:

  1. Ahhhh...the continuing story of the broken record in French Quebec! ...trite French Quebec, inferiorly complexed French Quebec.

    You'd think with the population left over from the Quiet Revolution would be old, weak and dead by now. Nooooo...like the disdain for black people that Americans still hold dear (like the 49% who again voted for you-know-who) since the abolition of slavery 155 years ago, the prejudices of the past become intergenerational and continue to imbrue what could and should be the better society.

    This editorial is the Quebec chapter. "Tell the big lie, rinse and repeat has been the go-to policy of the sovereignty movement for the last forty years." Too, I don't think Hitler invented this device or strategy, but he was probably one of its most effective implementers...unfortunately, since his war caused the death or life sustaining damage of over 50 million people.

    America, hopefully, will be concluding a very dark chapter in its history come January 20, 2021. At least the villainous government will be shuffled out of office on that date, but it's far from its followers are going away. The fact almost half of the electorate still supported that behemoth shows how people, if they choose, can be so easily manipulated. Many of these ignoramuses are still living the days of over a century and a half ago, so why should French Quebec drop its language nonsense?

    Too, it's not as if Palestinians still don't believe in their hearts and minds about obliterating Israel even though such written objective in their constitution has been removed. Simply put, I learned many, many years ago that people see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear and believe what they want to believe. Unfortunately for the civilized world, there have always been and always will be those who capture the worst of the human condition. The last four years in the U.S. are proof.

    In the case of Quebec, to me at least, its obsession is based on a very simple premise: Its majority is jealous of the minorities, especially those who don't speak French outside of work. For two centuries they were led astray by bad influences, namely the Perverted Catholic Church and despotic politicians. The majority, i.e., French speakers, were simpletons and fell prey to the aforementioned evil incarnates.

    It took them all that time to finally realize they were duped and they needed scapegoats for transference. They were insanely jealous that the minorities succeeded where the lots in life of the now so-called "Old Stock" stagnated.

    "Sadly our politicians and journalists, both French and English, are too weak to denounce the practice and fight for the truth." I'd say this is partially true, but the worst offenders are the minorities who have either chosen to be sitting ducks or migrate one way. I migrated decades ago. I think those of us who have done so are very glad we did. Those who have chosen to stay, I suppose, have found their serenity within French Quebec. I'm pleased to no end I took the latter choice. All I can say to my contemporaries who chose to stay they get what they deserve for being so complacent through all these years.

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  2. My comment will consist of statistics from Stats Canada and Wikipedia ("Demographic History of Quebec"). They will speak for themselves:

    Non-indigenous population of Quebec (1861-2011:

    1861 1,112,000
    1871 1,192,000
    1881 1,360,000
    1891 1,489,000
    1901 1,649,000
    1911 2,006,000
    1921 2,361,000
    1931 2,875,000
    1941 3,332,000
    1951 4,056,000
    1961 5,259,000
    1971 6,028,000
    1981 6,438,000
    1991 6,896,000
    2001 7,397,000
    2011 7,903,000

    Speakers of Aboriginal languages in Quebec (2016), Mother-Tongue:

    Aboriginal languages 45,570

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    Replies
    1. Tony, I suppose your point is that virtually nobody in French Quebec is indigenous (i.e., so-called First Nations)? These hairs have been split forever. Sometime back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, 60 Minutes did a show on the separatists. 60 Minutes back in the day used to select a couple of letters expressing viewers' comments near the end of the show, something they very rarely do now. One was an America comment asking which "Indian" language is the "official" one. Sorry, Tony, but that argument is as old as the hills!

      "Natives" or "Old Stock" (vieille souche, pur laine), in French Quebec terms, implies those who are all of white, Catholic (Roman or Perverted), are French mother-tongued and are multigenerational of those other three criteria. You know it, I know it, and everybody who reads this blog knows it.

      That they believe their "kind" is doomed is downright ridiculous, or would take several generations to play itself out. Their only solution to avoid this doomsday scenario is to get in the bedroom and get busy. What with the Quiet Revolution flushing the Perverted Catholic Church out of its meddlesome ways, who cares whose womb is occupied and whether a household eats meat on Fridays? The whole thing was absurd for over 200 years, but it's over now. The late René Lévesque once said the minorities would have to rely on their loins to survive and maintain its numbers. Well, guess what? Now the shoe is on the other foot.

      The French Quebec Government seems to allow French-speaking Muslims to fill an abundant amount of the immigration quota. THAT is likely where French Quebec's downfall will take place. Assuming these Muslim immigrants stay in Quebec, it is their families who tend to be larger than the Old Stock families of today where their significance will decline.

      Based on the Old Stocks' desire to retain the upper hand, the best advice I can offer them is to curb the number of Muslims making up the immigrant population. Some will see that as prejudicial, but the French Quebec Government, and population at large, will have to decide what alternative weighs heaviest. Their choice, not mine.

      Worse yet, French Quebec Old Stockers doesn't see Acadians, Franco Ontarians or Francophones from any part of Canada, or other countries for that matter, as Francophones equal to them. That only adds fuel to the fire. Quebec Nationalism is a very sharp double-edged sword!

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  3. I agree with this article 100% and find it very concerning that the West Island and anglophone MNAs are doing their traditional ben over and taking it up the pooper routing when it comes to votes in the National Assembly (Why the hell is Greg Kelley and MNA, I know him and he's dumber than a sack of hammers). I really wish an Anglophone party, something more serious than the old Equality Party, would form as I believe many anglophones would support them. For the time being I am suggesting to everyone I meet that they should stop donating to the Quebec Liberal Party as they no longer serve the interests of the Anglophone community. In short, if the PLQ want an ethnic state we should form our own political party and give it to them and they (PLQ) would no longer feel hamstrung by pesky anglophones. Lets face it people, the PLQ are using us as a vote bank, that is all.

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    1. MarcMC, I have one succinct word of advice for you: FUGGEDABOUDIT!

      This issue was revisited a few years ago, with lethargic results. Equality 2.0 I think it was called? It never materialized to anything. Oh, and finally, in my previous comments, the ex-Vancouverite whom I forgot about is named Hugo Shebbeare. While I applaud Mr. Shebbeare's efforts of the past, the simple fact of the matter is too few people rallied and supported his cause. Same in the past goes for others like Howard Galganov, who spent a plenitude of money on fighting the anti-minority establishment and same for lawyer Brent Tyler.

      Despite their hard-fought efforts, too few West Islanders, Chomedians, Snowdonians, etc. offered support. Equality elected four candidates in 1989, and were obliterated in the next election in 1994.

      Even if their success was much greater, Equality may have won 2-3 more constituencies, i.e., they would be a fledgling little party with no leverage. The PLQ would be as inert towards minorities as they have been since they enacted Bill 22 in 1974.

      As mentioned previously, and as a result of this foregoing paragraph, I'm perfectly content with French Quebec's separating. We'd save a fortune in equalization and other federal payouts, it would LIKELY spell the end of a bilingual Canada (since the seppies all refer to Canada as English Canada anyway) and even though New Brunswick is constitutionally bilingual, it would be too small a minority to successfully fight so either they'd separate or perpetually fight alienation. Don't think French Quebec would come to their rescue, or other French Canadians for French Quebec sees them as sell-outs (their term: «vendu»!)

      Re Greg Kelley: He is the son of long-time MNA Geoffrey Kelley of that same constituency on the western tip of the Island of Montreal. To me, his father, like most other minority MNAs, is/was a fart catcher. The PLQ leader shouts "JUMP!" and they answer: "How high?" Think of that riding as a family business, much like the All-American Lunatic on his last days in the White House.

      To me, and I imagine most readers who went through the language b.s. that started in the 1970s, the last three Anglo MNAs with gonads were Clifford Lincoln, Richard French and the late Herbert Marx. They had the gonads to oppose Bill 178, then-Premier Robert Bourassa's that invoked the Notwithstanding Clause in the Constitution and bring in French-only signs in Quebec that was previously ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (but those judges wrote French should be compulsory on signs, if French Quebec wanted such legislation). Bill 178 forbade outdoor signs in languages other than French, but allowed other language signs indoors as long as the writing on them was not more than half the size of French lettering and/or there had to be twice as many signs in French vs other languages, namely English.

      Thankfully, this led to the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord that would have declared Quebec a "distinct society" (and only G-d knows what can of worms that would have opened). The defeat was led on two fronts: (1) a First Nations MLA in Manitoba named Elijah Harper voted against Meech, the only MLA to do so thus the vote was not unanimous and Manitoba did not ratify Meech by June 23, 1990, the deadline date; and (2) Clyde Wells, then Premier of Newfoundland reversed ratification by his predecessor Brian Peckford. Then-PM Brian Mulroney with his volcanic temper went completely apeshit on Wells, not daring to do the same to MLA Harper (you can only imagine the backlash Mulroney would have faced from First Nations people for doing so!)

      I can only conclude that minorities have found serenity by having chosen to stay in Quebec, and it is at their peril.

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  4. Marc, here is a good link to read called War Over Words and also a CBC video back in the day.

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