Montreal Special Language Status Is Inevitable

The recent pronouncement of Montreal longshot mayoral candidate Balorama Holness on language dropped onto the Quebec political landscape like the proverbial bombshell.

Mr. Holness had the temerity to suggest that Montreal could possibly hold a referendum seeking bilingual status which if successful would create a city that would effectively opt-out of Quebec's persecutory language laws like Bill 101 and the proposed Bill 96. 

The reaction amongst language militants was swift and furious, dripping with palpable rage and visceral scorn, the very idea of 'special status' deemed an existential threat to the very essence of Quebec.

It is a reaction to be anticipated, Quebec nationalists have been demanding and receiving exceptional and special treatment from Canada for decades and the idea that they themselves will have to consider a little water in their wine, an unacceptable affront.

I read with a measure of schadenfreude a noted nationalist who raged that bilingual status for Montreal would rip the heart out of Quebec.
Hmmm...

Let us start by exploding the myth that Montreal is and always was a French city. The lie is boldly proclaimed in nothing less than the Constitution of the City of <Montreal which proudly proclaims,

CHAPTER I

CONSTITUTION OF THE MUNICIPALITY

1. A city is hereby constituted under the name “Ville de Montréal” .

Montréal is a French-speaking city.

Now the majority of Montrealers are native French speakers as well as immigrants who identify as Neo-francophones, but around 35% of Montrealers are Anglophones as well as immigrants who identify as neo-Anglophones,

Article 1 of the City constitution smacks of hubris in declaring Montreal a 'French city,' akin to a medieval king declaring himself ruler of the universe

By the same objective standard perhaps the drafters could have added a second clause declaring Montreal a 'White' city and perhaps a third article declaring Montreal a 'Christian' city because the same threshold exists.

I wonder how language militants would react if the City of Westmount issued a declaration that it is an "English City' because Anglos are in the majority with francophones constituting only 22%  of its population

By this same rationale, the Towns of Montreal West, Cote Saint-Luc and another half-dozen towns on the island of Montreal could also declare themselves "English Cities"
By the same standard, the Town of Hampstead could even declare itself an 'English-Jewish Town.' 

 

Of course, such declarations would be seen by French language militants as a racist or colonial provocation because Quebec nationalists simply use an asymmetrical counting method to determine fairness.
To them having Montreal declare itself French is fair while considering it unfair for other towns to declare themselves English.
It is the same rationale whereby Quebec whines that it is an endangered minority while simultaneously declaring itself a proud and robust nation.
On and on it goes....

As for Montreal being historically a French city, I would remind nationalists that nothing could be farther from the truth.

Montreal was literally built by the English and Scots, with much of the heavy-lifting done by the Irish.

Look at the downtown names of streets bisecting the main drag of St. Catherine.
Simpson...Redpath.. Musée(Museum), Mountain, Drummond, Stanley, Peele, Metcalf, Mansfield, McGill College, Victoria, University, Union, and Aylmer.
Almost the entire skyline and historical infrastructure  of Montreal is an Anglo achievement.

The banks, universities, colleges, businesses, museums, libraries, waterworks, rail network were largely built by non-francophones.

Until the 1960's Montreal was an Anglo achievement, even nationalists know this.

"Before 1977, for historical reasons, Montreal was a predominantly English-speaking metropolis. French was practiced in a very minor mode." Josée Legault, Journal de Montreal 

But none of this really is important. 
Montreal's present situation is all that matters and it's strange that on the issue of Montreal's identity, language nationalists and anglo defenders agree on the most important aspect, that is that Montreal and the rest of Quebec are two different animals.

 "In the last thirty years Montreal has experienced a demographic revolution, with the massive arrival of immigrants far exceeding our capacity for integration. In the metropolis, the Quebec identity has become an identity among others, and certainly not the most powerful."   Mathieu Bock-Coté,

"French, as the official language in Montreal? No, that's over!" Richard Martineau,

In Montreal, English was the dominant language of work. Social mobility. Integration of immigrants. Commercial signage. Education for over 85% of newcomers. Etc. French was seen as the language of the "poor"  Josée Legault, Journal de Montreal .

Politically, culturally and linguistically, Montreal stands out more and more from the rest of Quebec. Joeseph Facal

Future laws that aim to protect French will not change demography. The "Revenge of the Cradles," which explains our long survival in North America, is well and truly over. Denise Bombardier,

"An anti-nationalist coalition in the making. There will certainly be no referendum on the bilingual status of the city of Montreal during the next term. The fruit is not yet ripe enough. But if there was one, what would be the result? A survey on this subject was conducted by Léger three years ago for the Association for Canadian Studies. The question was both simple and ambiguous.
In your opinion, is Montreal a bilingual city?
The sample....offered an impressive answer of clarity: a massive yes. By group: 86% among allos, 83% among Anglos, 80% among French people.
The referendum proposed by Mr. Holness would ask: Do you want the city of Montreal to have bilingual status?

The No camp would make a point of emphasizing the distinction between the real city, which has a majority of bilingual inhabitants, and its legal status, which must remain French-speaking. I would gladly participate in this effort. But I owe it to lucidity to say that the Yes would win.
Montreal would claim to be officially bilingual. Jean-François Lisée

 So it's clear from the above that French-language nationalists understand what Montreal is and though thoroughly freaked out by the reality, they clearly see the handwriting on the wall.

The language situation in Montreal is irrefutably moving towards bilingualism.

The immigration influx, characterized by language nationalists as the chief villain in the decline of French in Montreal shows no sign of abating.

The CAQ government is caught between a rock and a hard place, a labour market desperate for workers versus the inevitable demographic shift away from French on the island of Montreal with increased immigration.

During the election campaign Mr. Legault promised to reduce by 20% the 40,000 number annual immigrants welcomed to Quebec each year.
In fact, in 2022, the CAQ just announced rather quietly that Quebec will welcome 70,000 new immigrants in 2022. Link[fr}

As Mr. Lisée said in his piece, the time is not yet ripe for a head-on political fight for bilingual stats in Montreal, but it is coming.

Mr. Holness serves a usual purpose if he can play spoiler in the Montreal mayoral debate by siphoning votes away from Denis Coderre, returning Valerie Plante to the office of mayor and thus setting up the real battle for bilingualism for Montreal four years from now.
Madame Plante will be the perfect foil and easy to beat. 

With another 200,000 immigrants and an emboldened and maturing bilingualism movement in Montreal, four years hence we can expect a real mayoral race between two opposing views, that is a candidate proposing bilingual status versus a candidate who proposes the status quo.
Even language nationalists knows who will win.

As for the Quebec government who will threaten and bluster, in the end, political expediency will bring them to the table because the threat of bilingual status is a lot less frightening than a referendum on Montreal succession.

Alea iacta est

Threat of Montreal Partition Driving Quebec Language Militants Mad

I told you before that a partition movement for the island of Montreal, whether ultimately successful or not is the only strategy that can lead to any sort of satisfactory outcome for minority communities in Quebec.

All the good intentions and lobbying by Anglo and ethnic community leaders intended to attenuate the precepts of Bill 96 are doomed to failure because for French-language militants and the CAQ government itself, punishing our communities, either for political gain or sport, is more important than the phony and unneeded protection of the French language that the law would purportedly provide.
The more we howl and complain the more they enjoy inflicting the pain, like a demon child sadistically roasting ants with a magnifying glass.
Too graphic?
How about a snarly Mexican bandito gleefully shooting bullets around the feet of his prisoner shouting.."Dance! Dance!"
Get the picture.

They are not indifferent to our pain and suffering, they are in fact revelling in it. That is what we are up against and the sooner we accept this reality, the sooner we can pivot..

This last week something happened that I've been waiting impatiently for.
A political voice has spoken the unspeakable in public, firing the first real and effective salvo in protecting and defending our linguistic rights.

For all those organizing a futile lobbying effort to soften the harsh elements of Bill 96, it is time to embrace the reality that polite dissent will not be effective. We need to embrace a different tact, and as the old saying goes...the best defence is a good offence.

Balarama Holness: Daring to go where no man has gone before.

Longshot Mayoral candidate Balarma Holness finally brooched the subject of Montreal seeking its own path in the language debate, rocking the political status quo, sending French language militants into an apoplectic rage-fest.

“Balarma Holness said he’d ask the Office de consultation publique de Montréal to hold a one-year consultation on the status of English and French in the city’s public and private institutions. During the hearings, he would also consult Montrealers on whether they wanted the city to hold a referendum on language. The outcome of that referendum, which would not be held during his first mandate, would determine whether French remains Montreal’s only official language, he said — even if the mayor of Montreal does not actually have the power to declare the city bilingual.

“The National Assembly will not determine the character and the nature of the city of Montreal. Montrealers will determine that,” he declared.
“If Montrealers want to hold a referendum … we will do so and we will be asking both the provincial and federal governments to respect the democratic willingness of Montrealers,” he added.
Should citizens want bilingual status for Montreal, Bill 96, overhauling Quebec’s French language Charter, would not apply to the city, he said. Montreal Gazette

“In 2018, Holness argued that if Quebec became a country, Montreal would have the right to separate from it. He even pleaded for the organization of a Montreal referendum to allow the separation of the metropolis. Holness is what we call a partitionist” Journal de Montreal {fr}

Now if I was a consultant for the other side I'd advise them to ignore Mr. Holness because he has little chance of winning and almost no profile in the French community.
His missive on special status or partition would go largely unnoticed.

BUT of course, rabid protectors of the faith could not resist engaging and unloaded a barrage of hate and criticism via the francophone media that was so vitriolic it spawned a campaign of hate against Mr. Holness that included death threats and hate mail so bad that he reported it to the police.

Here's one such fan mail;

" In the name of proud Quebecers, I am telling you that you are an effing dirty nigger. A bastard immigrant who needs to be killed. Do us a favour Dolarama, kill yourself, otherwise ask someone to shoot you. Dammed shitty nigger, fuck you motherfucker" 

Hmmm......

While this hateful reaction is unacceptable, it does demonstrate the fear we can strike into the hearts of our tormentors. 

I promised you in many previous posts that this would happen, that the mere mention by someone of substance the possibility of Montreal going its own way would spark the reaction we need to bring our issues front and center and force a real debate.
It would eliminate the free ride the CAQ is enjoying in bashing our community.

Here are a few samples of the furious reaction in the French media.

“Those who believed in a credible 3rd voice for Montreal will be disappointed. Balarama Holness has just made a totally irresponsible decision by promising to hold a referendum on the linguistic status of Montreal. 

He is playing with fire. 

As if we needed an open war between French and English in Montreal on the status of French city or bilingual of the metropolis when French is already faltering. What a lack of judgment!” ELSIE LEFEBVRE 

I most enjoyed the ugly screed written by ethnocentric Mathieu Bock-Coté who went apeshit over the pronouncement made by Mr. Holness, reminding readers that he is a black activist who had the temerity to complain that the person named by the government to combat racism "wasn't the right colour."

Mr. Bock-Coté likes to label those who oppose his views on Quebec society as "White Rhodesians," but since Mr. Holness is Black he had to settle on 'neo-Rhodesian'
Like many of Mr. Coté's posts, this one was quickly scrubbed of the slur, but not before being published.

“Please understand and forgive me for insisting: I am not talking here of all those who reclaim “diversity”, but rather a radical multiculturalist movement that instrumentalizes the reference to diversity in order to reject our people. in our own country.

This agenda will find an ever greater echo in the years to come. It expresses a real contempt for Quebeckers, who are presented as a bunch of rednecks, hicks, filthy, intolerant people behind the times regarding modern diversity. This ethnic supremacism is hidden behind the banner of diversity and inclusion.” Journal du Montreal

Another famous Anglophobe, Normand Lister in a sarcastic piece, hits the nail on the head with this observation:

“.... the other reason for the Anglos to vote overwhelmingly for Balarama is that they could them intimidate the Legault government, which is already uncomfortable in regards to  language reform.” Link{fr} 

In a radio interview, Jean-François Lisée warned that the movement to free Montreal from the clutches of an inconsiderate Quebec government is serious and may already enjoy 30-40% support on the island of Montreal. 

That's much more support than Brexit enjoyed in the infancy of the movement.

Let us be inspired by the American Declaration of Independence which in part states;

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Let us therefore declare;

“That the adoption of Bill 96 requires the island of Montreal be afforded 'special status' vis-a-vis the law and failing such, a referendum will be organized to seek sovereignty from Quebec with the goal of becoming the eleventh Canadian province”

If our leaders and journalists adopt this confrontational line we can achieve much more than by grovelling.

Of course, the idea of a referendum will be rejected out of hand by the CAQ and the media, but given the manifest support on the island, politicians will have to deal with it.

More importantly is the man in the street, especially in the rest of the province,  who will be frightened over a looming political referendum that just might go the other way.
Possibly losing the island of Montreal over Bill 96 seems a poor bargain not to be chanced when a compromise is there to be had.

For them, blowing off Bill 96 seems infinitely preferable to the scenario described above.
Politicians will pay heed and likely do an about-face.

I am reminded about other famous about-faces including the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who was forced to accept a cease-fire with Iraq after stating he never would with the words,  “I drink this chalice of poison.”

To which I say to Mr. Legault...bottoms up.

Systemic Racism: For Premier Legault and Apologist media, Denial is Not a River in Egypt

The old adage that tells us that a photo is worth a thousand words can well be updated today to say that a video is worth a thousand photos.
Such is the case with a Facebook video that has nothing less than rocked the foundations of Quebec society and propelled the entire province into much-needed reflection and introspection on racism, especially institutionalized racism where companies, organizations, government offices, our law enforcement,  health, and social institutions discriminate against minorities in a systematic and pervasive manner.

The short video in question was shot by a native woman in a hospital in Joliette who was not only treated with abject contempt but actually died of neglect at the hands of doctors and nurses who assumed that she was simply impaired (like so many unfortunate native patients) rather than facing a very major health crisis.
After hearing damning and devastating evidence, the coroner's inquest into Joyce Echaquan's death concluded rightly that institutional racism contributed to her demise, a notion that old school politicians and nationalist journalists have refused to accept out of hand.

The idea that racism pervades Quebec institutions was roundly rejected by no less than the Premier, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, the leader of the PQ, and a lapdog French nationalist media who proclaimed that while racism existed in Quebec, it isn't widespread or institutionalized.

I don’t agree when we say there’s a system,” says Premier Legault, refusing to recognize systemic racism exists in Quebec,

Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet : While “there are individuals that are racist,” “one should avoid saying that all individuals in that particular group are racist.

The new leader of the Parti Québécois Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says he prefers the term institutional racism over systemic racism because it puts the focus on concretely solving the problem where it exists and not just blaming a system.

As for the nationalist media, the outrage was palpable, where the idea that Quebec faces an existential crisis over racism is a vile and malevolent construct, conceived by enemies of the Quebec 'nation.'

Richard Martineau in Le Journal du Montreal "
The worst part is that during this time, all these good little Quebecers who dream of seeing François Legault admit that there is indeed "systemic racism" in Quebec say absolutely nothing about the federal Indian law!  ...
"Fortunately, our PM stands up to them and refuses to give in to their blackmail."

Mathieu Bock-Coté in Le Journal du Montreal
"The grand Liberal-Solidaire coalition, the 'PLQS,' this week sought to use the commemoration of the tragic death of Joyce Echaquan in an odious way to force François Legault to bend his knees to the theory of systemic racism. 

Raymond Parent in Le Journal du Montreal
"I can understand the premier of Quebec's reluctance  to recognize systemic discrimination and I would tend to adopt the same posture if I were in his shoes.
He must consider all the legal impacts that such recognition may have on our political and social choices. Plus, it's hard to strike up a dialogue with someone who asks you to be on your knees at the start."

Now before you go off on Quebecers as inherently and unrepentantly racist, it's interesting to note that despite the government's denial and the media's general support for the notion that Quebec doesn't suffer from institutional and systemic racism, the majority of Quebecers aren't buying it.
In a poll conducted last week, more than two-thirds of Quebecers believe the opposite of what the government and the media are spoon-feeding them, that is that institutional racism is a serious problem here in Quebec.

As I said, the sad video of the racist treatment of  Joyce Echaquan at the hands of hospital staff is burned into our collective conscience and all the hand-wringing and excuses won't make it go away.  Nobody who viewed the video can un-see it and only the cold-hearted and truly racist cannot help but feeling a little shame and a lot of anger.
The coroner who wrote the damning report highlighted that without the video, the death due to racism, like so many other cases, would go unnoticed and unreported.
Such is the power of video evidence.

At the inquiry, those hurling the abuse were defensive and unapologetic. They were tired and perhaps the video was taken out of context....blah..blah..blah.
No remorse or apology, just excuses, and denial. It's a shameful analogy for the  Quebec establishment.

Years ago, I wrote about a qualified Muslim candidate who was tired of submitting his resume without ever getting an interview. He resubmitted his candidature with an identical C/V, but with a French name instead of his clearly Arab name.
You can guess the result. The C/V with the Arab name was rejected and the identical C/V with a French name was offered an interview.
This in a government office and the very definition of is institutional racism.
The candidate sued and settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, but never received an apology and for the office involved it was back to business as usual.

But the winds of change are blowing and in reaction to the poll and because of the public pressure. those denying institutional racism are changing their tune. 

The new talking point is that perhaps Quebec does suffer from institutional racism but no more so than the rest of Canada.

At least it's a positive step forward and the hard conversation has been opened up.
The public has made it clear that Premier's position is not one they share and that he's going to have to change his tune to remain relevant. 

That said, there remains a deep and knee-jerk defensiveness in the old guard to anybody or anything that challenges the idea of Quebec as a less-than-perfect society.

 In his latest article in  Le Journal du Montreal, Joseph Facal goes off pas a peu près on natives in a rageful and hateful rant, one that I've not seen in a while.

I've done my best to translate for those who have no French, but for those who want to capture the nuance of the original, click on the link

Autochtones: une récupération qui donne la nausée

Aboriginal people, as one of my best readers put it, didn’t have it easy in Canada.
But am I the only one who found that this necessary awareness quickly turned into a vulgar display of  ignorance, pretension and hypocrisy?

The Aboriginal cause has become, for many, the new way to show off one's political-correctness and virtue-signalling, especially when it does not require any sacrifice.  The Prime Minister of Canada improvises a public holiday, sheds crocodile tears and puts feathers on his head. Lightweight teachers who can't write a sentence without making ten mistakes want to "indigenize" their lesson plans and look with suspicion at their colleagues who refuse drink the Kool-aid. Others, hand on heart, want to hire an indigenous teacher, just one, even if it means lowering the criteria, just to say to themselves that they have helped to right a historic wrong. Still others are paid to convince us that indigenous traditional knowledge should be equated with experimental science, as if herbs cured cancer. At Radio-Blablabla, at Le Devoir, in all the media, young journalists display moral certitude proportional to their ignorance.
We accept the bullshit about Montreal, supposedly un-ceded territory, a claim demolished by any non-militant historian, considering it was the site where the Great Peace Treaty of 1701 was signed, precisely because it was seen as relatively neutral. Wrinkled journalists, who refuse to grow old and relive May 68, lecture their flock while well installed in the bourgeois comfort of Outremont. The students, also wanting to make history, are looking for a cause that is not too compelling. And so they are going to insult Legault as “ti-mononcle”, wear an orange sweater, light a candle, put a “Solidarity with Joyce” on their Facebook page, “decolonize” the libraries and sing Imagine.
The burden will be borne and the conscience appeased.
The big, big, big crusade of all these small, medium and large hypocrites is that François Legault must recognize the “systemic” character of racism. We haven't read two books, but we  are convinced, yes, ma'am, that they were  truly "genocided", not "culturally", no, "genocided" period.
What, you deny it? Shame !
The smartest have understood that there is a new profitable avenue here: jobs, media visibility, grants, dissertations and theses, etc. Everything is spectacle, everything is display, everything is recycling, everything is small steps towards great professions of faith.
But all this hypocrisy and drama is just business for the most part.
Almost all of the posers from the entertainment industry are first and foremost concerned with self-promotion.
The truth, the real truth, in many indigenous communities, is less glowing: under-education, drug addiction, despair, domestic violence, billions spent who-knows-where, illegal trafficking of all kinds, etc. We prefer not to look at it too closely. It might mar the romantic images.
Our society recycles everything. The important thing is that the misfortune of some can become the "business" of others.

That's quite a blast and leaves me wondering what is the point of the article is.
Why exactly did Mr. Facal write the article?

Is it somehow an explanation as to why Natives should be treated harshly, discriminated against, and left to die in our hospitals?

Quebec Premier Channels Donald Trump in Pedalling the Big Lie about Language

Premier Legault Pedals the Big Lie

It's one thing when dedicated sovereigntists and language nationalists peddle the big lie that in Quebec the French language is in mortal danger, it is to be expected.

But when the Premier of the province embraces the populist trope it crosses into risky territory where reality is divorced from fact and where dangerous and out-of-control consequences result.

Everybody expects dedicated nationalists to scream bloody murder over language, it is the only issue, albeit manufactured, that they have remaining.
When the only tool in the belt is a hammer, everything looks like a nail and so we are bombarded with fantastical stories of language gloom and doom, spun by con artists extraordinaire, bullshitters and flimflam artists who would make Donald Trump blush with envy at their inventiveness.

Speaking of Trump, over these last months we've watched in stunning incredulity at the dismal saga of his cynical and dishonest campaign to overturn the results of the election over manufactured and nonsensical claims of voter fraud.
We sit in our armchairs and ask ourselves how stupid his followers must be to believe such utter tripe,  without ever making the connection that the exact same situation is occurring here in Quebec, where another manufactured and phony controversy has been cooked up by devious sovereigntists and language militants and now, sadly adopted by our Premier in a naked and cynical attempt to wrest more power for Quebec from Ottawa and more specifically to consolidate his hold on power as Premier. 

Mr. Legault executes to a tee the propaganda strategy invented by the Nazis and perfected in the modern era by Mr. Trump.

That is to tell the big lie, blame a certain identifiable minority, use the complicit media to whip up anger and dissent in the faithful.
So the comparison to the Nazis is not so outrageous as our Premier would pretend when he admonished a prominent hitherto media darling lawyer Anne-France Goldwater'who made such a reference.

Another chapter from this populist playbook is to portray the Quebec nation as a poor victim of the evil Canadian media, painted as merciless Quebec-bashers ad nauseam by the sovereigntist media. The pseudo-intellectual Mathieu Bock-Coté is a typical example of the pot calling the kettle black where he somehow misses the irony when he describes in an article these Canadian bashers as 'White Rhodesians.'
This phoney hypersensitivity to criticism is particularly galling considering the insults and mud flung at Canadians and Quebec's minorities on a daily basis by these Quebec's nationalist media thugs.

And so we in Quebec are living a political fantasy no different than the "Stop the Steal" nonsense that continues to grip America. While it may be easy for us to dismiss the American movement and its adherents as ignorant fools, it isn't so easy to admit we are gripped by the same type of political fantasy woven by cynics with similar ulterior motives. 

Here in Quebec, we have our own version of this big lie fantasy which I will dub... "Stop the Language Steal," a fantasy unsupported by statistics and facts.

While we are bombarded with cries of impending language extinction a la Chicken Little, there is nobody of credibility that can point to statistics that actually support the claim.

There is however one fantastic scholarly rebuttal of this language nonsense, an article written in French by Etienne Cardin-Trudeau, a doctoral student of political science at the University of Toronto.
If you have French, please read the fascinating account HERE{fr}.  

"The media bubble linked to the decline of French in Quebec is almost artificially created by a whirlwind of rehashed news and columns written by people with an interest in fanning the flames of identity nationalism. "

"This entire media fracas and political fuss is focussed mainly on the back of two trends: the decline of French as a mother tongue and as a language spoken at home. For mother tongue, the decline predicted by Statistics Canada is 78.9 to 70.1% by 2036. For language spoken at home, the decline is expected from 81.6 to 74.4%. The federal body released these projections in 2017.

What we are rarely presented with is the background to these numbers. Notably, the similar decline predicted for English in the rest of Canada.

Thus, English as a mother tongue in the rest of Canada would drop from 74% to 66% by 2036. If we take the language most often spoken at home, the expected drop is from 85.2 to 80 , 1%.

Two things, therefore, appear obvious: first, the proportion in the rest of Canada of people speaking English most often at home is similar to the proportion of Quebecers speaking French most often at home. In 2036, there would even be a greater proportion of people with French as their mother tongue in Quebec than of people with English as their mother tongue in the rest of Canada.What we are rarely presented with is the background to these numbers. Notably, the similar decline predicted for English in the rest of Canada.

In other words, if French is in danger of disappearing in Quebec because of the decline of French as the first language spoken at home in Quebec, a similar fate must await the English language in Canada where the decline of English as a first spoken language at home is more precipitous.
Ha! What utter nonsense!

Mr. Cardin-Trudeau's devastating take-down of the 'French is in danger' fantasy, is replete with data, context and analysis that is hard to refute.

So how have the language conspiracy peddlers reacted to the article?
To date, I've read no rebuttal to this scholarly work, nor have I seen any interviews on television or radio with the author. I dare say that the article is so toxic to the language fanatics that like a Chernobyl three-head fish, nobody dares touch it.

Like those media types in America who push the discredited theory of an election steal, when faced with tangible evidence of contradictory facts, they choose to ignore it, hoping that those they are attempting to deceive will remain oblivious to the truth. 

Every time you hear a Quebec politician or a media type complain about the decline of the French language understand that it is merely a device.

For the Premier, it is an attempt to sow fear amongst voters that they are in mortal language danger and that only he can deliver them from evil.

The nationalist media pedalling the nonsense of language doom is nothing more than a jaded attempt to drum up hatred of Canada, anglos, ethnics and immigrants to drum up support for sovereignty.

Here in Quebec, we actually face a bigger challenge over the big lie of the decline of the French language than the danger faced by Americans over the fraudulent claims of an election steal.

For every lie spun on FOX, Newsmax, OneAmerica New and conspiracy-based talk radio there are countervailing voices on CNN, MSNBC, NPR and mainstream news sources.

Here in Quebec, there is sadly nobody in our political class, either federal or provincial or in the media willing to oppose the big lie.

It is important for all of us to openly and vociferously deny that French is in Danger fantasy because to ignore it is to give it credence and oxygen and provides our political opponents with a victory based on fraud and deceit.

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather's Dirty Little Secret

 Liberal MP Anthony Housefather  is taking full advantage of the sympathy and publicity generated by a campaign poster that was defaced with a failed version of the Nazi swastika.

The incident says more to the intelligence author of the graffiti vandalizer who is either dyslexic or otherwise unable to correctly draw the hated symbol which today has morphed from a symbol of a bygone Nazi regime to an antisemitic symbol,  

We all condemn the hateful graffiti, there isn't a politician in Canada who would offer a free speech defence.

But that being said I cannot help but that Mr. Housefather's condemnation is hollow, a case of "do as I say, not as I do."

Mr. Housefather's dirty little secret is that he was a campaign poster vandalizer himself back as a youth and that in his last campaign, his own volunteer was caught removing opposition campaign signs.

"A volunteer helping out with the re-election campaign of Quebec Liberal Anthony Housefather was caught disposing of Conservative literature out on the campaign trail.
The incident was witnessed by a Conservative volunteer who happened to be canvassing the same apartment building in Côte Saint-Luc, Que., on Sept. 25. 
Documents shared with CBC News show that the witness claims Housefather was campaigning with several volunteers at the time of the incident.

But worse than that,  Housefather's own past behaviour makes his condemnation look like the pot calling the kettle back.

Here is the story as I've been reliably told and have verified as likely true

"Did you know that, in a strange but very possible way, the only reason Anthony Housefather is an MP today is because of the kindness of one {redacted} (yes, THAT {redacted}; we used to be best friends)? Let me explain.{redacted} and I worked on the "No" side in the 1992 Charlottetown Referendum campaign. We were putting up posters around NDG/Cote St. Luc for several hours and an MUCTC bus driver came along in his bus, saw us, and informed us that he saw a young male taking down our posters. He said that if we liked, he would act as a witness to identify the young man if we wanted to press charges. Well, you guessed it: that young man -- whom we then searched out and came upon -- was none other than one Anthony Housefather, then attending undergraduate McGill. We not only confronted him but saw him engaged in the dastardly deed as well. I then discussed with {redacted} whether he wanted to press charges (I, like the bus driver, was willing to) and he declined. I daresay that if {redacted} wanted to proceed with the charges, it is very possible that (1) Housefather would have been convicted; and (2) because of the conviction, he wouldn't have been accepted into McGill Law School; and (3) he never would have become mayor or MP. So in a very weird way, Housefather may have {redacted} to thank for his political career."

READ THE ENTIRE POST HERE

Next time Housefather complains about defaced posters, I dare any reporter to ask him to react to the above story.
Although this incident happened years ago, it is Housefather's claim of victimization by the latest poster defacement that opens him up to a discussion of his same prior bad acts.

I wonder if anyone has the guts to put the question to him......