I hope you can see that I’m on your side. I’m sorry about the unnecessary bigotry.
Yeah, there are some real bitterness among some anglophone Canadians. This is an undeniable fact. Some of that bitterness is self-justified by dragging out Quebec’s identity/nationalism issues. I feel anglophones could have a more comprehensive grasp of Quebec if these easy targets (language laws, religion, nationalism, politics) were not used as a cudgel to beat Quebec in random discussions.
They could just as easily be used to inform us of Quebecker’s primary motivations, aspirations, and societal views. Perhaps there’s still too much emotion here for that. 
So am I. Were it not for the unnecessary bigotry, Montreal today would be a larger and more thriving city than Toronto, as indeed it once was, businesses would not have left the province in droves, and Quebec would be doing far better economically instead of becoming ever more isolated and balkanized. These are strong positive things that are now in the sad realm of “might have been”, and we should all be regretful at the opportunities missed because of narrow-minded irrationality. It is a loss to us all.
wolfpup, I really want to highlight this fact. Bilingualism in Canada serves an entirely different function than Quebec’s language laws.
The reason why Quebec has the laws that they have is to ensure that the French majority can conduct their daily lives in their own language. If you live in Quebec you will need to participate in Quebec society in the language of that society, you need to be able to integrate into that society, and your children need to be able to be absorbed into that society. These reasons don’t exist in any other province of Canada, that’s why you can have a mishmash of semi-bilingual legal accommodations in French.
The rest of Canada doesn’t need to ensure the linguistic absorption of linguistic minorities into English as this process already happens without strict laws.
Bilingualism laws in the rest of Canada serves only to increase the abilities of French minorities to exist in Canada. That is not the same goal of Quebec’s language laws which need to serve the abilities of the French majority to exist in Quebec. While the exact laws can be debated, the ultimate goal (Quebec’s fundamental nature as a francophone society) is not up for debate. It will never be up for debate.
First of all, that last sentence isn’t true. Canada’s cultural paradigm is not assimilation, at least not nearly to the extent it is in the US, and the very extreme extent it is in Quebec. This similarity is why one finds anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic and general anti-ethnic sentiments in Quebec that closely parallel those in Trumpist right-wing America. Canada’s cultural paradigm is more focused on multiculturalism and harmonious co-existence, the opposite of Quebec’s extreme xenophobia and anglophobia. There are big ethnic enclaves everywhere. Even Chinatown in downtown Toronto is more inclusive than some of the newer shopping malls in Markham where store after store has signs that are ONLY in Chinese, never mind bilingual Chinese and English. There’s even been some grumbling about it from some councilors, but there are certainly no laws that presume to dictate the language of the signage of a private business – except of course in Quebec. It’s the extremes they have gone to that has driven businesses out of the province, to everyone’s detriment.
Secondly, the French majority has always conducted their daily lives in their own language. Among the many things that have changed in the past few decades as part of the intransigent francophone extremism is that, by force of law, they are trying to force unilingual French to also become the exclusive language of private business. This is exactly like when they idiotically tried to force air traffic control communications to be French when it’s English all over the freaking world. The predominant language of business in North America is English, and this is also true to a great extent throughout the world. The French ideologues have managed through their hysteria and extremism in one fell swoop to trample on the rights of the English-speaking minority, on the internal matters of private business, and on the practical viability of Quebec businesses to do business in the rest of Canada and the US and elsewhere in the world.
The only way employees can meet both the demands of the ideologues and the demands of business is to be fluently bilingual, which sounds cool, but that places extreme constraints on the flexibility of business to hire the best people and become optimally competitive. You know what the alternative is, right? It’s for a business to say “fuck this shit, we’re leaving”. Which many, many have done, as you well know. Which is one of the reasons that Toronto is a rapidly growing great city and Montreal, for all its beauty and amenities, is in relative decline from its former glory. I don’t say this arrogantly; I say it as an expression of pain for the decline of the city that I love, that I spent a great many years in.
And I’m not debating it. I’m debating their crazy and extreme methods for trying to solve an imaginary non-existent problem. Quebec has been a majority francophone society since long before Confederation. They always will be. Their idiotic language laws have done nothing to advance that cause; they have only marginalized the anglophone minority and driven out major businesses that used to form an important part of the Quebec economy. It’s true that in the past, English was an important if not predominant language of business and commerce in Quebec. But that’s because it is an important language of business and commerce everywhere. No law is going to change that.
I think this discussion is better suited for another thread … or maybe 1995.