Not standing with Canadian Charter Notwithstanding

[wolfpup]

@velomont

The thing that I find really frustrating and sad about all of this Quebec’s bill 96 and related philosophies is that it is founded on an outside-Montreal pathetic xenophobia that, IME, isn’t shared in Montreal by Montrealers.

My wife and I lived here in the early '90s for a few years and we loved the place. We moved back in 2013 and if this crap was stirring at the time it wasn’t that obvious at the time. Montreal is incredibly divers and open minded and, because of bill 101, most Montrealers under 40 or thereabouts are fluently bilingual, to the extent that I often see groups of a few people fluently conversing and switching languages mid-sentence such that you can’t really tell who is Anglo or Franco. There’s even a word for it that is often used - Franglais. And in the city (or on the island) almost everyone’s cool with it.

But a small gang of narrow-minded, fearful, xenophobic “nation builders” are doing their utmost to torpedo their province’s economic engine.

Yeah, I’m pissed off and we’re bailing as soon as we can - leaving what could be one of the best cities in the world.

I used to live in Montreal and I fully agree with you. It’s a beautiful, multicultural, vibrant city with gorgeous architecture and natural beauty and really great restaurants and a culture that is hard to specifically characterize but is just wonderfully unique in the world. It’s been suggested – during both of the two separatist referendums – that if Quebec ever votes to secede from Canada, that Montreal should secede from Quebec and link up with Canada on its own. I think that’s a fine idea.

Anyway, I don’t blame you for planning to bail. You’ll be very welcome here in Ontario, although the influx of immigrants and refugees from places like Syria and Quebec have really driven up housing prices.

My post in another thread about Bill 96:

Quebec's new language law

As I said in the other thread, I suspected that the comment you had made was about Bill 96. TBH, this bill goes a lot further than I had thought after briefly reading about it, but as the article says, it remains to be seen how many of its provisions are going to be enforced. The idea that the Language Police will, Gestapo-like, raid businesses and arbitrarily seize computers and cellphones and the like sounds a bit far-fetched. OTOH, the Language Police have surprised many before with their …