Quebec is part of Canada, therefore it’s official languages should be French and English. And possibly whatever First Nation/Peoples languages are still kicking around.
Don’t be obtuse, please. Comparing English to Hindi - in Canada! - is nothing but obtuse, or possibly sophist. The goal of the Bloc is to separate from Canada. Who cares if they can do it or not, that’s their goal. That’s their platform. That is why they don’t accomodate English speakers.
Why? Why should every part of Canada have the same official languages? Does anybody care that the only official language of Ticino is Italian (except for one municipality, apparently)? There’s a reason why we’re a federation.
There is a relatively large Indian community in Canada, mostly seen in some urban centres (Toronto maybe?) Unfortunately I couldn’t tell you if most of them speak Hindi; that’s the problem with these large multinational countries like India where different languages are spoken in different parts of the country. (Hey, that reminds me of another country.) Maybe I could have mentioned the Chinese community, which is nearly a majority in some parts of British Columbia. I’m not sure which language most of them speak, but in any case the Liberal Party doesn’t seem to consider it important to say anything in their language on their website.
Their platform is available in English, I think that’s pretty good. Look, I know English speakers aren’t the main target of the Bloc, which is the reason why they didn’t take the time to translate the majority of their material in English. If a large number of anglophones suddenly started considering casting their vote for the Bloc, I’m sure their website would get translated pretty soon, regardless of whether they are a separatist party or not.
Do you think the Reform Party had campaign material written in French in 1993? I’d be shocked if they did, and for the same reason the Bloc doesn’t have that much material available in English: French speakers weren’t their target audience. The Reform wasn’t even a separatist party. And now many of their supporters are part of the current government.
As far as I can tell, the government of Ticino does not suppress any of the other three official languages of Switzerland.
I’d be shocked if they didn’t. There are Francophone people and communities on the prairies.
Quebec receives massive transfer payments. They wouldn’t be getting them if they were separate. That is over $1000 per person they get from the ROC (The vast majority comes from Alberta and Ontario…Odd that the link doesn’t list how much the paying provinces lose on this program, isn’t it?). That is a huge amount to be giving up. They wouldn’t just be a little poorer. They’d be a lot poorer. Plus, a lot of people would leave Quebec if they separated. If you were English speaking only why would you stay? There would be a huge drain of the best and brightest (usually the ones who can afford to move easily). This isn’t even taking the amount of debt the Quebec provincial government has which is, frankly, staggering. A whopping 234% of GDP. Imagine what would happen if its GDP were to drop? The place would go bankrupt. Canada Govt Debt 2008
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RickJay seems to think that it would strengthen separatist movements in other provinces and lead to the disintegration of the country. I don’t see why this would be the case. I mean, Albertans don’t want to separate from Canada right now, why would they want to separate from a Canada with much fewer Eastern votes to boss them around, where nobody’s forced to keep with this expensive bilingualism charade anymore, and where they don’t even have to send their hard-earned money away in equalization payments to lousy lazy Quebecers? Isn’t that their ideal version of Canada?
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Quebec’s votes balance out Ontario’s. Without Quebec, Ontario’s voting block would be unacceptable. A Canada without Quebec would require a redefinition of provincial boundaries to equalize this power. And which provincial politician is going to allow that?
Quebec’s official language is French.
Yes, I know that. I was being deliberately obtuse.
Oh…carry on obtusing then.
Well, if you think it’s fair to compare (in Canada) the use of English to the use of Hindi . . .
I wouldn’t be shocked either way, but I truly don’t recall. If they had translated policy statements and such it would be most likely due to contesting most of the seats in New Brunswick, though. Outside of St. Boniface I doubt there’s a riding west of the Great Lakes where the Francophone community is large enough to be electorally significant (I looked it up - Reform did very poorly in St. Boniface in 93). Moreover, Reform was infamous for its negative attitude towards French. If I had to bet, I’d bet there was little or no French language Reform campaign material in 93.
I doubt they offer cantonal services and public education in the three other official languages of Switzerland. Quebec can offer you services in English and under some conditions you can send your children to English-language public schools, even though English isn’t actually an official language. What do you mean “suppress”?
There are, but they weren’t the target audience of the Reform. The old Reform Party was pretty much anti-bilingualism (which, to minority francophone – and anglophone – communities, is an important issue).
Eh, I don’t know. I’m sure I could counter your Fraser Institute studies with studies from other think tanks biased the other way. Not that I intend to do it since I’m not trying to convince anyone that separation is an economically winning propostion for Quebec, at least not in the short term. I know we’d be poorer, but I also know we wouldn’t become anything near a third-world country.
Huh, I hadn’t heard this before. I thought westerners (and especially Albertans) considered Quebec/Ontario to be basically an Eastern Block voting against the interests of the West (in which case cutting it nearly by half would be positive for the West), not as two provinces balancing each other and giving the West a chance to be heard. I’ll have to think about this.
Traditionally you would be quite correct. Since 93, however, if Quebec votes Bloc and Ontario doesn’t go entirely to the Liberals, there’s at least some slim chance that the election won’t be won before the polls close in Neepawa.
Well, you’re closer to the well; I’ll consider myself corrected. And I do, even though in retrospect, find that as reprehensible as I do the Bloc today.
Sorry, Hypnagogic Jerk, I was wrong there, but I’ll still work on my other arguments.
If a political party chooses to list its platform in 100 languages then that is its business. It may well be a valid question as to why it doesn’t translate its propaganda into a local language, if those are the people it hopes to gain votes from. I guess it depends on what those voters expect from their party. What a government does, on the other hand, is a completely different thing. I don’t want the government spending money on translating their information into other languages as everyone who immigrates to Canada should speak one of the two official languages.
Well, maybe towards the French, or more specifically, Quebec, where it was thought too much of the country’s time was spent on its issues. Nothing gets a westerner up in arms more than hearing one province thinks it is ‘more’ equal and deserves special privileges because of it than other provinces. Personally, I think if they actually paid more in transfer payments than it got then this wouldn’t be such a big deal.
Plus, it is a real pain in the ass to turn the cereal box around to see the ingredients in English…
Boo hoo hoo, cry me a river. I remember the time when it was not even available in French.
Yeah, it was great wasn’t it? <recalls the golden age fondly when all was right with the empire>
Uzi was kidding. Let’s all take a chill pill.
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Quebec’s votes balance out Ontario’s. Without Quebec, Ontario’s voting block would be unacceptable. A Canada without Quebec would require a redefinition of provincial boundaries to equalize this power. And which provincial politician is going to allow that?
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As Hypnagogic Jerk points out, this isn’t traditionally the way it’s been perceived in the West, and the idea of the two balancing out is something that almost never happens. The 2006 election, when Quebec gave the Liberal Party the finger and started electing Conservatives again, and therefore guaranteed Liberal defeat, is really the one recent case (and even then Ontario was only mildly Liberal) and I have a lot of difficulty believing Westerners all changed their opinions about Canada’s political balance based on exactly one election.
The aims of the separatists are, I thought, pretty clear; they want to break the country up and have their own fief. There’s no ambiguity about this. As to whether it would be tantamount to destroying Canada, it strikes me as obvious that it simply would. It doesn’t matter if the other parts break away, which is impossible to predict; what currently constitutes Canada would be profoundly, fundamentally fractured. This isn’t like some overseas protectorate breaking away. It’s not even like if Michigan suddenly declared independence and separated from the USA. It’s the loss of one of the founding peoples of this country, a repudiation of the philosophical underpinning of our national raison d’etre, and an enormous drop in area, population, economic potential and physical unity (since it would physically bisect the country,) not to mention the likelihood of tremendous frictional costs, conflicts, and anger that could last generations. The other provinces and territories would constitutionally remain Canada, but it would not be the same country and would be much weaker. The separatists know this; they also know Quebec would be poorer and weaker. They prefer linguistic purity over everything else; the people are just lobsters in a pot.
Having said all that, the truth is the BQ is one of the greatest political failures in Canadian history. It seems to me they’ve likely harmed, if not killed, separation’s chances in Canada. Rather than fracturing Parliament, they guaranteed three straight Liberal majorities. Rather than make separation a top flight issue, they’ve turned it from a near miss in 1995 to an issue even the PQ doesn’t like to bring up. It seems likely to me that the very existence of the BQ has strangled separatism, because the alienated-Quebec vote has had a place to park their political expression without having to atually vote “yes” on a referendum question. After just barely missing in 1995, the BQ has served to siphon that feeling off to the point that the movement’s so dead, the separatist parties have to pretend they’re something they aren’t. Even the most credulous voters can see that bloc MPs are in it for the pensions. I still think they’re absolutely the scum of the earth, but I delight in the fact that they’ve torpedoed their own movement.
But it’s run its course and I’d like the electorate to finally get rid of them; let the NDP take the socialist votes.
It not only goes against my vision of Canada, it goes against my vision of Québec. I don’t disagree with you - one should be able to speak French; it is a beautiful language that gives you access to a rich culture. I even agree that steps must be taken to encourage the French language and culture to thrive, though I have a big ‘but…’ over the sign law.
My big problem starts when one pretends that English culture in Québec doesn’t exist - my family was in there fucking the indians over and stealing their land, too! Uhh, wait, that wasn’t quite how I wanted to put it.
Why I roll my eyes about the Bloc is that they say they are standing up for Québec, when what they mean is that they are standing up for a particular side of Francophone Québec. Anglos have a stake in the history, a stake in the culture, and have contributed to the development of Québec. Not English Québec, not French Québec, not Hindu Québec, but Québec. If separation is good for the ‘nation’, it’s good for all of us, right? Over here? Been around since the early 1800s? If separation is not going to be good for all of us, how can you say it will be good for Québec?
Yes, I’m aware the relationship has not been comfortable or easy, and the English did not always treat the French with the respect they deserved. I just don’t think revisionism and disrespect (on either side) are the way forward.
There is a misunderstanding here. I mean based upon population. Right now Ontario has 38% of the population of Canada. Without Quebec Ontario has 51% of the population of Canada. With Quebec, one province doesn’t control the entire agenda of Canada.
Gorsnak, I owe you an apology. It was not my intention to aim that at you, and not my intention to dump on your idea to teach Economics as a compulsory subject in high school. I should have been more careful about the sequence of threads and/or quoted some of the people who sparked my reply.
I intended my reply as a response to statements made by RickJay in #215 about David Suzuki ‘being as dumb as a nerf hammer on economics’, Rysto in #213 about ‘crazy economic policies’, Rysto in #210 about income trusts, as well as many other earlier posts concerning the soundness of Stephen Harper’s economic policies and the unsoundness of Stéphane Dion’s economic policies. My point, such as it is, is that I do not accept that Harper’s is the only sound or even the best economic policy, whether or not he has a Master’s Degree.
Gorsnak, builder of theremins, voice of reason, any implication that I was aiming anything at you specifically was entirely my fault and I apologize.