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[Delenda]

Anglos need calm defenders
The Gazette
Published: 5 hours ago
For many Quebec anglophones, the idea of an activist group representing their interests fills them with ... well, horror, to be frank.

Who can blame them? More than 25 years of lobbying later, it doesn't seem like a whole lot has been accomplished. The issues that need to be addressed are many of the same ones that Alliance Quebec first took on 26 years ago: protecting access to health care delivered in English, making sure access to English schooling is respected, raising the level of bilingualism among anglophone youth so they need not leave to find good jobs, and so on.

Over the last 30 years or so, anglophones have tried everything, it seems. In the early 1980s Alliance Quebec tried the polite, reasonable approach (and, critics say, also tried infiltrating the Liberal Party).

In the late 1990s, William Johnson adopted a much blunter approach, leading AQ demonstrations against businesses that did not include English on their signs. Outside of Alliance Quebec, others earned the label "angryphone," some of them using foolishly intemperate tactics and vocabulary. Still others, most notably lawyer Brett Tyler, systematically defended anglo rights in the courts, scoring some impressive successes. But ultimately the anglophone future is a social and political question more than a legal one.

Through it all, anglophones' legitimacy as Quebecers has often been under assault or, at best, ignored. A quarter-million anglos, tired of waging existential battles, packed up and left years ago. Others just got on with their daily affairs. Still others decided a steady insistence on their legal, moral, and civil rights was the way to go.

This last approach strikes us as the sensible option. The community will thrive when we all do our part to support our essential services - the health-care system, schools and school boards, social services, libraries, universities.

When universities call for support, for example, we should be giving generously. If access to English-language health-care is on the wane, especially in remote areas - and it is - we have to complain to the government. (hey, even French speakers can't get medical services in many areas)

Then there's the federal court-challenges program, inexplicably axed by the Conservative government, which was designed to protect official-language minorities' rights.

Minority communities survive when their members will them to survive, when many people have a shared consciousness of being part of a group. (and you do more than that, by isolating yourself in your ghettos)The Quebec Community Groups Network (http://www.qcgn.ca) is growing into just such a role. A network of 29 diverse groups and organizations, it met last weekend to call for anglophones to become more engaged.

We're happy to echo that call - and to acknowledge that the QCGN has been doing a calm and careful job of building the connections anglophones need.

No single voice can speak for all Quebec's anglophones, but different groups with energy and a pragmatic focus on what's important to us will carry us a long way, especially if they communicate and co-operate together. We need groups, plural, to protect and promote our community. There's more than enough work for us all. (why don't you do what french minorities have been doing for centuries, i.e. assimilate?. )




© The Gazette (Montreal) 2008

[Delenda]

Lettre à la Gâzette:

Blame the anglos

Published: 5 hours ago

Re: "Anglos need to be involved: conference" (Gazette, March 2).

Yes, it's all our fault. We should be holding some prominent Quebec cabinet positions and have a ministry for the anglophone minority (equivalent to that which Ontario's francophone minority has enjoyed for decades). (Better be in a position where there is no minstry for a so-called minority than the other way around. English needs no protection anywhere)

The problem with Anglos is that they don't apply for cabinet positions.

****Yeah, that's it.

Doh!

Daniel Fuchs

St. Leonard




© Author 2008

[Delenda]

Endangered Anglos?


Anglos have not left Quebec because of xenophobia, but because they have more mobility in a lagging economy

Jean-Luc Migue And Gerard Belanger, Financial Post
Published: Tuesday, March 04, 2008


Last weekend, the Universite de Montreal hosted a high-profile conference on how to revitalize dwindling English-speaking communities in Quebec. It would have done better to focus on why Quebec Anglos are moving out.

A recent National Post editorial argues that "Anglo-Quebecers have been fleeing la belle province in droves," because the French establishment has made "anglophones the enemy." This interpretation cannot be ruled out. On the other hand, immigrants from abroad have also moved out of Quebec. And so have a large number of French Canadians.

In truth, Quebec's lower economic growth rate, more than its treatment of the Anglos, explains why the English-speaking community has become "a shadow of its former self."

The choice of location is mostly determined by real standards of living. People move from lagging provinces to the more prosperous regions of an economically integrated economy. This adjustment process continues until real income per capita have equalized across the regions. But land is a resource in fixed supply; its price increases more rapidly in prosperous provinces. In the long term, any monetary income differential is entirely capitalized in the price of land.

Differentials in land prices in turn largely explain variations in housing costs. Why in these circumstances would anyone live in relatively declining regions? For one reason: it's cheaper. They like the higher monetary income in fast-growing regions, but they like house prices in lagging ones. Quantities, in this case populations, adjust to differential growth rates, not prices or incomes. Over time lagging-regions advantages in lower land prices compensate for the lower nominal income. Once the process has worked itself out, statistics on published real per capita income cannot reveal real standards of living, when only a national price deflator is used, because living costs vary across regions.

The convergence of real per capita income has been documented in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Between 1920 and 2000, per capita income variations across the United States have significantly declined, despite wide movements in populations. With a national average equal to 100, interregional variations in 1980 ranged from 96 to 105. Interregional income differentials in England are on the whole tightly distributed, once adjusted for cost of living differences. In general, rural areas show lower average income than London as published in official statistics; yet equalization is nonetheless realized across both types of territory for similar occupations.

In Canada, a recent federal budget indicates that "while economic disparities between the provinces remain substantial, they have clearly declined over the last 25 years." This reduced dispersion occurred as important movements of the Canadian population took place: declining shares in the Atlantic provinces and Quebec together with rising shares in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

In Quebec, the consensus on the state of the economy among the elite is by now established. In its view, not only is the province not losing ground, it has improved its position relative to the rest of Canada and to Ontario since the "Quiet Revolution." This position rests on flawed analysis. When measured in terms of overall economic growth, population, investment and employment, the Quebec economy has witnessed a widening gap with Ontario and the rest of Canada over the last decades. Considering the period from 1981 to 2004, real GDP growth averaged 2.4% in Quebec against 3.0% in the rest of Canada, for an overall gain of 70.9% in Quebec and 96.3% in the rest of Canada.

Yet, the convergence principle has resulted in average real income converging between Ontario and Quebec. The wide divergence in total growth has been capitalized in land prices. On the basis of three measures in 2004, GDP per capita, personal disposable income and average weekly earnings, Quebec lags behind Ontario by 10%-16%. But those figures are not adjusted for differences in the cost of living. Montrealers in general earn lower monetary incomes, but these are wholly offset by lower land prices. Quebec's per capita income has gotten closer to real income in Ontario in spite of its dismal overall growth and therefore in spite of the "Quiet Revolution," not because of it.

Some people have special reasons to live in a specific region. An unusual preference is, like land, a fixed resource which renders its holder liable to improve or damage his position as a result of differential growth rates. In Quebec, French Canadians are less mobile than Anglos and other ethnic groups. Some would be prepared to sacrifice some income in exchange for the benefit of living in a French-speaking environment. Yet thanks to the mobility of other residents, they do not need to make that sacrifice. They gain in lower land prices.

Montreal Anglos do not have to overcome language and cultural barriers when they migrate. They also historically possess higher economic skills to take up demanding and lucrative employment. (parce qu'ils sont plus intelligents que nous?) In a word, they are more mobile. As long as Quebec remains a lagging province, they will prove to be more apt to leave. Residual anti-English sentiment remains a secondary factor.

--- - Jean-Luc Migue is Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute, Vancouver, and at Institut Turgot, Paris. Gerard Belanger is Professor at Universite Laval.

[Delenda]

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2126

Division and discord
By Beryl Wajsman Tuesday, March 4, 2008


“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” - Voltaire

Le Journal de Montréal recently staged a story about unilingual anglophones unable to serve the public in French. This is not only reprehensible journalism but incites the most dangerous kind of division and discord. It panders to the lowest common denominators not only in this profession but in our society. It must be roundly condemned.

For those few who missed it, Le Journal sent a reporter posing as a unilingual anglophone to almost one hundred companies looking for a job. Eighty-five companies refused employment because of language deficiency. In some of the places where the reporter got a “job” the reporter left after a few hours of serving the public. On this basis Le Journal started a three-day series, front-page, with the title “Sorry, I can’t speak French” and bemoaned how “hard” it is to be served in French in Montreal. Sadly, copies are selling like hotcakes.

Scintillating journalism is one thing. Scurrilous quite another. But what Le Journal did was symptomatic of a deeper malaise. And one evidenced by the venom in the chatter of francophone talk shows.

Le Journal was pandering to pathetic delusions of fear and insecurity. Never mind that it did not focus on the fact that 85 percent of the companies refused employment to a “unilingual anglophone”. What’s worse is that Le Journal seems to be stuck in a Duplessis-era time warp. Montreal is an international multicultural success story. An island where, as of five years ago, over 50 percent of the residents are neither anglophone nor francophone yet in some communities like the Italian and Jewish over 80 percent are bilingual. But victimization seems to sell better than confidence.

No amount of fake stories can sanitize illegitimate demands and latent insecurities. Nor can any amount of words cloak simmering prejudice.

There seems to be a visceral need to keep the pot of nullification and interposition boiling. It’s a shame. It’s not decent. It ought to stop. Those of us who have lived through the past three decades of “kulturkampf” — “culture war — “in “La Belle Province” have learned never to look at any event in isolation. Rather, we tend to look around 360 degrees to see what else is happening in the Quebec tableaux. It’s our own home-grown built-in sanity insurance. Kind of like anti-lock brakes for those black-iced Quebec roads. You know the skid is coming, you just don’t know where.

You see, for those of us considered “les autres”, the others, not pure-bred francophones “de vieille souche”, whenever we hear stories like this cooked up, the little hairs on the backs of our necks stand up. An early warning system if you like. And with Le Journal, we sometimes need warnings because this isn’t the first time the paper has engaged in the fabricated journalism of “optique”.

Last year Le Journal commissioned a Leger Marketing poll that “demonstrated” that 59 percent of Quebecers considered themselves racist to one degree or another. An astonishing figure outside of Okeefenokee Swamp if the percentage was half that. Yet what was troubling was that the questions themselves were tweaked to produce that result. More troubling still were the ads promoting the poll.

Below the question “êtes-vous raciste?” were pictures of Hasidic Jews and Chador-clad Muslim women. Since when do religious beliefs have anything to do with race or costume? Yet for Le Journal, in today’s Quebec, that is the subliminal message that still goes out more than 50 years after Premier Maurice Duplessis used his infamous Padlock Law to close Frank Roncarelli’s restaurant because Roncarelli had become a Jehovah’s Witness and Duplessis hated the Witnesses with a passion.

Le Journal decided to engage in its exercise on the heels of the Mouvement Montrealais Français’s successful boycott threat against Esso’s plan to change the name of its gas station shops from “Marché Express” to “On the Run” as they are everywhere else and as permitted by Quebec’s language law. Provincial Liberal Minister Line Beauchamp decided to declare that there was still not enough French in downtown Montreal and that more should be done to promote “the common language” of Quebec society. Chantage not-so-amicale at work.

And that is at the heart of the malaise at Le Journal. Exploitation and perpetuation of lies for profit and power. Poisoning the public discourse with the philosophy of “divide and conquer” creating a francophone majority riddled by self-doubt driven by a jealousy of others’ self-belief. Le Journal ca suffit!

[Delenda]

Good news is no news
The Gazette
Published: 5 hours ago

Quebec anglophones and allophones are more likely than ever before to speak French at work, according to 2006 census data made public this week. In response to this news Christine St-Pierre, the Quebec language minister, said more must be done to advance the use of French in the workplace.

This absurd reaction encapsulates the knee-jerk attitude toward language that major political parties all share. Language is the "third rail" of Quebec politics; deadly to any party the least bit careless about it.

Anglophones and allophones might naïvely expect that the increasing use of French in the workplace - 63 per cent of allophones spoke French most often on the job in 2006, up from 60 per cent in 2001 - could open the door to relaxation of rules governing access to English schools, for example.

Not a chance. In fact St. Pierre is promising to present new proposals for further expanding the role of French in the workplace.

The way language politics work here is that any bad news about French, however contrived, is a disaster; any good news is not good enough. Francophones now make up less than 50 per cent of Montreal Islanders? Never mind that tens of thousands of Montreal francophones have moved to off-island suburbs and that the whole metropolitan area is still strongly French-speaking. Look at Montreal, it's a disaster!

The census is, by its nature, more precise than any poll. Yet we have also had some pre-emptive grumbling over lesser research data, and the handling of it by the Office québécois de la langue française which, some people charge, is itself insufficiently vigilant! There are people eager, it seems, to complain about language for any reason - or none.

It's all a little wearying for anglophones and allophones who have, by a strong majority, accepted the primacy of French but just want a little respect and a little linguistic peace. Might as well wish for summer weather in March.




© The Gazette (Montreal) 2008

[Delenda]

Liberal MNAs abandon their constituents

The Gazette
Published: 4 hours ago

There might well be a thorny legal question in the Bill 104 case that the Supreme Court of Canada has now agreed to hear. But the political dimension of the issue is simple: It's about the two-faced shame of the Quebec Liberal government, and the lamentable silence of Liberal members of the National Assembly from Montreal Island.

You recall the case. It starts with the fact that Quebec's language charter says you can't get into an English grade school or high school unless you, or one of your parents, received the majority of your, or their, schooling in English in Canada. (Oddly, this arrangement means that only anglo parents have full freedom of choice.)

This painful restriction on basic free choice is part of the linguistic compromise that holds sway in Quebec. Many parents, including a lot of francophones, rage against this ham-handed social engineering, but the consensus - shared by many anglophones and allophones - is that the price is worth paying to ensure linguistic peace.

Still, it sits poorly with many of those anglophones and allophones that a Liberal government - which would have only a corporal's guard of MNAs without anglo and allo votes - insists on policing the edges of this school-language policy like prison guards in a bad movie.

When a law is restrictive, human ingenuity gets busy. Some parents, from all three language cateogories, worked out the fact that if a student's first school year was in English, then he or she had a golden ticket into English schools right through Secondary V The trick was to get that first year, and the solution was a fully private school, one that gets no government subsidies. Such schools are exempt from the language rules.

This was buying your way around the law, and only a few could afford it. And so a cottage industry was born.

In 2002 the Parti Québécois, devoted as usual to making life here hard for people not just like them, enacted Bill 104 to weld shut this tiny hole in the language law. That sturdy rationalist Brent Tyler, on behalf of 26 families, challenged the law in court, saying it violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms - and he won.

Whoosh! That sudden sound was the Liberal Party of Quebec rushing to the barricades to repel this assault by menacing Grade 1 tykes. With not a murmur of dissent from even one of the anglophone and elected-by-anglophones Liberal MNAs, Quebec vowed within hours to appeal to the Supreme Court to get Bill 104 reinstated.

That's the case the Supremes will now hear. Nine justices will decide what seems reasonable to them.

Meanwhile anglophone and allophone voters should consider what seems reasonable to us.

Yes, we understand that the Liberals live in mortal fear of any accusation of slackness in "defending the French language." But too many Liberal MNAs have in the process left themselves open to the accusation of abandoning their own constituents, without even a word of explanation. Shame on every single one of them.




© The Gazette (Montreal) 2008

[Delenda]

English schools impede anglos
Letter
Published: 4 hours ago
Re: "Anglos need calm defenders" editorial, March 4.

This might seem radical, but what anglos really need is someone to convince them that the only way to cure the community's language problems is to abolish our English school system and send everyone to French schools. If you want your children to stay in Quebec and find a decent job with prospects, they need to be socially and professionally comfortable in French.

It amazes me that some anglo-Quebecers will send their children to nothing but English schools right through university and then complain that their children can't find a proper job in Quebec and then must leave the province to find work.


If abolition is impossible, all English schools and universities should prepare students for life in Quebec by using the exact same exams that the French school system uses.

This would force the English system to raise its level of French instruction to a minimum level, and your university degree would then offer you at least the professional tools and confidence to work anywhere in Quebec in either language.

Only then will our children have a chance to flourish and be full partners in this beautiful province.

Bill Parker

Val des Lacs