www.politiquebec.com

[Delenda]

Being An Angryphone Is Something To Be Proud Of

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Howard Galganov

In the mid 1990’s, just after the Quebec referendum (October 30, 1995) to separate Quebec from Canada, an English language reporter in Montreal asked me why I’m always so angry.

My response was this:

“Anyone who is NOT ANGRY at losing the right to use his or her own language as he or she pleases, or the right to be an equal and visible citizen in his or her own country is a SCHMUCK.”

From this one exchange, I, along with others who shared a common view that ethnocentric nationalism within Quebec that stripped away the RIGHTS from English speakers to be equal to the French majority were called ANGRYPHONES.

Montreal’s conventional English Language Media, including the Montreal Gazette, CBC Radio/TV, CTV, Global TV and CJAD Radio also LOVED to call people such as myself hardliners and extremists.

One evening, during a live television debate in Montreal, amongst several “Anglo” apologists for ethnocentric Quebecois nationalism, all of whom considered themselves to be “BRIDGE-BUILDERS”, Brenda O’Farrell, who at that time was the Editor In Chief of the West Island Chronicle newspaper made the following statement to me:

Not everything is black and white she said. Everything should be open for discussion and debate. Only an extremist and a hardliner such as yourself can’t see that.

I was seated right beside Ms O’Farrell, up close and personal, which made my rebut to her statement all that much more poignant:

“Brenda, you’re a pretty good looking woman with whom I’d love to have sex. So how about doing it at a time and at a place of my choosing, whether you want to or not? And if you don’t want to, how about if I just jump on top and do it anyway?”

O’Farrell was aghast. My wife Anne, who was sitting in the audience, had a smile on her face from ear to ear since she knew what to expect from me. O’Farrell did not.

Brenda O’Farrell’s uncomfortable comeback was that I should get serious, and this is what she meant about me being a hardliner and an extremist.

My comeback to her was simple:

“Brenda - It was your words that said EVERYTHING is negotiable. That not EVERYTHING was black and white. And that there is ALWAYS room for discussion. So let’s discuss and negotiate how I can violate your body, heart and soul.”

I went on to explain that not EVERYTHING is negotiable. That there is a line to be drawn in the sand. And that there are black and white issues. And that my RIGHT that has been taken away from me to be an equal Canadian citizen within Quebec is indeed a black and white issue.

That the unrestricted use of the English language in Quebec is against the law should make us all very angry.

That bilingual non-French speakers are persona non grata to be employees in Quebec’s enormous civil service, is something very much worthy of anger.

That the English school system is being strangled by racist Quebecois laws that forbid virtually all immigrant children, including English speaking children from countries like Britain, the USA, Australia, New Zealand etc, from enrolling in any English school is a reason to be Angry.

That the visibility, enormous contributions and history of Quebec’s once incredible English speaking community has been obliterated, as if we had NEVER existed, is a reason to be angry. VERY ANGRY!

“So Brenda O’Farrell; what further part of the RAPE of the English population within Quebec do you want to negotiate?”

THERE WAS SILENCE.

Brenda O’Farrell, Editor in Chief of the Chronicle Newspaper went on to name me in her newspaper as Canada’s Newsmaker Of The Year in 1996.

We are now watching Quebec RAPE Canada. They’ve been doing it for decades, and getting away with it because we chose not to see.

We chose to ignore the plight of the English speakers within Quebec as if they weren’t REAL Canadians and were somehow negotiable.

But now, it is the rest of Canada that is finally feeling the RAPE.

Canada is awakening to the fact that Quebec has been governing this country to its own benefit for as long as I’ve been alive (58 years).

That our domestic and foreign policies have been decided by Quebec. That our national wealth has been shoveled into Quebec to buy votes. And that Quebec has used the threat of separation as a political sledgehammer with which to get whatever they want.

And what about the 97% of all Canadians (excluding the French province of Quebec) who do not claim French as their primary language, who are EXCLUDED from most jobs in Canada’s Civil Services, promotions in Canada’s Military, and recruitment in Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police?

WHEN ARE ALL OF YOU GOING TO GET ANGRY?

[Polémix]

Si j'étais un anglo je souhaiterais vraiment que Galganov se la ferme car son discours extrémiste appelle qu'on parle de l'apartheid anti-Canadien qui s'est pratiqué en ce pays depuis plus de un siècle.

N'importe quand ! Galgy.

[Delenda]

No fair play in education in Quebec

By Beryl Wajsman Wednesday, December 17, 2008

This past Monday, civil rights champion Brent Tyler told the Supreme Court of Canada that the Quebec government is violating the constitutional rights of immigrant parents by denying their children access to English-language public schools. Tyler added, and I concur wholeheartedly, that the policy could threaten the long-term viability of the English school system by eroding its student base. The issue this time is the constitutionality of Quebec’s Bill 104.

When Bill 104 was passed in 2002, the stated objective of the Quebec Government was to prevent an Allophone or Francophone child from attending a non-subsidized English-language elementary school for a year or less receiving, a certificate of eligibility and then transferring to the English language public school system. The Government used a sledgehammer to solve a relatively small problem. Very few students acquire this possibility through an “achat d’un droit” as lawyers for the Quebec government claim.

In August, 2007, Tyler won an important victory affecting dozens of students when the Quebec Court of Appeal declared a section of Bill 104 unconstitutional. At issue in Hong Ha Nguyen et al. v. Quebec is a constitutional challenge to the first sentence of the penultimate paragraph of section 73 of the Charter of the French Language (“CFL”).

The Court of Appeal for Quebec declared that this part of section 73 of the CFL is inconsistent with the right to instruction in the minority language guaranteed by subsection 23(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It further concluded that the inconsistency does not constitute a reasonable limit prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

Quebec’s appeal to the Supreme Court was expected. But what was stunning and disappointing was that the Attorney General of Canada decided to oppose the Quebec Court of Appeal’s decision in favour of Quebec’s Anglophone minority and intervened on behalf of Quebec. One can only speculate on the political calculus involved in that decision.

The Quebec Association of Independent Schools (QAIS), an organization comprising 25 English language private schools and one of the most compelling advocates for minority language rights, has accused the Attorney General of acting contrary to the best interests of the English-speaking minority of Quebec and of being in contravention of the Official Languages Act. It has written the Attorney General insisting that he withdraw his factum before the case was heard on Monday and has also lodged an official complaint with the Commissioner of Official Languages. The QAIS actions should be applauded by all fair-minded Quebecers.

“Prior to the deadline for submitting its factum we, as did other organizations representing our community, reached out to the Attorney General’s office at the highest level and were given the bureaucratic run-around,” explained Jonathan Goldbloom, Chair of the QAIS Bill 104 Committee. “The bottom line is that officials refused to consult with us, and the government has failed to meet its obligations as defined in Part VII of the Official Languages Act. This section obliges the federal government, including Heritage Canada and Justice Canada, to take positive measures in order to protect and promote Quebec’s Anglophone minority”.

One cannot help but wonder again as to why so much time and money is still being wasted on the chimera of the “endangered” French fact. But as always there is little that is reasonable or sensible when it comes to language in Quebec.

The Quebec government’s position is prejudicial to a fault. As Brent Tyler pointed out, if all immigrants are directed to French public schools, the only source of new students for the English system will be interprovincial migration since statistics show there is actually a net out-migration of anglophones from Quebec. “If you accept the argument of the Quebec government, you are cutting to zero, for all practical purposes, any source or replenishment,” Tyler told the high court.

An interesting fact in this court challenge is that the 26 families represented by Tyler involve about 100 children. Estimates of the total number of transfers before the law was passed range up to about 8,000. And many of those were Francophones who understood the importance of bilingualism.

French is not endangered in Quebec by English education. Francophones, Anglophones and allophones are endangered by the venality of what Mark Twain called “the swollen envy of pygmy minds” in the Quebec statocracy who spend millions on marginalizing a hundred kids. It’s time for some fair play in education.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/7003

[Delenda]

Denormalizing separatism

George Koch And John Weissenberger, For The Calgary Herald

Published: Wednesday, December 17, 2008

The past weeks have revealed many things, including the tendency among much of Canada's political class to treat Quebec separatism as basically normal. The trend even includes a son of the man who spent his national political career fighting the separatists.

Numerous pundits have also adopted this mindset. Among the few who hasn't is the National Post's Robert Fulford, who recently illuminated how Quebec separatism and separatists have been progressively "normalized,"with their English-Canadian apologists inventing a vocabulary of euphemisms--and studiously avoiding the subject whenever possible.

A central part of the story of the past weeks is Prime Minister Stephen Harper's counter-campaign to denormalize separatism.

Undoing the ill-work of decades will take time, but Harper has started well. His political opponents plus many journalists are appalled and, apparently, terrified. Millions of Canadians, by contrast, seem to be on board --almost as if they'd been waiting for it. If the polls are to be believed, the Conservatives have climbed to record popularity. For many Canadians, Quebec separatism--and politicians who offer separatists an effective federal veto--are anything but normal.

For the crime of speaking plainly, Harper's been hammered as a demagogue, a practitioner of "wedge" politics, even Robert Mugabelite. The mildest commentary holds that Canadians didn't need to hear about separatism, that Harper should have focused on the proposed Liberal-NDP coalition's other defects. Even sister newspapers of the Herald ran tut-tutting pieces taking that line. Repeated often enough, this narrative will become the meme on Parliament Hill.

Justin Trudeau, wearing his most doe-eyed expression, urged that it was time to move beyond the "old divisions."

In other words, it's just fine to govern jointly with separatists--and in poor taste to mention it. By raising this unbearably painful subject, Harper was said to be stoking divisions and insulting all Quebecers (although it would seem tough for even a "distinct" society to be at once bitterly split and unified in outrage). Almost alone, Andre Pratte of La Presse insisted the PM wasn't insulting all Quebecers.

It's true Harper was quite blunt during the most heated exchanges in the House of Commons. (Then again, Stephane Dion was shrieking "liar" almost hysterically.) But Harper's lengthy remarks after his meeting with the Governor General show a man explaining himself calmly and rationally.

"The Bloc has a mandate that is different than the three other parties," he said.

"For our three parties --and I can speak especially about my Quebec Conservative colleagues--my, our, Canada includes Quebec. For the Bloc Quebecois, their Quebec doesn't include Canada and this is a difference of perspective that is much more fundamental than other political differences between parties."

There was much more, none of which could be construed as denouncing Quebecers.

Harper's message was that the separatist federal party may be legal--but it's not normal. Although well outside the particular currents of Parliament Hill opinion, events suggest Harper's position represents the nation's mainstream.


The focus of disapproval, disbelief and anger for many Canadians has been the coalition's alliance with separatist politicians far more than its mere existence or wasteful proposals.

Many of the anti-coalition petitions that circulated during the crisis placed separatism front and centre, including this open letter to the Governor General: "When a group whose purpose is to promote separatism, and does not run a candidate in any province other than Quebec, can form part of a coalition government, any rules that previously existed need to be disregarded or thrown out."

Anti-separatism also featured at the nationwide rallies, like the 3,000-strong crowd here in Calgary. Yet even we Albertans proved easily able to distinguish separatism and its federal practitioners from Quebecers generally.

When one speaker reminded folks that Quebec City is Calgary's sister city, people cheered. Nonetheless, Quebec Liberal politicians were later reported to have been cowering in terror that they were about to witness another "Quebec flag-stomping or burning" episode. Now who's insulting a whole province?

Yet the hammering of Harper continued last week. Leading figures accused him of strengthening the separatist cause--citing claims from the separatists themselves.

But why take separatist politicians at face value? Dogmatic ideologues such as Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois are driven by an unwavering agenda, and say whatever advances their purposes.

In any case, why would calling out the separatists strengthen them more than concocting a coalition in which the Bloc Quebecois would gain a veto? Again we see the mindset that separatism and its practitioners are normal -- it's the PM from Alberta who's the aberration.

Luckily, the public doesn't seem to be buying it. Public opinion is meshing with Harper's program to denormalize separatism.

His position is of a piece with the young opposition MP whose private member's bill one Stephane Dion would later pass as the Clarity Act. The next--much longer and more arduous --phase will be persuading Quebecers they have more to gain by supporting federalist parties than gravitating to the Parti and Bloc Quebecois.

We don't deny any individual's right to advocate independence, but separatism as a national political agenda needs to be denormalized.

George Koch is a journalist and partner in a Calgary communications agency. John Weissenberger is a senior geologist with a Calgary-based oil company, former chief of staff to the federal minister of immigration and longtime conservative and reform party activist. Their articles are archived at http://www.drjandmrk.com.




© The Calgary Herald 2008

[paradox]

Merci dalenda pour tout votre travaille de recherche.

C'est fou comme situation, Un scénario ou le Bloq et les principaux acteurs sont tous Quéquois, Imaginnez la situation inverse, aucun représentant québecois dans la Coallition et le Bloq Albertains qui ce retrouve en position de force...

Trop drole, comme la majorité des gens d'ici, ils ne semblent même pas ce rendre compte qu'ils sont aussi esclaves que nous du système qui n'a plus de frontière lui !

[Garak]

Comme j'aimerais un journal francophone de qui dénonce les excès du nationalisme comme la ROC. Ca serait la vrai liberté médiatique.

[moso molo]

Being An Angryphone Is Something To Be Proud Of

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Howard Galganov

In the mid 1990’s, just after the Quebec referendum (October 30, 1995) to separate Quebec from Canada, an English language reporter in Montreal asked me why I’m always so angry.


WHEN ARE ALL OF YOU GOING TO GET ANGRY?

POurtant ce n'est compliqué, ontario=anglo québec=francais, si les anglos ne sont pas contents, l'ontario n'est pas très loin.

[moso molo]

Comme j'aimerais un journal francophone de qui dénonce les excès du nationalisme comme la ROC. Ca serait la vrai liberté médiatique.

Ah ben oui, radio canada, la presse, tva,tqs sont pro-souverainiste, au dernière èlection les sondages projetais le PQ, bon 3 ième, pourtant ils ont fini 2 ième, comme quoi les médias aurait voulu que l'adq et le PLQ battent le PQ.