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by lemmiwinks
1445 days ago
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> Quebec is in the process of making it difficult for anyone to attend English-language schools, Not true > and causing another round of people and companies to leave Quebec as they did because of René Lévesque and the PQ. How to tell me you're an angryphone without telling me you're an angryphone (and totally ignoring historical facts in the process) |
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It is very clear that the Quebec legislative assembly knew that both Bill 21 and Bill 96 were undemocratic and wrong-headed from the beginning, since they preemptively invoked the notwithstanding clause to override charter rights (which they knew that both bills would walk all over).
Not all of 96 is bad. I sympathize with the need to protect the French language and am not against legislative measures to do so. (The decision against Villeneuve’s restaurant "New Town" years ago was just silly, though.)
However, there are clear negative messages being passed by other parts of 96 which make it extremely xenophobic (just like 21), such as ending services for new immigrants in any language other than French after six months.
With respect to history…Toronto was not the preeminent city in Canada. That was Montréal, until the first referendum. Tens of thousands of anglophones left their homes in Quebec as they no longer felt welcome, and numerous businesses shifted their base of operations from Montréal to Toronto, and Toronto has benefited ever since.
In recent years, Montréal has attracted a number of companies back to the point where I have worked with (as a vendor) a couple of companies that closed secondary headquarters in majority English Canada and forced their employees to move to Quebec in order to remain employed. I am hearing that some of those employees are now feeling (once again) unwelcome in Quebec, and those companies may be reconsidering their headquarters in Quebec because of the lack of consideration for charter rights by the current government.
I love Quebec. I think that much should be done to protect the French language there. But I don’t think that preemptively violating charter rights is the right way to do it.