| Because: [3] exclusively targets non-Christian symbols and came after a campaign of primarily non-city folk freaking out because immigrants are different - most infamously Herouxville where the town published a manifesto
warning immigrants against "stoning and burning women. It included, too, an explanation of the importance of Christmas trees." [1]. The Catholic symbology remains in the officialdom - see the giant cross that sits atop Montreal, and the crosses that were never removed from the public schools, or many provincial offices. Not to mention it's OK to wear a crucifix. [4] goes way beyond education. Montreal is a functionally bilingual city and those of us from here speak "franglais", a mix of the two and have no issue switching. This new law massively restricts access to: education, medicare, legal services, to name a few in the official language of your choice. It even gives powers to the language police to, for example, raid a law or medical office, get access to confidential documents to ensure you are only being served in French [2]. I live in a nation with 2 official languages in a city where the majority of people are bilingual and happy to serve in either language- and Quebec just effectively made one of those languages illegal. How is this is not discrimination? Georgia-Atlanta is an analogy.
The rural areas are 99% white, unilingual francophone - a group who genuinely believe bilingualism and multiculturalism is a problem - Montreal's two key, unique strengths and defining characteristics. If we had representation by population, these would be non-issues but because the rural areas are heavily weighted, the ruling CAQ has a supermajority after winning only 37% of the vote.[3] [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/herouxville-quebec-r... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bill-96-explained-1.... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Quebec_general_election |
A distinct cultural group seeking to avoid cultural or linguistic change created by an influx of outsiders isn’t “racism.” It’s a human right for distinct ethnocultural groups to seek political autonomy on that basis: https://unpo.org/article/4957. Quebec is by its very nature a province for French speaking descendants of French immigrants to Canada. Québécois are perfectly entitled to say it should stay that way. It’s alien to modern Anglo notions of multiculturalism, but that doesn’t make it “racism.”