Quote: Originally Posted by no color
Not sure how many of you folks in the rest of Canada know about the laws here in Quebec allowing for discrimination based on language. Well, there are "recent" new laws which amount to a clear violation of civil rights.
French speaking persons living in Quebec can sponsor a close family member, while English speaking persons no longer can.
Several years ago, my Husband was able to sponsor me, an American citizen to move to Canada (Quebec). Like myself, my husband is an English speaking person, who was educated in English in his home town of Montreal, where we both now live.
We were recently looking at sponsoring another close family member, however although we qualify and will easily get approved by Immigration Canada, we cannot complete the sponsorship as the Quebec forms now need to be filled out in French. I am an American, and my husband was educated in English in Montreal, so neither of us are capable of filling out the forms in French. This law was not around 9-10 years ago as my husband did not have to fill out any French forms in order to legally sponsor me to move to Montreal, otherwise we would not be here.
My question is, why have English schools and universities in Montreal if you are going to deny civil rights to citizens who are part of the English speaking community?
Quote has been trimmed, See full post:
I'm a Franco-Ontarian, so I'll take my own province as an example of where I stand on this, and essentially believe in a parallel policy for Quebec with regards to French.
Personally, I'm in favour of but one official language of government administration for reasons of efficiency. That being the case, even though I'm a French Canadian living in Ontario, I oppose official bilingualism. As far as I'm concerned, the Ontario government should operate in English only. Of course I believe in individual bilingualism as part of a well-rounded education, but even then I'd define individual bilingualism to mean knowledge of the official language plus an additional language of each individual school's choosing. In other words, I believe that English ought to be compulsory as either the language of instruction or the second language of the school, as per the school's decision, as long as the school can guarantee that all students will learn English well. I also believe that this should apply to all migrants (including from other parts of Canada) to Ontario. If you want to relocate to Ontario, learn English first.
Having said that, however, I believe that Ontario does have a responsibility towards those whom it has accepted already, so any such policy should not be retroactive, but merely take effect as of now. In other words, those French-speaking adult Ontarians who don't know English should still be provided with services in French at least in their own local communities. After all, it's the province that has failed to educate them properly in English, it's the province that has failed them. That being the case, the province now has a responsibility towards them while ensuring the same mistake is not repeated with their children.
I would say a parallel policy should apply to Quebec.
This being the case, it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to then support official bilingualism in Quebec. Having said that, however, I would also argue that while the province of Quebec has a duty to ensure that all of its youth learn Frech well, either as a first or second language, and has a right to refuse migrants to Quebec who don't know French, I also believe that, like Ontario with its monolingual French speakers, the Wuebec schools have failed their monolingual adult English speakers, and that being the case, Quebec now has a responsibility to provide them with services in English, and that includes immigrants it has already accepted, while ensuring it doesn't repeat the same mistake with its next generation.
What you might not realise is that official bilingualism is estimated to cost Canada 16 billion Canadian dollars per year. A regional model whereby each local community would have but one official language would certainly restrict mobility for those who don't know both English and French, but would also save money. Essentially it would be a trade off.
