Would you support a language tax?
- Thread starter Machjo
- Start date
This makes about as much sense as paying tax dollars for someone to learn Sanskrit or using tax dollars to pay Slick Willy to speak at the CNE. If you want to learn a language other than English pay for it yourself.
I normally don't praise the Conservatives, but some of them did have a good idea concerning their idea on linguistic regionalism, whereby English would official in some parts of the country, French in others, and some parts could be bilingual. This could save the us millions of dollars right there. And I agree with the idea of guaranteed freedom of schools to choose their second-language and of pupils to be tested in the second-language of their choice as long as standards are met. This is not the case in most school boards in Ontario where French is compulsory.
The money that could be saved by replacing official bilingualism with linguistic regionalism could be diverted to creating course plans and developing resources for Aboriginal languages. Going to a Swedish-style voucher system coudl also motivate schools to be more responsive to parents.
Strangely enough, most of these ideas are the kind fo thing conservatives would support. Though I'm normally not so fond of the conservative parties, there are exceptions on a policy by policy basis.