this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024

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Bill 96: Group seeking injunction against Quebec's French-language law (montreal.ctvnews.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A group representing Quebec's English-speaking community is seeking an injunction with the court to challenge the province's controversial French-language law known as Bill 96, CTV News has learned.

all 30 comments

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My first thought is "good."

Quebec's language laws have always been punitive, under the guise of protectionism. I can only imagine what people would say if the government here in Alberta decided to pull the same shit against French speakers. (And with Smith in power, it's entirely possible!)

If you really must, declare a provincial dominant language; then step aside and stop trying to actively harm people for speaking English.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

In a hypothetical situation where the dominance of the English language in Alberta was in question, the Albertan government would definitely try to enact English language laws. Same goes for my home province of Ontario.

Quebec’s language laws have always been ~~punitive, under the guise of~~ [about] protectionism. The value of language protectionism can be tough to understand if you speak English - the most powerful language in Canada and across the globe - as a first (and only) language

[+] [email protected] -12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The problem seems to be that Quebec has intertwined language with culture. A language is simply a means for two people to communicate ideas, and that is paramount to a functioning society.

Without a common method to exchange ideas, you can't have a society. English isn't the best language, but it works, and like it or not, it's been globally adopted. It's a standard, and anyone in the tech industry knows the problems that come with having multiple, competing, interoperable standards.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The only people I've ever heard scoff at the idea of culture and language being intertwined have been unilingual anglophones. Funny coincidence.

I'm actually dismayed at the comparison of language with tech standardisation. Sure, it's silly to pretend that learning English isn't economically or socially beneficial, no one is arguing against that. But you're essentially saying that the language I love in, I think in, I learn in, I exchange in, I live in is substandard because what, fewer people speak it?? Language is culture and culture can only live through language, it's normal for people to want to preserve that. Language is more to humans than a simple communication protocol.

A language is simply a means for two people to communicate ideas, and that is paramount to a functioning society. Without a common method to exchange ideas, you can't have a society.

You realize French is a language, used by people in Québec (and across Canada, there are a million francophones outside Québec) as the common method of exchanging ideas? Is Québec not a functioning society, or at least as functional as anglophone-majority provinces?

[...]anyone in the tech industry knows the problems that come with having multiple, competing, interoperable standards.

Just curious, if Mandarin suddenly became the new lingua franca overnight, and your province's Mandarin-speaking population was growing constantly, would you just throw English away and learn Mandarin?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Just curious, if Mandarin suddenly became the new lingua franca overnight, and your province’s Mandarin-speaking population was growing constantly, would you just throw English away and learn Mandarin?

Over several generations? Absolutely.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago

"culture can only live through language"

Lo-fucking-l.

That was a great example of ignorance in a nutshell. There is nothing wrong with loving your language, but calling it the only way your culture can live is simply wrong.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

problem seems to be [...] intertwined language with culture

You lost the argument right here. Language is as fundamental to culture as the sky is blue.

The rest of your post amounts to "communication is important to function" and you are not wrong on that front. But you put no weight on the importance of culture too.

Consider this your wakeup call, that just because you don't personally care about society having an identity doesn't mean the rest of us don't.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Of course, and what's the culture tied to English speakers then? Do you think 2nd and 4rd generation Canadian Italians/Ukranians/wherever, who don't speak their native language, have lost all sense of their culture? Are the 2nd and 3rd generation anglophones living in Quebec incapable of adopting any of Quebecs culture?

Get over yourself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You sound like people who hear about evolution and they ask "so where are the monkeys turning into humans." They are not saying there is culture tied to speaking English, they are saying that speaking English is part of some cultures and therfore by learning English you are participating in those cultures. French is the same. I'd you let French die off, you are letting part of French cute die off. If you learn French, you are choosing to inmerse yourself in French culture.

The guy said "intertwined" and it's a great way if thinking of it. You don't learn French and then French culture, learning a language is taking part of a culture, in this case Quebecoise, not even French.

[+] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

First and foremost, the legal declaration that Quebec is a unilingual province. We're a bilingual country. Maybe we should forbid offering services in French in the rest of the country.
The cap on English-language CEGEPs. "Sorry, but we've hit our limit for your kind of people."
Judges no longer need to be fluent in anything other than French. How does that allow for trials in English? (And even if you can find a bilingual judge, getting them to hear the case will be onerous.)
Businesses with 25 or more employees will be legally required to operate in French - complete with certificates, committees, and inspections. God help you if your employees start talking to each other in their native language!
Refugees and immigrants will be denied access to services in any other languages after six months.

While it's true that most of the country doesn't have a requirement to offer services in both official languages, there's only one province that is trying to actively and aggressively forbid it. That's not protectionism, that's punishment.

[+] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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[+] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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[+] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

How about Saskatchewan as an example? With Alberta, we are the butt cheeks of Canada, yet in Saskatoon, you can go to the city hall website, click the accessibility button, and get the site served in 19 different languages. Yes, they're just using Google Translate, so there are no Canadian Indigenous languages, but it's a start. In addition, I think those languages and more are available for in-person service through an interpretation contractor.

There are plenty of efforts to prevent languages from disappearing. I have no problem with Quebec doing things to preserve their French, but I'm not sure it should be via removal of other language services.

On the other hand, I have no language I'm trying to preserve, don't live there, and haven't visited in decades, so I'm willing to let them make their own decisions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's the same thing

It's not. I've had colleagues in Hungary who had not learned Hungarian in five+ years and were doing just fine

[+] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not everyone has an ease with language, unfortunately.

You and I do, but I know francophones who are incapable of learning English no matter how hard they try, and anglophones who are incapable of learning French, or any other language for that matter.

It works out for some people, but others will never learn anything beyond their native tongue, especially if they migrate as adults.

European countries and their citizens tend to understand and speak English pretty well, with some exceptions, and most of them offer services in English upon request

[+] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I feel like you and I are on the same page, with a slight variance in opinion 😅

I respect your opinion, it's quite a common one in Quebec outside of Montreal.

What I'm understanding from your text is that anglophones who grew up in Quebec should just up and leave their home province if they don't want to, or can't, learn the French language because the language they always used and were able to converse in for their whole life is no longer acceptable, since they can essentially live anywhere else in Canada / USA.

Personally, I've always been of the opinion that Quebec should export their French to other provinces rather than turn itself into an enclave. Make the Canadian east coast French! Hell, make Vermont French! Nothing's more fun than going to Vermont or Ontario and speaking French with the locals.

We won't have the opportunity to teach people French if we ban English CEGEPs and universities because the people we could potentially be teaching French to will just go to other provinces and learn no french at all.

But I understand how you feel due to how we were treated historically in Canada, and I too feel that it's important to teach French to immigrants and kids, but I don't agree with forcing people to speak French by banning other languages. Official signs should definitely be french-only though.

An aside: France is one of the exceptions I was talking about, they don't really do English, but most of the countries around it do.

TL;DR: I don't want Quebec to be known as the province that bans languages, I want Quebec to be known as the province that spreads French far and wide.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

As far as I can tell, there are two real problems with Quebec's language policies in general:

Too many sticks and not enough carrots: the Quebec government can't seem to find a way to make anyone want to learn French for its own sake. They can only force people to learn it against their will.
They're solving the wrong problem: Whether adults arriving from outside of Quebec learn French doesn't actually matter much. You measure the health of a language by seeing how many children are learning it as a first language, or one of their first languages. French is not in danger in Quebec by that measure. French is not in danger in Ontario by that measure, even though the Ontario government's policies regarding the French language for at least the past fifty years have wobbled back and forth between "lukewarm tolerant" and "weakly supportive".

Thing is, I'd bet the politicians in Quebec know they're solving the wrong problem. Like ultraconservatives, they're playing to a fear that they've carefully instilled into their base.