🚀 go-pugleaf

Wes Warner wrote:

>     In exactly this sense - anywhere in the Free World except
>     Quebec you "can" use any language you like to put up signs

Wrong. You can put any language you like. You just have to put French
next to it.

>    or otherwise "speak" to anyone you want.

Wrong. It is not forbidden in Quebec to speak to anyone you want, in any
language you want.

> The usefulness
>     (=eadership) of a sign in URDU might be low in Toronto
>     but there is no law against it.  In Quebec it (URDU) would be
>     prohibited entirely on a bus or large freestanding roadside
>     sign and dwarfed by a mandtory French translation anywhere
>     else.

I'll agree with you that the language law that deals with signs is a bit
stupid. Blame the liberals. Anyway that's besides the point. Commercial
advertisement, since it is undertaken through a "raison sociale", i.e. a
company, has little to do with freedom of speech. There's no law to
prevent you from putting up a non-commercial sign in any language you
want.

But we already know that you have trouble separating commercial from
non-commercial, so that probably why you imagine the sign law as
restricting personal freedoms.
 
>     In Canada we require that the Federal and some Provincial
>     Governments are staffed so that residents "can" be served
>     in either French or English.  This adds some expense to
>     the cost of Government, and discriminates against a Gov. job
>     for people from unilingual areas of the country if they
>     failed to learn the 'other' national language well enough
>     in school or in some other way.

In principle. In reality, it's not that uncommon to encounter civil
servants who have very little proficiency in the "other" national
language. Well, we shouldn't be surprised of anything with
bureaucracies... Again, difference between the "official" version and
reality.

>  For 30 years the people
>     of Canada have accepted the extra cost and the unavoidable
>     employment discrimination as a 'fair' price to pay. (It
>     provides an economic incentive to learn the other language
>     to get a Gov. job -- (and sadly roughly half of us work for the
>     Gov more or less.)

Half? What do you mean?
 
> :>The other is the actual
> :>real world, where it's a LOT easier to live in english in Montreal than
> :>it is to live in French in the greater part of Anglophone Canada.
> 
> *** I agree with what you say - but the reason for the ease
>     in Montreal is --in spite of-- not because of Quebec
>     Gov. policy.  The real reason is that there are more
>     mother tounge English in Montreal than the total population
>     of the smaller Canadian provinces.  This is an accident
>     of Montreal history, just as French in Quebec is an accident
>     of Quebec history.
> 
>     On the other hand most of Anglophone Canada was settled
>     and developed by English speaking people. Another accident
>     of history. (Yes I know, some localities had early
>     French settlements and French was discriminated against
>     ending not too too long ago.)

Francophones were actively discouraged from settling the west.

>     Few people in China speak either French or English, another
>     accident of history.  This reality is immune to wishes,
>     or legislation.
> 
>     So it is foolish to complain about the lack of English
>     people to talk to in the Sagenuay P.Q. or French people to
>     talk to in Victoria BC.

I agree. You did not actually understand what I was referring to.

> How could you expect personal
>     experience to be different.  That is never what "official"
>     bilingualism in Canada meant or promised - yet secessionists
>     use this argument repeatedly (the supposed failure of bilingualism)
>     as an argument for secession.

You are severely mistaken - perhaps you did not quite follow the
preceding discussion. I did not present this truth (with which you
agree) as an argument for secession. I merely presented it to show how
dishonest it is for anglo-quebecois to say they are an oppressed
minority, when they have access (for historical reasons) to everything a
minority would only dream of in another country. As an example, I gave
my own experience in Toronto - the metropolis of a supposed "bilingual"
country - where it is impossible (not difficult, impossible) to live in
french.

I suppose you go and check in the metropolises of other multi-national
countries (i.e. Belgium, Switzerland) and compare how linguistic
minorities can lead most of their lives in their own mother tongue... 
 
>  :>Care to argue?
> 
> **** Sure -- see above ;-)

Well, seeing as you agree with me on the main point, I see no reason to
continue this argument ;-)

__________________________________________

�lie Charest <turgon@mlink.net>

"Vive le Qu�bec Libre!"  Charles De Gaulle
"I don't need to elaborate on that ... Next question!"  Jean Chr�tien

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