From: CZ94 <CZ94@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA>
Subject: Re: RACISM???/Access to English schools
Organization: McGill University
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 15:38:14 GMT

In article <1992Jul20.204009.3372@csi.uottawa.ca> cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne) writes:
>
>There is a BIG difference between:
>(1)  Having poor availability of schools in French due to a lack of
>demand, due to the lack of a large French population, and
>(2)  FORBIDDING children to study English in school "because we have
>to protect the French language," or some such political reason.
>
I won't argue with your point that there is a difference between
(1) and (2) above.  However, I don't think (1) is a full explanation
of the lack of French schools.  There *was* active opposition to
French schools in Canada outside Quebec.  Some of this is ancient
history (e.g. Regulation 17 in Ontario), but some of it is more
recent.  I lived in Ontario in the early 1980s.  I'm not a Franco-
Ontarian, so I can't report first-hand on the situation (Ou es-tu,
Rhealiste?).  My second-hand impression was that the provincial
government was working to improve the availability of French language
services, but doing so as quietly as possible so as not to inflame
the rednecks.  Though the province was willing to pay for expanding
the French schools, many school boards opposed this.  Penetanguishene
was a notable example of this, and I think there were others.  My
impression was that the situation was worse in some other provinces.

I'm not at all suggesting this justifies Bill 101, but I think it's
a point worth noting.
>
>I guess that he should have known better than to cite Great Britain
>for doing something nice.  A Quebecois would NEVER accept that
>something good could come out of London.  Silly example, Mr. Potter.
>
Wait a minute. *I'm Quebecois* (even if I wasn't born here, and
French isn't my mother tongue).  I don't like these silly generaliz-
ations that Quebecois are anti-British.
>
>Yes, all regions HAVE been bilingual.  Until some of them chose to
>take on policies of unilingualism...  Some basic services have been
>available in both languages, and there were no legal barriers to
>providing optional services in either language.  There are barriers
>now.
>
I think we need to distingush between fields of federal and
provincial jurisdiction.

In practice, very few regions of the country have ever been
bilingual.  The federal government is officially bilingual.  This
is still true, even in Quebec (this point should be obvious,
but many Canadians outside Quebec seem unaware of it).  Bills 101
and 178 cannot outlaw bilingual signs in Quebec post offices.

I don't know if any provinces have laws saying "English is the
official language of ...", the way Bill 101 says "French is the
official language of Quebec," but that is the de facto state of
affairs in most provinces.

I would also point out that the Quebec government does provide
"some basic services" in English.  It's true they sometimes make
it difficult to obtain those services, so I end up dealing with them
in French.
>
>However, things have changed, in terms of policy.  Demographics change
>more slowly.  Today, unilingual anglophones need not apply for
>government jobs (unless they're in some "minority group") - they'll
>stand at the back of the line behind everyone else.  The bilingual
>francophones are the ones getting the jobs today.
>
Maybe this is true for some jobs, but certainly not all of them.
I know of many unilingual anglophone research scientists with the
federal government, including some newly hired ones.  I also know
of bilingual anglos and bilingual francos, but not any unilingual
francophones.

Tom Box
CZ94@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA

Newsgroups: can.general