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.
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.
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.