Canadians for Language Fairness

[Edward Kennedy]

The hostility to the the French language is greatly misplaced. After all, French was not invented by Trudeau!

French-speaking Canadians were historically the most family-oriented and conservative of all. They simply went collectively insane in the 1960s. Would that they could re-gain what they once were: the strength and backbone of Canada.

Yes, I have worked with French people and thy were good workers and responsible. What happened, according to some grassroots French people I knew was that the meatheads in the education system churned out a bunch of idiots with no common sense.

[Fabulous Fred]

Be fair. Look to Belgium as a nation where language "fairness" as built a nation!
Belgium is an inspiration to all of us!

Sure ...... Great Idea,

Calls for a Breakup Grow Ever Louder in Belgium

BRUSSELS, Sept. 16 — Belgium has given the world Audrey Hepburn, René Magritte, the saxophone and deep-fried potato slices that somehow are called French.

But the back story of this flat, Maryland-size country of 10.4 million is of a bad marriage writ large — two nationalities living together that cannot stand each other. Now, more than three months after a general election, Belgium has failed to create a government, producing a crisis so profound that it has led to a flood of warnings, predictions, even promises that the country is about to disappear.

“We are two different nations, an artificial state created as a buffer between big powers, and we have nothing in common except a king, chocolate and beer,” said Filip Dewinter, the leader of Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Bloc, the extreme-right, xenophobic Flemish party, in an interview. “It’s ‘bye-bye, Belgium’ time.”

Radical Flemish separatists like Mr. Dewinter want to slice the country horizontally along ethnic and economic lines: to the north, their beloved Flanders — where Dutch (known locally as Flemish) is spoken and money is increasingly made — and to the south, French-speaking Wallonia, where a kind of provincial snobbery was once polished to a fine sheen and where today old factories dominate the gray landscape.

“There are two extremes, some screaming that Belgium will last forever and others saying that we are standing at the edge of a ravine,” said Caroline Sägesser, a Belgian political analyst at Crisp, a socio-political research organization in Brussels. “I don’t believe Belgium is about to split up right now. But in my lifetime? I’d be surprised if I were to die in Belgium.”

With the headquarters of both NATO and the European Union in Brussels, the crisis is not limited to this country because it could embolden other European separatist movements, among them the Basques, the Lombards and the Catalans.

Since the kingdom of Belgium was created as an obstacle to French expansionism in 1830, it has struggled for cohesion. Anyone who has spoken French in a Flemish city quickly gets a sense of the mutual hostility that is a part of daily life here. The current crisis dates from June 10, when the Flemish Christian Democrats, who demand greater autonomy for Flanders, came in first with one-fifth of the seats in Parliament.

Yves Leterme, the party leader, would have become prime minister if he had been able to put together a coalition government.

But he was rejected by French speakers because of his contempt for them — an oddity since his own father is a French speaker. He further alienated them, and even some moderate Flemish leaders, on Belgium’s national holiday, July 21, when he appeared unable — or unwilling — to sing Belgium’s national anthem.

Belgium’s mild-mannered, 73-year-old king, Albert II, has struggled to mediate, even though under the Constitution he has no power other than to appoint ministers and rubber-stamp laws passed by Parliament. He has welcomed a parade of politicians and elder statesmen to the Belvedere palace in Brussels, successively appointing four political leaders to resolve the crisis. All have failed.

On one level, there is normalcy and calm here. The country is governed largely by a patchwork of regional bureaucracies, so trains run on time, mail is delivered, garbage is collected, the police keep order.

Officials from the former government — including former Prime Minister Guy Verhhofstadt, who is ethnically Flemish — report for work every day and continue to collect salaries. The former government is allowed to pay bills, carry out previously decided policies and make urgent decisions on peace and security.

Earlier this month, for example, the governing Council of Ministers approved the deployment of 80 to 100 peacekeeping troops to Chad and a six-month extension for 400 Belgian peacekeepers stationed in Lebanon under United Nations mandates.

But a new government will be needed to approve a budget for next year.

Certainly, there are reasons Belgium is likely to stay together, at least in the short term.

Brussels, the country’s overwhelmingly French-speaking capital, is in Flanders and historically was a Flemish-speaking city. There would be overwhelming local and international resistance to turning Brussels into the capital of a country called Flanders.

The economies of the two regions are inextricably intertwined, and separation would be a fiscal nightmare.

Then there is the issue of the national debt (90 percent of Belgium’s gross domestic product) and how to divide it equitably.

But there is also deep resentment in Flanders that its much healthier economy must subsidize the French-speaking south, where unemployment is double that of the north.

[A poll by the private Field Research Institute released on Tuesday indicated that 66 percent of the inhabitants of Flanders believe that the country will split up “sooner or later,” and 46 percent favor such a division. The poll, which was conducted by telephone, interviewed 1,000 people.]

French speakers, meanwhile, favor the status quo. “Ladies and gentlemen, everything’s fine!” exclaimed Mayor Jacques Étienne of Namur, the Walloon capital, at the annual Walloon festival last Saturday.

Acknowledging that talk of a “divorce” had returned, he reminded the audience that this was a day to celebrate, saying, “We have to, if possible, forget about our personal worries and the anxieties of our time.”

Belgium has suffered through previous political crises and threats of partition. But a number of political analysts believe this one is different.

The turning point is widely believed to have been last December when RTBF, a French-language public television channel, broadcast a hoax on the breakup of Belgium.

The two-hour live television report showed images of cheering, flag-waving Flemish nationalists and crowds of French-speaking Walloons preparing to leave, while also reporting that the king had fled the country.

Panicked viewers called the station, and the prime minister’s office condemned the program as irresponsible and tasteless. But for the first time, in the public imagination, the possibility of a breakup seemed real.

Contributing to the difficulty in forming a new government now is the fact that all 11 parties in the national Parliament are local, not national, parties. The country has eight regional or language-based parliaments.

Oddly, there is no panic just now, just exasperation and a hint of embarrassment. “We must not worry too much,” said Baudouin Bruggeman, a 55-year-old schoolteacher, as he sipped Champagne at the festival in Namur. “Belgium has survived on compromise since 1830. Everyone puffs himself up in this banana republic. You have to remember that this is Magritte country, the country of surrealism. Anything can happen.”

Maia de la Baume contributed reporting from Namur.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/world ... nted=print

[Knox]

http://www.albertalocalnews.com/opinion ... rench.html

My difficulty with the difficile French

By Bill Greenwood - Red Deer Advocate - August 01, 2008

There are what we call “truisms,” those kind of universal observations that form the basis of our collective wisdom.

You know, things like: “you can’t take it with you;” “you can’t get blood from a stone;” “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree;” that sort of thing.

We also have the kind of generalized ethnic observations that aren’t really all that far from the truth. Scandinavians are known to be stoic; Italians are outgoing; the Scots are taciturn.

Some of these kinds of things are actually true, as languages have a certain impact on social interaction that gives rise to these kinds of generalizations. Which, of course, leads us to another great truism: the French are difficult. OK. I’ve said it.

But let’s be honest here, there aren’t seven people in this readership who can claim honestly that they’ve never been forced to acknowledge this hard reality from other sources. After all, it was a French president who got up and left a G8 banquet because he was expected to eat (gasp!) British cuisine. (OK, so we all know that’s an oxymoron, but that’s not really the point, is it?) The entire D-Day invasion almost got sidetracked by Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s anti-Anglo bigotry, in spite of the fact that the entire invasion force amassed to liberate his country’s sorry ass was comprised of English-speaking soldiers.

The point of language is that it is a means of communicating.

In Canada, some French Canadians are caught up in the notion that, unless they can communicate in French, they would prefer not to communicate at all.

Worse, there’s always somebody willing to drag the courts into this.

Some years ago, a fluently bilingual federal civil servant felt an obligation to sue Air Canada simply because he wasn’t offered a choice of soft drinks in French, despite his obvious proficiency in English.

In Alberta, a bilingual truck driver has engaged in a rampant case of faux outrage simply because the traffic ticket wasn’t printed in French.

There is no high-minded principle at work here. None.

Let’s back this up just a bit, shall we?

Every time this issue comes up, it’s important to remember that, since 1759 in Canada, the very survival of the French language has depended solely on simple British courtesy. Without that protection, it would have faded into oblivion, like the fur trade and Napoleon’s dreams.

It’s too easy to overlook that, in a strict libertarian sense, helping the French language survive requires an inhibition of the civil liberties of those who don’t speak French.

Most of us are willing to let that slide — to a point.

But, when citizens who are fully conversant in English try to claim that their rights are somehow being violated by the lack of a French language label on a traffic ticket, then it’s time to push back.

Firstly, this isn’t a case of some poor soul accused of a high crime being forced to endure a trial in a foreign and inexplicable language.

None of us would stand for that.

It’s simply another case of a malcontent linguistic minority attempting to subject the rest of us to yet another level of governmental intrusion into our lives where none is warranted.

The logical extension of this complaint would require that all peace officers in Alberta be conversant in French, despite the fact that — on any given day — there are fewer unilingual Francophones in Alberta than there are mating pairs of Sasquatch in Clearwater County.

As I’ve said, language laws represent an unnecessary intrusion of the state into the affairs of the citizenry.

In Canada they exist solely to coddle the sensibilities of a far-too-insecure minority that can’t see the future for the past. Those laws ignore the hard realities of linguistic evolution, especially in the context of the societal evolution of North America.

We can also surmise that it’s not likely that, had history taken a different turn, the English-speaking inhabitants of New France would have been granted the linguistic and religious privileges that came out of the English victory at Quebec.

In their present form, our language laws offend me at a very deep level.

They unnecessarily expand the powers of the state and have gradually tightened the ability of the linguistic majority to participate in their own governments at several levels.

They simply prove the old adage. The French are difficult.

Bill Greenwood is a freelance writer living in Red Deer.

[virgey]

I wouldn't use the word "difficult" to describe the French.

[winespius]

"But the back story of this flat, Maryland-size country of 10.4 million is of a bad marriage writ large — two nationalities living together that cannot stand each other"
That about sums up the situation in Canada..however the french are definately becoming the dominant partner in this dysfunctional marriage...

[Knox]

Cutting Costs of Official Bilingualism from Budget 2009.

SUMMARY

The Standing Committee on Finance is strongly urged to substantially reduce the funding for Official Bilingualism.

1. CUT FEDERAL FUNDING FOR OFFICIAL BILINGUALISM

a. Federal Ministries, particularly Heritage Canada, Departments, Commissions, Crown Corporations and Public Service.
b. Federal Programs that promote Official Bilingualism.

2. FINANCIAL COSTS (estimated --- see end notes)

a. The Federal cost one year only to March 31, 2008 --- $605 Million (without interest).
b. Federal 40 year total to March 31, 2008 --- $56.266 Billion (including interest to 2007).
c. Total Federal plus Provincial plus Private Sector, 40 years --- $1.15 Trillion.
d. Percentage of population bilingual:1986--16.86%; 2006--17.44; 20 year increase 0.01%; for a Population Increase of 19%; at an average annual cost, Federal government only, of more than $500 Million.

3. HUMAN COSTS

a. Official Bilingualism has created Segregation by Language and Race.
b. It has created a discriminatory Bilingual Elite Class of Canadians.
c. It has created an unfair Affirmative Action Employment Program.
d. Millions of Unilingual Canadians are denied job and promotion opportunities in their own country.
e. Millions relegated to low paying, minimum-wage, part-time employment.
f. It has resulted in the loss of homes, bankruptcy, broken families.
g. Official Bilingualism is Discrimination by Language and Race.

4. POLITICAL ORIGINS

a. The undemocratic Official Languages Acts, 1969, 1988, 2005, and the Constitution Act 1982 with the Charter of (fewer) Rights and (limited) Freedoms
b. The Official Language issue is one of undemocratic 'Language-by-Law'.
c. These Acts transferred the peoples’ democratic power from their elected representatives in Parliament, to unelected Federal Courts.
d. These Acts have created a Canadian Apartheid.
e. Official Bilingualism is a specious Double Standard of Canadian Citizenship.
f. The rationale for Official Bilingualism is the mythical "National Unity" and the racist “Protection of the French Language and Culture”.


I am pleased to offer my written submission to the Standing Committee on Finance for your consideration in preparation of Budget 2009, in response to your government's invitation to Canadians to participate by making a recommendation.

My recommendation to substantially cut funding for Official Bilingualism is based on the following information:

Spending on Official Bilingualism. (Estimated---see end notes)

The Federal cost of Official Bilingualism for one year only to March 31,2008 was $605 Million. (without interest)

The total for one year ending March 31,2008, Federal, Provincial, Municipal and Private Sector was $19 Billion.

The total 40 year cost, 1969 to 2008, for Official Bilingualism for the Federal
Government, Provincial Governments, and Private Sector, $1.15 Trillion !

This is revenue collected (extorted in the name of 'National Unity') from taxpayers; the minority 22.3 percent French-speaking, and the majority 87.7 percent English-speaking. English-speaking taxpayers pay nearly five times as much as the French for this miserable failure called Official Bilingualism. Contrary to popular belief, we are more divided today than ever in our 141 years since Confederation as the Dominion of Canada.

“There is no way that two ethnic groups in one country can be made equal before the law! To say that it is possible is to sow the seeds of destruction!” -- Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, 1966.

But Trudeau did it anyway, and we now reap the destructive harvest.

Successive governments funded the creation of, and used the “Franco Bank” to recruit thousands of Quebecois to place in English-speaking Canada, to create a demand for bilingual services where there previously was no need. Hundreds of millions were squandered, and these Quebecois are still being funded as agents provocateur.

The democratic form of government we thought we had, prior to the Trudeau regime, was suddenly corrupted by a group of French Quebec politicians, bent on revenge for the British 'Conquest' of New France. They were greedy for the power to control and manipulate the country like a third world dictatorship. "The rights of the minority must be protected" they said. At the expense of the Majority!? The people's representatives in Parliament dismissed the concerns of the majority.

'DEMOCRACY'

1. Government by the people, usually through elected representatives.
2. A form of government in which the people have a say in who should hold power and how it should be used.
3. Control of a group by the majority of its members. (Oxford and Webster's English dictionaries. Perhaps the French language has a different definition of 'democracy'?)

'Only in Canada' does the government employ and fund an entire Ministry (Heritage Canada) to administer the use of languages.

'Only in Canada' does the government employ and fund a 'language police' department (Commissioner of Official Languages) to enforce these 'BAD' language laws.

'Only in Canada' does the federal government interfere in the language of education of the provinces and territories, by funding French Immersion programs and the Parents for French organizations in the English language school system, with no parallel form of English Immersion in Quebec, or even in Officially Bilingual New Brunswick.

Is this not discrimination? Is this not racism? Is it not legislating the disunity of the country? The official segregation of Canadians by language?

LEGISLATION

I note that at no time in our history have the citizens of Canada been consulted, allowed public debate, to deliberate or to participate in any form of democratic process to accept or reject, or to review the Official Languages Acts nor the Constitution Act,1982 with its Charter.

The sole beneficiaries of this program are the unilingual French province of Quebec and the minority French population, which today comprises the majority of ’so-called’ bilinguals, paid for by the Rest of Canada. This minority, bilingual Canadians, now effectively control the government of Canada.

Yet the Rest of Canada is legislated to accept a lopsided concept of Official Bilingualism that requires English-speaking Canadians to become fluent in the French language in order to be employed in their own government. Canada opposed the despicable South African Apartheid. Why do we not oppose this equally specious French-based Apartheid in Canada?

Bad laws must be amended and/or repealed to provide relief from unfair taxation. The bad laws are the OFFICIAL LANGUAGES ACTS, 1969 and 1988, and Bill S-3, 2005, THE CONSTITUTION ACT 1982, particularly THE CHARTER OF (FEWER) RIGHTS AND (LIMITED) FREEDOMS.
.
CUTTING FUNDING FOR OFFICIAL BILINGUALISM

The following are some of the areas that the Standing Committee on Finance should review to reduce the Government's spending:

1. Cut the Government's $1 Billion 'Action Plan' to promote and extend the French language throughout Canada (except Quebec).

2. Cut the Bernard Lord recommendation to spend at least $1 Billion to promote and extend Francophone communities outside Quebec, from his "Consultations on Linguistic Duality and Official Languages". This had been a fraudulent waste of tax dollars on a fraudulent "consultation" process with mainly the Franco-phoney organizations outside Quebec, and that failed to democratically consult with the majority of Canadians, and even failed to respond to written concerns.

3. The government’s announced budgeting of some $750,000 to recruit French-speaking immigrants from Africa, to bring their French-second-language, to supplement the French minority communities in the Rest of Canada, outside Quebec.

There are many more language programs that are costly and of little benefit to the values of the majority of Canadians. Heritage Canada Ministry must be the largest single drain on the Canadian economy. The Department of National Defence is probably the second biggest spender on Official Bilingualism. This is another example of governments’ hypocritical double standard.

CONCLUSION

The federal government must bring to an end the wasteful funding of Official Bilingualism, and redirect those Billions of tax dollars to the under funded social programs like Health Care and Education, to National Defence, to the broken Justice System, to the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. If not, there is good likelihood that the Dominion of Canada will crumble.

END NOTES

1. The estimated costs of Official Bilingualism have been arrived at from a combination of government announced programs, Statistics Canada, and research and calculations since around 1995 by now retired Chartered Accountant, Jim S. Allan in Toronto, Ontario.
While, as Mr. Allan states, his calculations do not claim be error free, he tried to err on the lower side.

2. Interest calculations are based on StatsCan published rates, year by year, from 1974 to 2001, and from Finance Canada for 2002 to 2008. 1973 was the last year Canada had a federal surplus. The annual interest expense on our federal debt, that peaked at about $600 Billion, and is now about $500 billion, is believed to be currently around $20 Billion per year. Annual inflation rates are also included.

3. Mr. Allan has evidence, October 9, 1999, indicating the cost to Ontario for its French Language Services Act (Bill was approximately $1.305 Billion per year. This suggests that his estimate of the 10 provinces together at 50 percent of the federal cost, is likely too low.

4. Mr. Allan uses the 20X factor for Private Sector costs from research done at the Centre for Study of American Business, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Since the US does not have Official Bilingualism, and the 20X factor is claimed there, the equivalent in Canada is likely to be much higher.

Respectfully submitted,

John M. Wood
E-mail: johndot@shaw.ca

[Knox]

e-letter from Language Fairness


WHY NOT LEARN FRENCH?

Why not learn French? This is the glib reply of one Ottawa area talk show host to anyone who questions the conventional wisdom of the government policy called "Official Bilingualism". Sounds reasonable does it not? French is a language. You can learn a language. So why not just learn French? This argument comes up time and again from the advocates of Official Bilingualism. Just learn French and all your problems with Official Bilingualism will disappear. Oh really!?

Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Victor Goldbloom, Dyane Adam, Graham Fraser and others have dangled the prospect of Anglophones benefiting from learning French to lure unwitting Anglophones into supporting Official Bilingualism. Canadian Parents for French dangles the possibility of Anglophone children benefitting from learning French in front of anxious parents. It is just like an animal keeper in Marineland holding up a dead fish in front of a pack of caged seals. This sounds reasonable but does it really work this way? Put away the statistics for a moment and look at a single case study. Business schools use case studies. It is as legitimate an approach as any to a question.

Let's look at the case of an Anglophone who did know French. One whom I have known all my life -- my aunt. Let's treat this as a case study. Let's see what actually happens when an Anglophone does know French. She lives in Ottawa. There is no need to reveal her name. She is not a member of APEC, ELA, CLF or any English language activist group. She has been speaking French all her life. She is fluently bilingual in the Quebec variety of French. On my mother's side of the family, French was the first language. Like my mother she learned French before she learned English. Unlike my mother, she stayed in Ottawa all her life and was able to keep up her French. Every summer at her summer cottage in Quebec my aunt regularly spoke French. During the winters, I often heard her speaking French over the phone when I happened to be visiting her at her home in Ottawa. I have heard her speak French to friends who dropped by when I was visiting. My aunt is fluent in French. There is no mistake about that.

However, my aunt does not have a French name. Not her first name, nor her maiden name, nor her married name is French. My mother's family has one of those Francophone names like Blackburn, Johnson and Martin that are so common in Quebec. She is not a Roman Catholic. In spite of an increasing secularization in Quebec Roman Catholicism is still a very large part of the Quebecois identity.

After a career as a nurse, my aunt tired of the shift work and started a new career in the Public Service. She worked in a pay unit in Supply and Services Canada. Official bilingualism came in and there was a competition for CR6 which in this case was Pay Unit Supervisor. My aunt passed the government's test for being a Francophone. Her mother, my grandmother, did speak French as a first language. For the language skills test my aunt spoke French into a recording machine. Evaluators compared her French pronunciation and grammar with that of others in the competition. My aunt also passed the other skill tests involved. My aunt won the competition and won the competition for Pay Unit Supervisor.

Sounds like a success story in official bilingualism does it not? It is no such thing. Did my aunt get to enjoy her new position. No way!

The only other person in the office who could handle a conversation in French started booking off sick every Friday. Every Friday, the Francophones from the Montreal office called in with long complicated questions in French about their pay. My aunt had to handle all these calls and they took up almost all of her working time on Fridays. Before my aunt won the competition there had been no such calls from the Montreal office. As a result of the calls, my aunt's blood pressure rose to a dangerous level and she had to quit her job. Before she left she had to train her replacement, a Francophone, in many of the procedures involved in the job. When her Francophone replacement appeared on the job, her Francophone co-worker's Friday sicknesses ended and the supposedly urgent calls from the Montreal office stopped.

My aunt has passed two hurdles. She knew French. The government hired her as a result of a competition, but her career crashed on the non-acceptance of her Francophone co-workers.

What this case study tells us is likely in store for those who actually succeed in learning French. Will French Immersion be the alchemy for anxious Anglophone parents that will turn their children's future into gold? No! It will not. The seals at Marineland are the lucky ones. Once they do the trick the keeper will throw them a dead fish and they will eat it. The parents of French Immersion students get to look at the fish, smell the fish and beg for it, but they're not going to get the fish no matter what tricks they perform. In spite of the propaganda of Official Bilingualism - the sad reality is that a knowledge of French is a ticket to nowhere for a Canadian Anglophone.


W. A.