What better way to celebrate the Huffington Post's entry into the Quebec market than to remind the world of its segregation laws.
Quebec segregates the rights of its own residents through The Charter of the French Language, commonly known as Bill 101. The most significant of several provisions that violate fundamental human rights are the language of education provisions which divide Quebecers into two separate and distinct civil rights categories:
1) those who can choose to send their children to either French-language or English-language publicly-funded schools; and
2) those who can only send their children to French-language publicly-funded schools.
The discrimination procedure used to determine placement in either of these two civil rights categories is based upon:
1) whose one's parents are; and
2) what the parents' classification is (i.e., eligibility certificate).
This classification is handed down, generation after generation.
This regime of discrimination based upon descent violates the basic tenet of a free and democratic society that all are equal under the law.
Indeed, the language of Bill 101 used in the discrimination process described above is identical in principle to the one used under the now defunct apartheid system of South Africa. It is, in places, virtually word for word.
Quebec's school segregation laws have decimated the English language school system, and its community.
In 1970, there were 250,000 students in Quebec's English-language school system. This had declined by 57 per cent to 108,000 by 1990 and slowly edged back to 122,834 by 2003.
There is a further asymmetry of rights in this regard.
Prior to enactment of Quebec's language laws, immigrants to Quebec could freely choose to send their children to either English or French publicly-funded schools. Now they can't.
The Quebec government -- both separatist and non-separatist alike -- have been unwilling to put into effect section 23.1.a of Canada's Charter of Rights and freedoms because they refuse to enact the provisions of section 59 of Canada's constitution. As a result, an inequality exists between Quebec and all other Canadian provinces.
Immigrants from French-speaking countries, such as France, whose first language is French, can come to any of the English-speaking provinces outside Quebec, become citizens, and have the constitutional right to send their children to French publicly-funded schools.
However, immigrants from English-speaking countries, such as the United States, whose first language is English, and who come to Quebec and become citizens, do not have the constitutional right to send their children to English publicly-funded schools.
All it would take to eliminate this inequality is a proclamation by the legislation or government of Quebec.
Bill 101 has attempted to eradicate the English language from Quebec since its inception. Only numerous rulings from domestic and international courts have held Quebec's human rights violations in check.
For example, in December 1988, Quebec overrode a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada decision that found the language of commercial signs provisions of Bill 101 in violation of both Quebec's and Canada's Charters of Rights and officially suspended freedom of speech and equality rights. Then-Premier Robert Bourassa, the author of the law, bragged that "we have suspended fundamental liberties."
Tony Kondaks is the author of Why Canada Must End, which can be read in its entirety online at www.whycanadamustend.com
No, all Mr Kondak wants to do is to undermine the french in Québec, to submerge them under linguistically hostile immigration!
No, Mr Kondaks does not belong to the pages of a progressive newspaper; he belongs to the same leagues as the people who instituted apartheid in South Africa!
Claiming that Québec has apartheid is disinginuous and plainly false; if this was the case, surely the very potent canadian charter of rights would have found fault with that and have cancelled all the provisions that restrict the access to english schools!!! Yet this has not been done.
In Québec, everyone has access to quality education without discrimination!
10 + 1 men is not hard to intimidate but let the truth out of the bag and see what the majority says! Quebec hates bilingualism and anything of a British heritage - bigotry cannot hide in the light of day and cold hard facts!
Well, if you want to back-up what you say, I dare you to prove that law 101 has violated any **HUMAN RIGHT**.
Jean: Start Here and of course there are VOLUMES of more examples. See: United nations Human Rights Agreement and The Internationa Human Rights Ageement that Quebec Legislators and Canada Federal Legislators signed to Obey and Honor: See the section that Includes Language as a freaking human Right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney_General_of_Quebec_v._Blaikie_(No._1)
That is how the english managed the tour de force of making italians the ennemies of the french, even though there are seldom two cultures that are so similar!!!
By the early 1970’s, law 22 was passed, which made french the sole official language in Québec. It also provided that all immigrants must go to french schools, unless they would pass linguistic tests that would determine if they knew english so to have access to english schools.
Needless to say, that half-witted measure was a major failure on the onset!
When the sovereignist Parti Québécois came to power in 1976, following an unprecedented amount of political scandals the liberals were embroiled in, they quickly passed law 101 which strengthened law 22 by prohibiting all immigrants from going to english schools.
The only way you could go to english school was if one of your parents went to an english school.
And law 101 worked: 35 years later, the decline of french has been stopped and immigrants now are becoming french instead of english. Last night, I was in Chinatown having supper, and the restaurant was full of young chinese kids speaking french to each other.
This is the basis of Mr Kondak’s rants; he is lamenting that immigrants cannot go to english schools, to further minorize the french.
Why else Mr Kondak would want immigrants to go to english schools? Certainly, french schools do not deliver a lesser form of education!
(Contiued…)
1. De langue et de tradition, le Québec est une société française depuis des siècles.
2. Cette société est aussi composée de gens de langue et de tradition anglaise qui vivent fidèles à leurs origines, dans le plein respect de la grande majorité de la population québécoise. Ils dirigent des institutions (hôpitaux, écoles, etc.) qu'ils maintiennent "anglophones", tout en y accueillant des québécois qui ne le sont pas.
3. Le Québec accueille en outre un très grand nombre d'immigrants, de professionnels et d'étudiants temporaires, ainsi que de touristes, provenant de partout dans le monde.
4. De nombreux québécois ont adopté des enfants de tous les coins du monde. Nombreux sont ceux qui s'assurent que ces enfants demeurent en contact avec des gens de leur pays d'origine vivant au Québec, afin qu'ils soient impreignés de la culture de leurs ancêtres et qu'il en connaissent parfaitement la langue.
Ce sont les faits et la réalité du Québec, à savoir sa vérité, comme peuvent l'attester des millions de gens qui y vivent sereinement et dans la bonne entente. Cela fait du Québec une société non pas idyllique mais une société civilisée où il fait bon vivre.
ELLE EST À PRENDRE OU À LAISSER.
We now have French sign laws (Bill Z-22, taken from Bill 22 {Quebec's French Language Laws or Bill 101}), a French hospital, French college, primarily French commercial sector. Stipulating minority rights take precedence over majority rights is what the UN referred to as Nazi like and against UNESCO.
When there is no political representation and clear violations of even the very language laws that promoted bilingualism it is obvious that the admitted exploitation and subversion of special interest groups and lobbyists is the power (or "the Stakeholder) of this land. If we can't get the Canadian Constitution Federation to represent us we had best get our own pots and pans out soon!
I am Acadian and French and English but I am not represented by the SANB or the fraudulent and unethical funds they secure to promote Frenchification. Because I was raised to be English I am discriminated against by my own elected officials. Breaking the law and bragging about it in the media is treason. Declaring that "the stakeholder" dictates the law and not the people who voted for you is a violation of the oath of office. How much more do we need to experience before we say "Look, the evidence is there - DO SOMETHING!!"
Pour commencer 40% des québécois francophones sont bilingues et sans compter ceux qui, comme moi, lisent l'anglais sans le parler; ce qui m'a permis de pouvoir de lire ce tas d'ineptie.
Au Québec nous avons deux systèmes scolaires publiques gratuits de la 1ière année jusqu'au CEGEP, un en français et un autre en anglais.
Les frais scolaires de nos universités, tant francophone que anglophone, sont les plus bas en Amérique du nord. Il y a bien McGill, une université anglophone, qui s'est essayée à charger $25,000.00 de frais mais elle a été rappelée à l'ordre.
À Québec nous avons le plus grand université francophone en Amérique, l'université Laval ( http://www2.ulaval.ca/accueil.html ), sites web en français et en anglais
Il y a l'université du Québec ( http://www.uquebec.ca/reseau/ ), sites web en français, anglais et espagnol, qui a un campus dans 6 villes au Québec.
Nous avons de grandes universités anglophones:
L'université Concordia (sites web en anglais et en français) http://www.concordia.ca/
L'université McGill (sites web en anglais et en français) http://www.mcgill.ca/
Nous avons des centres hospitaliers universitaires francophones et anglophones.
Curieusement ce sont toujours nous les francophones qui se font accusés de ségrégationnisme alors que les communautés francophones à travers le Canada ont quasiment été toutes décimées, heureusement ceci tend à changer et les communautés francophones hors Québec vont valloir leurs droits.
Bye
Christian Boutin
Et je ne vois pas pourquoi un devrait survivre au détriment de l'autre et au Québec on le prouve avec tous les services offert également aux francophones et anglophones.
Et parler positivement de soi ce n'est pas de la vantardise que ce soit un francophone ou un anglophone qui le fait.
La loi 101 est issue de la nécessité.
Je crois que la majorité des commentaires ici permettent de justifier la Loi 101. Je dirais même que «votre loi n'est pas notre loi ». Votre loi, c'est-à -dire, celle qui vous avantage, n'est pas la vérité; où vous y voyer un avantage d'invoquer la démocratie. Et Si le sénario s'inversait ? Et si le Canada était à 80% francophone ?
Vous diriez exactement le contraire... Ce qui se passe ici, c'est que vous défendez naturellement votre propre camp. Invoquer les Droits de l'homme est une arme contre le camp francophone simplement.
« (...) vous pensez que c'est vous qui désignez l'ennemi, comme [toutes les démocraties]. Du moment que nous ne voulons pas d'ennemis, nous n'en aurons pas, raisonnez-vous. Or c'est l'ennemi qui vous désigne. Et s'il veut que vous soyez son ennemi, vous pouvez lui faire les plus belles protestations d'amitiés. Du moment qu'il veut que vous soyez son ennemi, vous l'êtes.»
Vous pourrez toujours faire valoir votre Loi pour gagner votre guerre, nous fesons valoir la notre pour gagner notre guerre: la survie culturel