Canadian language waste in another form, court cases.
In Canada, people are forever going to court to claim language rights. I believe this is a waste of money, although great for lawyers and people who make money of court cases. The recent Supreme Court decision, described in this article in the Ottawa Citizen is just another example.
To me it is simple. The majority French speaking society of Quebec, through their elected representatives, have decided that immigrants who want to their children to attend publicly funded schools will have to send them to French language schools. That is the deal in Quebec. If you do not like it, do not emigrate to Quebec.
I understand why the Quebeckers have the law. They want to maintain their society as a predominantly French speaking society, in this vast English speaking continent. That is their wish. It is not for others to moralize or wag fingers. And these court cases are tiring and just another example of language waste in Canada. We spend a fortune on language and are generally poor at speaking other languages (except for the French Canadians).
Oh but you see, even we Quebecois suck bad at speaking the other language, or any other language for that matter. Generally speaking, anyway.
Montreal is a special case as far as language goes in Quebec, since its demographics are quite peculiar.. The rest of the province is pretty much 100% french-speaking.
Posted by: Phil | October 31, 2009 at 07:43 PM