Bud Talkinghorn: Mired in the past -- & -- The buck stops here--and then disappears

Mired in the past--The crux of the bilingual debate

I wrote recently (disapprovingly) on the GO transport system in Toronto being forced to erect costly bilingual signs. So I was interested in the letter to the editor from Marie-Reine Roy, from CBC Radio Canada. Her rebuttal to the National Post's editorial about the waste reiterated all the old excuses for why billions are spent across Canada to placate a tiny minority outside Quebec. Her appeal to consider the withering of French as a national disgrace holds a thimble-full of water with the rest of us. Especially, as she is an agent of the Canadian government's largesse. Take away her millions in tax crutches for Radio Canada's programming and see how it plays even in downtown Quebec City.

Where is her concern for the half million English speakers, who have left Quebec because of its repressive language Bill 101? One English high school in Montreal once had 1,300 students. When it slipped below 500 they turned it into a condo. That decimation for her was probably a Martha "good thing" Anyway, the whole bilingual signage business is simply a trojan horse for eventually making sure that every public service has a 'bilingual' component. Translation: More unilingual English speakers lose their jobs, more French bilinguals take them. And why are the French more bilingual? Because the linga franca (an ironic term that today) of North America and most of the world is English. Even my francophone friends watch English programming on TV. The more travelled of them realize that when they go to Amsterdam or Rio, or Saigon, English, not French, is their passport to communication. They are not living in Paris and they accept that. The only language policy I consider more absurd is to spend money teaching Aboriginals Slavy or some other arcane language instead of standard English. What a cunning plan to keep them from progressing in our modern society. My ancestors used to be fluent in Gaelic; so what? They gave up that in the 19th century and suffered no lasting traumas. Forget the government-sponsored indoctrination and get on the 21st century bandwagon. But permit a touch of cynicism. If the Quebecois and the aborigines became fluent in English they might just leave their reserves. And where would that leave their politicians, who depended on a captive audience?

© Bud Talkinghorn--I noticed that Ms. Roy expressed herself very eloquently in English.




Some Quebec Liberals' motto: The buck stops here--and then disappears

That some wildly-popular TV series in Quebec features a bunch of welfare cheats and general scammers shouldn't come as a surprise. The Quebecois keep electing politicians who have, let's be kind, a relaxed moral code. Time after time, throughout the last four decades, the scandals continued to emerge out of that province. One culprit during the Trudeau era actually went so far as to blame the English media for reporting his financial crime. It made Quebecers look like a bunch of thieves, he complained.

© Bud Talkinghorn