Dear Mr. Prime Minister; about this bilingual nonsense …

Dear Mr. Prime Minister

Of all the events and incidents that have caught our attention during this first decade of the 21st century, there is only one I wish to bring to your attention: Canada's odious Official Bilingual legislation and its dismal and divisive consequences.

I’m sure that you privately understand that Canada doesn't need to be bilingual nor do Canadians wish to be bilingual. Whether all Canadians, or no Canadians, are bilingual will not shift Canada’s position in world affairs one iota.

Domestically, I can assure you, English Canadians will not die of despair if official bilingualism were to disappear tomorrow.

However, I will admit that Francophones are another matter. Francophones are obsessed with language. They are obsessed not just with the state of their own language in Quebec, they are obsessively furious because the Rest Of Canada remains utterly indifferent to it and has declined to learn it.

Perhaps Francophones’ problem lies with their history and the fact that they lost, not one, but several, pivotal battles to the English, and hence lost, irrevocably, what should have been La Belle Province from mer unto mer.  Mr. Prime Minister, I’m sure we both recognize that had history been as Francophones would have it, both seas would have been mal de mers.

Well, it didn’t happen that way - and we understand their angst. In fact, Francophone angst probably explains why they rewrote their history this past summer and tried to erase what Michael Ignatieff referred to last summer as that “tragic” loss in 1759.  In fact, their surreptitious insurgency to take control of the Federal bureaucracy may well be driven by their intense desire to regain the self-esteem they lost in 1759. And, of course, to make Anglophones seethe.

Be that as it may, we in the ROC are getting really quite upset because so much of our nation is being ‘managed’ by Francophones who, unable to earn their way through hard work, intelligence, and diligence, are oozing into the system and, greased by bilingual rules and regulations, are disguising themselves as workers, staffers, and managers.

Official bilingualism has evolved into a system which permits Francophones to write, and interpret, the rules by which candidates are selected for jobs and by which promotions are granted. This biased selection process routinely shunts exceptional Canadians aside in favour of also-ran Francophones who can be classified as bilingual only if you include seriously mangled English as the second language.   

French language training sits at the very peak of all that represents incomprehensible government waste. French language training represents, all by itself, the costliest program failure ever conceived by a Canadian government. And it continues, decade by decade, to swallow billions to achieve just one end; to appease a besotted people so immersed in self-pity it beggars the imagination.

And there are other consequences that crop up as a direct result of bilingualism; our freedom of speech.  Some provinces, notably New Brunswick and Ontario, have enacted gratuitous and whimsically enforced municipal bilingual sign laws. These laws have set once-friendly neighbours, and neighbourhoods, one against the other and have, in towns and villages that once lived in peace and harmony, given rise to resentment, bitterness, and animosity.

Nor do we like being managed by Francophones – who, incidentally, are unable to manage their own province which, but for massive welfare payments from the ROC, would be virtually bankrupt.  Should Ontario students pay excessive college and university tuition fees so Quebec students can pay far less? Only Liberals believe that such an arrangement is as it should be.

All this hatred is the result of Francophones who have immigrated into Ontario, and who have subsequently demanded that we change the way we live to accommodate their personal and cultural preferences.  Successive Liberal governments - immersed as they are in the swamp of multiculturalism and driven by a reflexive fear of being labeled racist – bow, scrape, and acquiesce.

Ontario acquiesces while Quebec sneers.

Mr. Prime Minister, people generally learn other languages when it is to their advantage to do so. However, when all three levels of governments in Ontario coerce their citizens to learn French and install bilingual signs because Francophones lost a war two and a half centuries ago, hackles are bound to rise.  And let me assure you Mr. Prime Minister, you have a horde of irate Anglophones out here with seriously raised hackles.

For heaven’s sake, Mr. Prime Minister, show some spunk, grow a spine. Be a good conservative and make this répugnant legislation disappear.    --JGP