Quebec chooses language over common sense

 

“Coercive language laws are counter-productive to a state’s prosperity. Governed by emotion, not reason, (Quebec’s) laws have the effect of driving away the most entrepreneurial residents.”

National Post, October 27, 2010

By Barbara Kay

During my last round of buffing at the Montreal aesthetics salon that I frequent, I enjoyed an interesting exchange with “Alia,” a lovely young woman of South Asian ancestry who threads ladies’ eyebrows for an embarrassing pittance.

Alia and her husband immigrated here three years ago. Their two-year old son is enrolled in one of Quebec’s famously cheap daycare programs. Alia’s husband is a messenger by day and a pizza deliveryman by night. In good functional English that she learned in Bangladesh, Alia outlined their long-range plan to me. They will stay in Montreal until their son finishes elementary school. Then, with her parents who are awaiting their green light to come here, “We will move to Calgary or Edmonton and open a 24-hour handy store.”

Why Alberta? Alia is happy to have her child educated in French for now, as is required under Quebec law. But if they expect to maximize his opportunities for success — and that was the whole point of their emigrating, and being prepared to work around the clock en famille in a store — he would have to learn how to read, speak and write high-level English.

Quebec’s loss, Alberta’s gain, all because Quebec forces Alia’s son to be schooled in French.

Today, in great swathes of the world, English unilingualism is no impediment to steady career advancement, whereas even tri- or quatri-lingualism — if none of the languages is English — is of little use for advancement. Furthermore, unilingualism in any language but English (that includes you, French) is the kiss of death to private-sector career advancement.

As we learn from Robert McCrum’s new book, Globish, excerpted in the Post last month, global English is the “world’s language.” A quarter of the world’s population speaks English with more or less proficiency. Resistance to its economic hegemony and institutional usefulness is futile. Indeed, apart from Quebec, there are few (any?) places in the world even trying to resist that reality.

Coercive language laws are counter-productive to a state’s prosperity. Governed by emotion, not reason, such laws have the effect of driving away the most entrepreneurial residents — not just ambitious immigrants like Alia and her family, but native sons and daughters too.

Local languages are culturally enriching and provide dazzling social capital amongst our cultural elites, but are most useful career-wise in bureaucratic linguistic hothouses (e.g., Quebec’s bloated civil service) where symbols of cultural equality trump reality. In the real world of the marketplace, English rules.

And where prosperity, not culture-worship, is the goal of a state’s government, reason prevails with a vengeance. According to a 2008 report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, an astonishing 96%-100% of those polled in China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam said it was important for their children to learn English. Even former colonies aren’t throwing out the baby with the bathwater. India was happy to see the back of the Brits, but learning English remained an obsession (India’s 1951 constitution was written in English). In May 2010, a temple in the state of Uttar Pradesh was dedicated to “Goddess English.”

Most people speak English out of self-interest, but those who love their native language won’t abandon it if both languages are taught side by side. In Bangladesh, the official, and fiercely loved Bangla language co-exists in harmony with English, that country’s valued, widespread and widely relied-upon second language. Likewise with Hebrew and English in Israel.

It’s time Quebec stopped cutting off its nose to spite its face. Colonialism was then, Globish is now. Admit it, accept it, and embrace it. If a language isn’t loved enough by native speakers to flourish, and can only be saved through the linguistic dhimmitude of others, it isn’t a language worth saving.

bkay@videotron.ca

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Read more: fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/10/27/barbara-kay-quebec-chooses-language-over-self-interest/#ixzz13hB9rlN6

Quebec and the Fairy Godmothers

Calgary Herald
By Licia Corbella

Today, let's have some fun and play Fairy Godmother to Quebec. Let's grant the province the wish it articulated in Copenhagen. Wave the magic wand and poof, wish granted. Shut down Alberta's oilsands, except, since it’s Quebec making the wish, we have to call it tarsands, even though it's not tar they use to run their Bombardier planes, trains and Skidoos.

Ah, at last! The blight on Canada's reputation shut down. All those dastardly workers from across Canada living in Fort McMurray, Calgary and Edmonton out of jobs, including those waitresses, truck drivers, nurses, teachers, doctors, pilots, engineers etc. They can all go on Employment insurance like Ontario autoworkers and Quebec parts makers!

Closing down Alberta's oil industry would immediately stop the production of 1.8 million barrels of oil a day. Supply and demand being what it is, oil prices will go up and therefore the cost at the pump will go up, too, increasing the cost of everything else.

But lost jobs in Alberta and across the country along with higher gas prices are a small price to pay to save the world and not "embarrass" Quebecers on the world stage. Not to worry though, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Nigeria can come to the rescue. You know, the guys who pump money into al-Qaida and help Osama bin Laden target those Van Doos fighting in Afghanistan. Bloody oil is so much nicer than dirty tarsands oil.

Shutting down the oilsands will reduce Canada's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 38.4 Mt (megatonnes). Hooray! It's so much fun to be a Fairy Godmother! While that sounds like a lot, Canada only produces two per cent of the world's man-made GHGs and the oilsands only produce five per cent of Canada's total emissions or 0.1 per cent of the world's emissions. By comparison, the U.S. Produces 20.2 per cent of the world's GHG emissions, 27 per cent of which comes from coal-fired electricity.

The 530-square-kilometre piece of land currently disturbed by the oilsands (which is smaller than the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. At 570 square kilometres) must be reclaimed by law and will return to Alberta's 381,000 square kilometres of boreal forest, a huge carbon sink.

Quebec, of course, has clean hydro power, but more than 13,000 square kilometres were drowned for the James Bay hydroelectric project, permanently removing that forest from acting as a carbon sink.

But Fairy Godmother is digressing all over the place. While the oilsands only produce five per cent of Canada's GHGs, it contributes much more to Canada's economy. After all, oil and gas make up one-quarter of the value on the TSX alone. Alberta is also the largest net contributor per capita by far to Confederation and there are only two more -- B.C. And Ontario.

Quebec hasn't made a net contribution to the rest of Canada for a very long time. This is not to be critical (after all, Fairy Godmothers never criticize), it's just a fact. In 2009, Albertans paid $40.46 billion in income, corporate and other taxes to the federal government and received back just $19.35 billion in services and goods from the feds. That means the rest of Canada got $21.1 billion from Albertans or $5,742 for each and every Alberta man, woman and child. In 2007 (the last year national figures are available), Alberta sent a net contribution of $19.49 billion to the ROC or $5,553 per Albertan -- more than three times what every Ontarian contributes at $1,757. Quebecers, on the other hand, each received $627 net or a total of $8 billion, money which was designed to help "equalize" social programs across the country. Except, that's not what is happening. Quebec has more generous social programs like (nearly) free university tuition (paid for mostly by Albertans) and cheap provincial day care (paid for mostly by Albertans).

But in this Fairy Godmother world, poof, those delightful unequal programs have now disappeared! Quel dommage!

The July 2009 Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) report states that between 2008 and 2032, the oilsands will account for 172,000 person-years of employment in Ontario during the construction phase, plus 640,000 for operations over the 25-year period. For Quebec, the oilsands will account for 84,000 person-years of employment during the construction phase, plus 292,000 for operations over the 25-year period.

In total, the oilsands are expected to add $1.7 trillion to Canada's GDP over the next 25 years.

Wave wand and Poof, Jobs, gone! So, now that the oil industry has shut down and left Alberta, Alberta has become a have-not province and so has every other province. Equality at last! Hugo Chavez will be so pleased.

Meeting our Copenhagen targets suddenly looks possible, as most of us can't afford to drive our cars or buy anything but necessities, so manufacturers have closed their doors and emissions are way down.

The dream of many Quebecers to form their own nation and separate from Canada has died at last. Alas, in Alberta, separatist sentiment has risen dramatically, citizens vote to separate and the oil and gas industry returns.

Albertans start to pocket that almost $6,000 for each person that used to get sent elsewhere and now their kids get free tuition. Fairy Godmother's work is done. Wish granted. Quebecers must now sign up for a foreign worker visas to work in Alberta to send their cheques back home so junior can start saving up to pay for college.

Licia Corbella is editorial page editor of The Calgary Herald.

Bribing Quebec corrupts the whole country

The problem with bribes is they don’t just corrupt the bribee; they corrupt the briber as well.

Ottawa Sun, September 29, 2010

By Lorrie Goldstein, QMI Agency

 

That’s being overlooked in the latest phony, only-in-Canada “controversy” over the Maclean’s cover story describing Quebec as Canada’s most corrupt province.

All the usual suspects in Quebec and Ottawa — provincial and federal politicians of all stripes, both separatist and federalist — predictably have their shorts in a knot over Maclean’s stating what everybody already knows, including inside Quebec.

That is, while there’s corruption in every province, Quebec really is different. That’s because the constant bidding war between federalists and separatists for the affection of Quebecers, using federal tax money, fuels a unique degree of corruption inside Quebec.

But that doesn’t just corrupt Quebec. It corrupts the rest of Canada, too.

Indeed, the most infamous recent case of corruption in Quebec — the “federal” sponsorship scandal — originated in Ottawa.

An idiotic plan by a panic-stricken Jean Chretien to win the loyalty of Quebecers in the wake of the 1995 referendum by buying them a few federalist trinkets with our money, exploded into a scandal in which $100 million of our cash disappeared down the same sinkhole it always does in Quebec, going back decades.

To state the painfully obvious, that constantly trying to buy the loyalty of Quebecers by bribing them to stay in Canada corrupts everyone and everything it touches, is not to insult ordinary Quebecers.

Indeed, they were as infuriated by the sponsorship scandal as the rest of the country, and gutted the federal Liberal party in the ensuing election.

The real disgrace is that our political classes in Ottawa and Quebec constantly attack any mention of the endemic corruption in that province as bigotry, in order to avoid ever having to address it.

Historically, both the federal Liberals and Conservatives (let’s not even get into the provincial parties) have an abysmal history of committing and countenancing corruption in Quebec.

This includes vote-buying, ballot-stuffing, influence-peddling, toll-gating, recruiting party members from graveyards and runaway patronage, to say nothing of turning a blind eye to wholesale corruption inside Quebec’s construction industry.

(That said, recent revelations via a Quebec inquiry that — horrors! — political influence affects who gets appointed as a judge, is hardly a problem confined solely to Quebec.)

While the sponsorship scandal involved actual corruption by federal Liberals, the federal Conservatives under Stephen Harper have corrupted themselves politically by pandering to Quebec — which hasn’t done them any good.

This instead of doing what they said they would do if elected — treat every province equally.

Instead, we get infuriating, pathetic spectacles like eight Conservative MPs donning Nordiques jerseys to show their brainless support for shelling out $175 million of our money for a new hockey arena, so Quebec can get a second NHL team.

That prompted the higher foreheads in the federal Conservative and Liberal parties to say if we’re going to do something that stupid in an era of huge deficits, we’ll have to do it for other provinces, too. Mon Dieu!

That’s another way bribing Quebec corrupts all of Canada, since other provinces are perfectly happy to let Quebec extort whatever it can from the feds, before lining up at the trough to get the same deal for themselves.

In Canada, that’s called taking the high road.

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lorrie.goldstein@sunmedia.ca

ottawasun.com/comment/columnists/lorrie_goldstein/2010/09/28/15509236.html

Trudeau’s impact is obvious; it’s also mostly bad

 

Pierre Trudeau died 10 years ago this week, so of course the tributes and legacy analyses have been coming thick and fast. Among my favourites was offered up by Chantel Hebert, one of the few people worth reading at the Toronto Star.

National Post, September 29, 2010

By Lorne Gunter

Well, I have one, too. But unlike most commentators, I come to bury Trudeau (or at least make sure he’s still buried), not to praise him.

While he certainly had a profound impact on Canada, it was mostly destructive. Even the few positive changes he made might be called inevitable; they were the type of changes that were coming to every western society by dint of cultural evolution anyway.

Trudeau was by and large a social engineer convinced of his own intellectual superiority and the cloddish unimaginativeness of nearly everyone else.

Not only was he arrogant enough to believe that the natural laws of society and economics can be ignored by determined central planners without consequences, he was also arrogant enough to imagine the light had been given to him more than anyone else, so that he alone possessed the superior knowledge required to see what needed doing and everyone else should defer to him.

Some have argued that legalizing abortion, divorce and homosexuality were bold innovations by Trudeau. Yet nearly every Western nation did the same at around the same time. Trudeau merely ensured Canada was riding the same waves as the rest.

Give him some due. Trudeau faced down the FLQ during the October Crisis of 1970 and a decade later, while much of our chattering class trembled with fear at the prospect of Quebec separation, he shouldered the burden of defeating the sovereigntists in Quebec’s 1980 referendum.

Still, he faced down the separatist terrorists by invoking the War Measures Act and proving just how shallow his vaunted commitment to individual liberties truly was at crunch time. And he won the 1980 referendum at the price of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — which opened the Pandora’s box of judicial activism — as well as two decades of expensive Quebec appeasement that ended in Adscam.

Of course Adscam came long after Trudeau left office. Still, it was a natural and predictable outcome of throwing gobs and gobs of money at Quebec in an attempt to win the province’s federalist loyalty. When the first money thrown failed to buy Quebec’s love, more and more was thrown until there was so much money being sloshed around at projects of diminishing significance that it was inevitable sticky fingers would grab up some.

While not directly Trudeau’s fault, Adscam was a by-product of his chosen method of fighting Quebec nationalism.

His impact on culture was devastating. He implemented official bilingualism in the vain hope that Quebecers would feel more at home in Canada if they knew the post mistress in Houston, B.C. was fluently bilingual. In the process, though, he failed to placate the Quebecois, but managed to alienate millions of anglophones.

Today, four decades and several billion tax dollars later, we are barely more bilingual as a nation than we were when Trudeau began this social experiment and just as divided (or more so) along linguistic lines.

He imagined that multiculturalism would unify us in our diversity – although he never explained how, practically, that logical non sequitor was supposed to happen. Instead, it has led to divisive ethnopolitics, political correctness dictating national policy, the importation of overseas animosities and the ghettoization of large blocks of new Canadians. Even the inflow of refugee claim jumpers can be traced back to the way that Trudeau thought multiculturalism and easy immigration would make Canada more cosmopolitan.

Human rights commissions are part of his legacy, as was the Court Challenges Program that paid minority plaintiffs to file court cases demanding that they be given Charter rights.

After he left office, Trudeau frequently insisted he had fought for a Charter of Rights to protect individuals from the state, and claimed Court Challenges and the Charter’s provisions authorizing judges to “read in” in rights had both been meant to make that protection easier.

How naive.

Activist judges and activist special interest groups quickly learned they could use one another to advance a radical social remake of Canada, and Ottawa would pay for their court appearances. What was meant to be a shield from the power of the state instead created a cozy little cabal among lefty legal scholars and judges that simply shifted the might of the state from the elected Parliament to the unelected judiciary. Both are, after all, branches of government. So the Charter didn’t protect citizens from the excesses of the state, it merely managed to change the whip from one had to another.

Sure, having politicians vote away our rights is bad, but is it really worse than having overreaching judges do the same? At least the politicians we can vote out of office from time to time. Thanks to the Charter, the new boss is the same as the old boss, only also unreachable by the people.

The CRTC is a Trudeau creation, the people who tell us what we may watch on television and listen on radio.

So, too, is the notion of the CBC as mouthpiece of social and political activism.

But as bad as that litany is, it is probably on the economy that Trudeau was at his worst.

Inflation, national debt, lost opportunities due to protectionism and economic nationalism — all were Trudeau’s legacy. Because he understood so little about economics and entrepreneurship, Trudeau was easily convinced that history would leave capitalism behind and replace it, if not with socialism, then with some form of command-and-control economy.

His reforms to unemployment insurance (now euphemistically renamed Employment Insurance) ensured our labour market would be badly distorted for nearly 30 years. His scheme of regional transfers — that at one time accounted for 40% of have-not provinces revenue — helped freeze poorer regions’ economies in amber and delay the day when their own desperation would lead to innovation and growth.

He presided over the largest expansion of government in our history; from 1974 to 1976, alone, Ottawa’s spending increased by 50%. He believed we could inflate our way out of debt, so never concerned himself with budget deficit, the consequence of which is an enduring national debt (although Conservative prime ministers have helped him out there). And he implemented wage-and-price controls that further damaged the economy they were meant to resurrect.

He even convinced himself it made sense to beggar a productive region — the West – for the enrichment of less productive ones. So he implemented the National Energy Program, which hurt both the economy and national unity.

Trudeau may have been a great theoretician, but if a solution required even a centesimo of practical understanding — and all successful solutions do — he wasn’t interested.

He may have had more impact on Canada than any other 20th century prime minister. Yet on balance, that impact was mostly bad.

Read more: fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/09/29/lorne-gunter-trudeaus-impact-is-obvious-its-also-mostly-bad/#ixzz11DkVP7L8

Canada is waking up, finally!

We, the various groups fighting the Official Languages Act, are finally being vindicated by the articles that have been printed over the last few days on the 10th anniversary of P. E. Trudeau’s demise.

October 1, 2010

Lorne Gunter has no qualms about pointing out that Trudeau’s legacy is what has created such a divided country out of the fairly harmonious country of Canada. He referred to all the features of Canadian life that have resulted in great unhappiness across the land – the OLA, Multiculturalism, his Charter of Rights that has led to activist judges and groups, a huge increase in our national debt and a national propensity towards socialism that has destroyed the innate independent nature of Canadians.

What I find most encouraging is the fact that mainstream media is finally coming to the conclusion that Trudeau and his attempts to elevate the position of Quebec & the French fact above the rest of the country is the real reason for the disunity within Canada. It has led to the pandering of ONE province and the vote buying that has resulted in huge sums of money being thrown at that province because they control 75 seats, most held by a homogenous culture of French-speakers whose primary concern is the preservation of the French language & culture. The imbalance thus created, politically, economically, culturally, historically and emotionally explains why there is a general malaise in this country where the English-speaking majority have resigned themselves to a culture of defeat.

However, we are not defeated yet – not while we have people who continue to pay attention, to speak up & protest and, with the help of an awakening media, spread the word!!!

I have included the links to the other columnists on this topic – if you have the time to read their opinions (some for & some against), please do so. There was a very interesting discussion on CFRA this morning between John Robson (History professor at the U. of Ottawa) and Steve Madely about the legacy of Britain (the Magna Carta) and how this has laid the foundation for our concept of Freedom. If you have the time to listen, I’ll include the link at the bottom.

Kim