Tweet
My Mom is visiting this week and I thought of you when she told me about this story.
I suppose it is a system like this you would like to see in Jamaica to protect Patois patois.
Pastagate is a sign of more Quebec language law silliness
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Pastagate+sign+more+Quebec+language+silliness/8019598/story.html
Quebec is the laughing stock of the world right now with Office québécois de la langue française.
I wonder why the don't practice what they preach and call it Le Bureau québécois de la langue française. Maybe someone should file a complaint with them so they can investigate themselves.
I suppose it is a system like this you would like to see in Jamaica to protect Patois patois.
Pastagate is a sign of more Quebec language law silliness
Every now and then in Quebec’s language debate there comes a tipping point of silliness.We’re there now, with Pasta-gate, and the furor over the lack of French on menus in an Italian restaurant: It’s not pasta, it’s pâtes.
Seldom has Quebec been subjected to such ridicule and derision beyond its provincial borders. The story got picked up on CNN, which means it was broadcast worldwide. Social media went viral.
Inspector Clouseau never had such hilarious material.
Jean-François Lisée, the Parti Québécois cabinet minister responsible for Montreal and the English-speaking community, put it down to an excess of zeal on the part of the language inspector from the Office Québécois de la langue française.
Apart from the language of menus and signs, there’s a question of customers in restaurants and stores being served in French first: the “hi/bonjour” versus “bonjour/hi” issue. Seriously.
Lisée and his PQ colleagues may dismiss the pasta incident as overdone, but subsequent reports in The Gazette and La Presse make it clear that it was not a one-off at Buonanotte, but more like the language police out of control.
Moreover, it was the PQ that rekindled the language issue in last summer’s election campaign, when Pauline Marois played the identity card at every turn. The last thing Quebecers needed or wanted was another language debate, but Marois cynically stirred one up to consolidate her base, which had been bleeding votes to Québec solidaire on the left.
Marois promised to extend the student-enrolment restrictions of Bill 101 from the kindergarten-to-Grade-11 system to CEGEPs, which would have excluded francophones and allophones from English-language colleges. She pledged that companies with as few as 11 employees would have to comply with Bill 101, when the current requirements begin at 50 employees.
Elected with a weak minority government, she had no choice but to step back from those promises. She would never have got them past the Liberals and Coalition Avenir Québec in the legislature.
Instead, she has proposed Bill 14, amendments to the language law and provincial charter of rights. CEGEPs are left alone and businesses with more than 25 employees will have to comply with the linguistic regime. Which continues to miss the point: why would anyone in his or her right mind buy a small company or start one in Quebec, when he/she would spend all that time filling out forms, and when as a resident he/she would be looking at the highest marginal tax rates in North America?
The election campaign behind her, Marois urged Quebecers to be “sentinels of the language.” Echoing her boss when introducing Bill 14, the minister responsible for the language law, Diane De Courcy, said that while there was no money for more language police, “what is possible for all citizens is to become language sentries.”
In other words: snitches, filing anonymous complaints to the OQLF, which then sends its inspectors swooping down on restaurants, stores and businesses dealing with the public.
This is where the script becomes less like Peter Sellers and more like George Orwell.
Is there reason to be vigilant in protecting French? Sure. But it’s not by persecuting English and other languages that Quebec will promote the use of French.
A test of tolerance will come if some of Quebec’s bilingual municipalities lose their bilingual status because of their English-speaking share of the population falling below 50 per cent.
That’s what is currently proposed in Bill 14, and it’s already sparked an uproar in Montreal and the Eastern Townships.
In terms of language demographics, the latest census data are quite intriguing. The percentage of francophones in the Montreal area fell from 49.8 per cent in 2006 to 48.5 per cent in 2011. Cause for alarm? Nope. Because in that period, the number of Montreal residents speaking French and another language at home increased by 37 per cent or 90,000 people. As Celine Cooper noted in a recent magazine piece: “The statistics show that across Quebec, including Montreal, an increasing number of allophones are speaking French at home, indicating that French has surpassed English as the language to which newcomers are turning.”
Moreover, linguistic and cultural diversity are an important source of comparative advantage for Canada and Quebec in the global economy.
Finally, Pastagate symbolizes a retrograde movement back to the late 1970s, when Bill 101 was born. It was a different era, before laptops, cellphones, the Internet, smartphones and social media.
Seldom has Quebec been subjected to such ridicule and derision beyond its provincial borders. The story got picked up on CNN, which means it was broadcast worldwide. Social media went viral.
Inspector Clouseau never had such hilarious material.
Jean-François Lisée, the Parti Québécois cabinet minister responsible for Montreal and the English-speaking community, put it down to an excess of zeal on the part of the language inspector from the Office Québécois de la langue française.
Apart from the language of menus and signs, there’s a question of customers in restaurants and stores being served in French first: the “hi/bonjour” versus “bonjour/hi” issue. Seriously.
Lisée and his PQ colleagues may dismiss the pasta incident as overdone, but subsequent reports in The Gazette and La Presse make it clear that it was not a one-off at Buonanotte, but more like the language police out of control.
Moreover, it was the PQ that rekindled the language issue in last summer’s election campaign, when Pauline Marois played the identity card at every turn. The last thing Quebecers needed or wanted was another language debate, but Marois cynically stirred one up to consolidate her base, which had been bleeding votes to Québec solidaire on the left.
Marois promised to extend the student-enrolment restrictions of Bill 101 from the kindergarten-to-Grade-11 system to CEGEPs, which would have excluded francophones and allophones from English-language colleges. She pledged that companies with as few as 11 employees would have to comply with Bill 101, when the current requirements begin at 50 employees.
Elected with a weak minority government, she had no choice but to step back from those promises. She would never have got them past the Liberals and Coalition Avenir Québec in the legislature.
Instead, she has proposed Bill 14, amendments to the language law and provincial charter of rights. CEGEPs are left alone and businesses with more than 25 employees will have to comply with the linguistic regime. Which continues to miss the point: why would anyone in his or her right mind buy a small company or start one in Quebec, when he/she would spend all that time filling out forms, and when as a resident he/she would be looking at the highest marginal tax rates in North America?
The election campaign behind her, Marois urged Quebecers to be “sentinels of the language.” Echoing her boss when introducing Bill 14, the minister responsible for the language law, Diane De Courcy, said that while there was no money for more language police, “what is possible for all citizens is to become language sentries.”
In other words: snitches, filing anonymous complaints to the OQLF, which then sends its inspectors swooping down on restaurants, stores and businesses dealing with the public.
This is where the script becomes less like Peter Sellers and more like George Orwell.
Is there reason to be vigilant in protecting French? Sure. But it’s not by persecuting English and other languages that Quebec will promote the use of French.
A test of tolerance will come if some of Quebec’s bilingual municipalities lose their bilingual status because of their English-speaking share of the population falling below 50 per cent.
That’s what is currently proposed in Bill 14, and it’s already sparked an uproar in Montreal and the Eastern Townships.
In terms of language demographics, the latest census data are quite intriguing. The percentage of francophones in the Montreal area fell from 49.8 per cent in 2006 to 48.5 per cent in 2011. Cause for alarm? Nope. Because in that period, the number of Montreal residents speaking French and another language at home increased by 37 per cent or 90,000 people. As Celine Cooper noted in a recent magazine piece: “The statistics show that across Quebec, including Montreal, an increasing number of allophones are speaking French at home, indicating that French has surpassed English as the language to which newcomers are turning.”
Moreover, linguistic and cultural diversity are an important source of comparative advantage for Canada and Quebec in the global economy.
Finally, Pastagate symbolizes a retrograde movement back to the late 1970s, when Bill 101 was born. It was a different era, before laptops, cellphones, the Internet, smartphones and social media.
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Pastagate+sign+more+Quebec+language+silliness/8019598/story.html
Quebec is the laughing stock of the world right now with Office québécois de la langue française.
I wonder why the don't practice what they preach and call it Le Bureau québécois de la langue française. Maybe someone should file a complaint with them so they can investigate themselves.
Comment