One could argue its only because it got national coverage but I don't think we know for sure.

Ultimately I don't think it matters unless we start seeing a recurring pattern.

We moved out of Quebec mostly for the politics 5 years ago and I'm so glad I did. We're never going back.

Look what happened to French in Louisiana, or Irish in Ireland, or Native American languages across the continent. Quebecers don't want that to happen to them, and I can't blame them.

By the way, always remember that Quebecers never chose to become part of Canada or any English-speaking society; they were conquered by military force.

In fact, as places that explicitly chose to be part of a country, Quebec ranks pretty highly, since they've had multiple referendum's about leaving Canada.

Please.

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-angus-reid-ca...

I think a majority vote choosing to stay is a hell of a lot better than "forced to stay by the military"... which is what you'd get from the post I originally replied to. And it's not "against eachother" so much as "politely thinking that we'd be better of splitting the country in two" for most of them.

We're just about as white as they come. "Speak White" means "Speak the english of your captors."

There is an actual poem from about the time of the Quiet Revolution named "Speak White" which would explain this really well, here's (ironically) an English translation of it :

https://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=738881

For me, displacing large communities based on their mother tongue is nothing to be proud of. Be it either way.

Sure, as for literally any other subject, you may find people with extreme views on the topic, but that's what they are: extreme. That doesn't make it the general consensus.

Please stop spreading lies like this.

Edit: and, of course, this does not apply to tourists or visitors. This point is about people who want to live in Quebec.

1. Montreal has about 50/50 French/English split whereas in Quebec City it's something like 98/2 French/English. Yes, that was presented as an advantage.

2. There was a graph showing how the city is becoming more and more French-speaking over time. Again, proudly presenting that fact as a selling point.

I never said they are openly hostile but by hindering any English business and opressive language laws they drove whole communities of English speakers away. That's a fact.

This will no doubt come across poorly, but it's important to keep in mind when it happened. Quebec was allowed to keep their language, despite being conquered.

The current government is downright hostile towards Anglophones and immigrants.

You could say the same thing for the indigenous people of Quebec. Why is there no protection for their languages? For example, the Malecite–Passamaquoddy language may have as few as 600 native speakers remaining [1]. This is a much more urgent situation than French, which has 76.8 million native speakers worldwide.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malecite-Passamaquoddy_languag...

I explicitly mentioned in my comment that the destruction of indigenous cultures throughout the Americas was a regrettable thing, which is why Quebecers would like to avoid it happening to themselves.

I'm not blindly arguing here that French is the greatest language ever and nationalist Quebecers are correct on all political matters. I think French people were colonialists and their treatment of Native Americans in Quebec was terrible. But that doesn't change that now, however unsavory the circumstances of its birth, the Quebec culture doesn't deserve to be wiped out.

Francophone Quebecers have enough political power to enforce and expand their language and culture laws in order to “defend” their culture. But never lose sight of the fact that this comes at the expense of more than just anglophone residents. This affects all other cultures within Quebec. And that’s why you see it take the form of more than just language, it includes attacks on minority religious symbols and clothing as well.

French survives in a sea of anglophone hegemony only because of such language laws.

I can vouch for that - if you make any attempt at all to speak the most basic French they love you for making the attempt.

(It is now illegal in QC to be a public servant and wear e.g. a turban, yarmulke, crucifix, etc. Public buildings are still adorned with crucifexes and saint's names for reasons of 'cultural respect'.)

It kills innovation and economic development, and leads to the rampant religious discrimination and xenophobia now seen in the province.

Quebec's official language is French - regardless of its status within the rest of Canada. Why would you move it immigrate to Quebec if you are not willing to learn French?

If you like Canada but not French, go to Vancouver or Toronto

We've as much right to this province as francophones.

Also, here's a hot-tip: telling people they don't belong somewhere and that they should go live elsewhere is usually a really great heuristic of when you're extremely wrong.

French is the official language of Québec. If you want to live there and not do business with people in French, that is your problem.

I wouldn't say you don't belong there. By all means belong there. But the official language is French today, regardless of who built the province. If you want the province's official languages to be English and French, well, democracy is there to make that possible, even if it's unlikely at the moment.

You have a right to live in Québec. But for the moment, not a right to demand that businesses or government agencies communicate with you in English.

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As for me, I lve in Ontario. And FWIW, I believe very deeply that our society should beend over backwards to do business with people in a language they understand. So if someone is in trouble with the law, I am happy to have my tax dollars go to providing them with a translator. I think government web sites should have all sorts of translations available. I believe in the melting pot.

But...

All I can do is advocate for it and vote for it. If a different province votes for something else... I respect that.

I feel that official languages is in a very different bucket than laws about what people can wear in public.

But language WANTS might not be economically viable. For example in Scandinavia, Sami people (estimated population <100k) demanded all government interaction (documents, services, etc) to be translated in all their dialects (there are 11+ dialects, which are different in writing). Amount of work to be done to support that request would be astonishing.

Ironically the same true for French. There are 20+ very different dialects, is Quebec ready to work in all of them on government level? Or are we talking about le français standard?

So there is some practical limits to this, and so far EU is handling it's ok-ish. EU-wide systems are available in all official languages of all members, and minority languages are embraced when practical.

Or are you talking about the various regional languages/dialects/"patois" in France? If so, sure, many could be called "dialects of French" but they aren't spoken at all outside of France so it isn't really relevant to Quebec.

- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_France

But as far as I know, none of them are spoken in Quebec...

If so, sure, you have a consistent position at least. If not, why is Quebec different?

We have a national law that all students--anywhere in the country--can receive instruction in either English or French--but this has been consistently undermined in Quebec. They have made it so arduous to qualify for English school* that nearly all English speakers will not qualify.

That is just one example of the double standard. If you want the country to be bilingual, then it has to work both ways.

* The rule is something like "Both of your parents must be native Quebec and both must have attended English school in Quebec for their entire childhood. Any deviation from this and you cannot qualify to English school". So anyone who immigrates from the rest of Canada, or has one French/one English parent is disqualified.

Citation needed. Federal government offers services in French almost everywhere, as it offers services in English even in areas where almost no one speaks it.

But provincial services? There's just nothing. Ontario struggles to keep higher education and health services in French, and this is the province with the highest number of French speakers outside Quebec. There is a party in New Brunswick explicitly against providing services in French and they got 13% of the vote in the last election (reminder, New Brunswick is the only province to be officially bilingual).

So I am highly skeptical of your stance about the rest of Canada "bending over backward" to offer services in French...

So it's not just an issue of access, but equal access. That's why I called it 'bending over backwards'. It feels like a lot of politically-correct posturing that ignores the reality that there are very few French speakers in Winnipeg.

Despite all of this, the French services probably still suck. It's likely that they are equal on paper, but not in reality.

Most provinces do not make that choice, the further west you go.

Meanwhile no one wants to go to a French language CEGEP (years 11-13) because they need to learn English, and people in Ontario fight to get their kids into bilingual immersion schools.

For instance, Ca voter registration in tagalog.

https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting-resources/voting-cal...

Quebec is part of Canada, where English is one of the official languages. But English is not an official language of Quebec.

I also remember being a kid being ANGRY at Quebec for daring to want to separate, and thought we should just "kick them out, if they want their own country so badly."

I've come to appreciate Quebec as a unique and meaningfully distinct part of Canada. I do not think it weakens my Canadian identity to have one part of the country have a fiercely proud and unique perspective on feeling equally Quebecois and Canadian at the same time (or some balance of the two). Just because I don't have a similar sense of identity about my province, doesn't mean others can't.

I do think it's a bit unfair that the Federal Government has to treat English and French equally while Quebec itself does not, however I've also learned ago that fair actions and intentions do not always lead to fair outcomes. If Quebec did not fiercely fight to protect it's French-speaking status, it would have died a long time ago and got swallowed up from both sides by the English side of Canada. And that would have been a shame.

Finally, I'm an immigrant. And as such, I am deeply welcoming to other immigrants to Canada. But I also am conscious of the fact that refugees notwithstanding, immigrants have a choice in which part of the country they immigrate to. And given that, I don't think that it's unreasonable to build expectations for them that if they move to Quebec they will need to study and master French if they want to integrate. This should not be any more of a shock or burden than expecting Belgian immigrants to understand that there is a French half and a Flemish/Dutch half, and they are quite different.

The reality is that the anglophones built Quebec because they were colonizing it, and without them the francophones would have "built Quebec" just as well.

In general, I am in favor of the rights of regions to self determination as it is generally better when people are ruled by a government they consent to.

I support the right of Hong Kong, Catalonia, Quebec, Scottland and others to succeed if the majority of their inhabitants have a strong and consistent desire to leave.

I do not support discriminatory policies or attitudes that are intended to drive certain groups of people away.

All they have to do is add either a test or transcripts for 3 years of high school in French. Over time I've known many folks who obtained permanent residency through the exact same program (some of them after completing PhD almost exclusively in English). All they had to do was a test.

The reason French people believe this is because yes, there is some old vocabulary like souliers retained in Quebec, but on the other hand there are also some features that they've lost over time that are retained in France, like using si instead of oui to contradict a negative.

They merely reopened the case and saw that there were no missing documents. She could have gotten the same result by re-submitting the application instead of going to the media.

This whole story sounds more like some politicians are trying to get a spin out of it.