"Sovereignists want Quebec to defy Supreme Court ruling on Bill 104"

http://tinyurl.com/ydbomgl

MONTREAL – A downtown rally Monday evening will kick off “a vast campaign of public mobilization” designed to pressure the Quebec National Assembly to declare it will defy an Oct. 22 decision on English-language schooling in Quebec handed down by Canada’s highest court, prominent Quebec nationalist Mario Beaulieu said ... The court declared Bill 104 unconstitutional. The Quebec law had tightened access to English schooling in the province

...So much for sovereigntists respecting democracy, a large element of which is the rule of law, with all its checks and balances..

[Bill 104] had been adopted in 2002 by the Quebec National Assembly – unanimously, Beaulieu and others noted repeatedly during an afternoon news conference at the SSJB headquarters ...

The National(ist) Assembly does a lot of things unanimously; that doesn't make them sound. Take the long-gun registry ... please.

“This judicial decision threatens the survival of the French language in Quebec,” Beaulieu declared, stating that Quebec never agreed to Canada’s 1982 constitution.

Thus judicial decision affects about 1000 students per year; statistically insignificant in the French school system, but lifeblood for the anglos.

Besides, Quebec may not have signed the constitution, but it is bound by it. That's also in the constitution.

The first of what Beaulieu said will be a series of events around the province is to be held at 7 p.m. Monday near the SSJB offices, at the Just for Laughs museum, 2102 St. Laurent Blvd. just south of Sherbrooke St ...

Just for laughs? That's for sure.

The Kyle Wozniak file

http://rabble.ca/babble/central-canada/bureaucratic-bs-could-force-montrealer-english-school

If Canadian federal-jurisdiction workplaces are strictly federal, then it should be hands off from provincial interference. Unless of course, the interference is for a principle you support, like the prima facie-tiousness of French in Quebec.

But federalism, like democracy, is a series of checks and balances. Schools are a provincial jurisdiction under the Constitution of Canada. Educational rights in the official languages are enumerated there. The so-called Canada clause, where access to English schools in Quebec is granted, was whittled down by federal-provincial wrangling all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Thomas Mulcair of the federal NDP is a former Quebec provincial cabinet minister, and a putative federal one. His comments and insight on Quebec are germane and welcome at any time.

But Kyle Wozniak's father's presence or absence is not germane in this case. His educational history and Kyle's mother's rights are.

Now you care about Kyle's education. Kyle's mother presumably went to French school in Quebec, but since she didn't move anywhere, she has a presumptive right to schooling her child in English.

The majority and the minority both will have to suffer along with the political types' endless appeal to insecurity. Recall Proposition 08 against gay marriage in California (please). Minority rights balanced against those of the majority are another price we all owe each other.

Maybe Woody Allen would be as hard-pressed to satirize Quebec as Mordecai Richler was: just present the facts and no one will believe it's not a put-on.

"Two-tier health, two-tier education"

"PQ is pressuring Liberals to close Bill 101 loophole"

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/tier+health+tier+education/2239066/story.html

.

.. Should it be a tuition fee that can exceed $15,000 for every child for every year of her education? Or should it be the low, low bargain price of the same fee but for only one child for only one year, after which not only he but also his brothers and sisters and his children could attend English public schools for free? The answer was the lower price, until the one-year loophole was closed in 2002 by the adoption of Bill 104 by the Parti Québécois government of the day, with the support of the Liberal opposition

...And it can't simply re-introduce Bill 104 with a so-called "notwithstanding" clause, since the latter can't be invoked for a violation of minority language rights ...

The PQ thinks it has the answer. Last week it proposed to extend Bill 101's restrictions on admission to fully private English schools. It cited experts in constitutional law saying such a measure could be challenged only as a violation of freedom rather than minority language rights, and could therefore be shielded by a notwithstanding clause ...

"Extending 101 [to CEGEPS] is nonsensical"

http://www.themetropolitain.ca/articles/view/710

.. In 2000, the Larose Commission on the State and Future of the French language ...reviewed the idea of extending Bill 101 limits on English eligibility to the CEGEP level. The arguments and statistics then were much the same as they are today. Unanimously, we did not carry the idea forward ...

While the proposal – if ever adopted – may satisfy a few into a false sense of security over the French language, it fails to address a far greater menace to the use of French at home and in the workplace. And that menace is not the English-speaking community or the English language, but rather the quality of French that is taught in Quebec schools regardless of whether those schools teach in French or English ...

... the percentage of allophones had reached an overall majority of enrolment in the French system’s primary and secondary levels on the island of Montreal. The Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste likened it to the “Louisianisation” of Quebec ...

Many factors weigh in on a young adult’s choice of which CEGEP to attend, some substantive, some trivial. The ultimate choice may not just be a question of language, but also proximity, curricula and other considerations particular to each student regardless of linguistic background ...

And let’s not forget that this proposal would also apply to francophone students who likely will be less than amused at having their rights stripped from them in a misguided attempt to restrict the rights of allophones ...

Chantal Hebert: "Language law to face foe from within"

http://tinyurl.com/ygtm7af

...While the Bill 104 debate has focused on immigrant parents, the reality is that some francophone parents had also been using the private school loophole to get their children into the English school system.

Their numbers may be small but they are part of a larger trend that increasingly sees French-speaking parents aspire to more effective English-language training for their children.

In the future, the competing aspirations of Quebec francophones are more likely to erode the consensus that underlies Bill 101 than the House of Commons or even the Supreme Court.

The quality of French is strained. By the French.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/language+limits+CEGEP+choice/2168964/story.html

... Anglophone students, after years of French in primary and secondary school, study more French in CEGEP, and the great majority of them emerge effectively bilingual. Many francophones naturally want the same advantage ...

The best thing Quebec's self-declared defenders of French could do for its continued survival is to ensure that it is taught well in primary and secondary schools - including English ones ...

The real language scandal is how poorly too many of the province's French-language school graduates speak and write French, one of the world's most elegant languages ...