It's unanimous: they are anglophobes

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/notwithstanding+clause+says/2219518/story.html

Bill 104, adopted unanimously in 2002 by the National Assembly, tried to block “transition” schools but last month the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Bill 104 unconstitutional, giving Quebec one year to find another way to resolve the issue.

"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.

"The Pied Piper of Quebec"

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-pied-piper-of-quebec/article1366946/

... [Jacques Parizeau] lures Quebeckers with a Pied Piper's melody. But his spin on reality shows when he quotes selectively the report of five eminent experts in international law consulted in 1991 by the Quebec government. “The unanimous conclusion of their legal opinion is quite clear: The frontiers of a sovereign Quebec would be those of current Quebec.”

But Mr. Parizeau seems to forget that he published a letter in which he accused the Supreme Court of favouring the partition of a seceding Quebec. And he omits more pertinent quotations from the five experts: “The right to secession does not exist in international law.” And this: “The Quebec people exercises effectively its right to self-determination within the framework of the Canadian whole and is not legally authorized to invoke it to justify its future accession to independence.”

On May 19, 1994, Mr. Parizeau told the National Assembly: “There is the law. We are a law-abiding state. Canada and Quebec are not banana republics. There is the Constitution. There is international law. And we have been elected to defend the law.” After that beginning, he argued that Canada was divisible but Quebec was not. The law be damned.

Mr. Parizeau's flights of mythology would be amusing but for the ascendancy he holds as Quebec's most influential separatist. The crowds at his book launch Monday proved that. As such, he is more dangerous than ridiculous.

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.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign ... with French predominance

http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/years+later/2018306/story.html

1989: " ...the Liberal government's use of the notwithstanding clause to override a Supreme Court decision that banning English on outdoor signs violated freedom of expression. The clause allowed the Liberal government to hastily pass Bill 178 to maintain the ban, a move that was regarded as a severe slap in the face from anglophones' traditional political ally."

1993: "The Liberal government changed the law four years later when the notwithstanding clause came up for renewal, finally allowing English on outdoor signs, with French predominance."