Whether it is the health situation, the assaults on the Quebec law on secularism or the attacks on Bill 96 on the official and common language of Quebec, French, I make two wishes.
In this twilight of 2021, we can predict the fact that 2022 will be a year heir to many challenges and unfinished battles in 2021. Battles that will occupy our minds throughout the year 2022.
Health
Fully vaccinated, many were preparing to experience the end of the year holidays in relative serenity, after almost two years spent in the shadow of a pandemic that will have turned our personal, family, social or professional lives upside down. It was without counting on the unexpected arrival of Omicron …
This new variant has almost brought us back to square one … It has collectively plunged us back into worry, torpor or frustration, triggering a rush on rapid tests in pharmacies, reminiscent of the one that was on paper. toiletries in shops in 2020 …
However, it turns out to be less lethal, but much more contagious … Thus, for our health salvation, my first wish is that this South African variant (Omicron) be the last of the series of mutants of the Wuhan virus; that it does as little damage as possible, and, with the help of planetary vaccination, that we quickly achieve collective immunity.
National identity
In the shadow of Omicron’s hubbub, through fundraising and “strategic” appointments in various federal legal spheres, opponents of the Law on the secularism of the State, adopted on June 16, 2019 by the Parliament of Quebec, sharpen their weapons with the avowed goal of barking it in court. They don’t care about this law, which nevertheless fits perfectly into Quebec’s intercultural model.
Quebec interculturalism, its “Living together”, is a model for managing cultural and religious diversity that is the subject of a broad consensus among the Quebec population. Nothing to do with the Canadian model of multiculturalism, its “Separate Living”, rejected from the start by Quebec, regardless of the color of government.
Reminder: it is not forbidden to practice your religion in Quebec.
Moreover, Bill 96 aims in particular to enshrine in the Canadian constitution that Quebec is a nation and that French is its only official language. A radical section of the English-speaking population of Quebec is angry … It is frightened by the prospect of the loss of certain linguistic advantages.
Once adopted, like any law, Law 96 will not be perfect. And like any law, it will be perfectible …
Reminder: it will not be forbidden to speak English in Quebec.
For the salvation of Quebec surrounded in an Anglo-American “linguistic ocean”, my second wish is to see the expression of a lasting and unwavering collective support for the affirmation of a national cultural identity based in particular on its Act respecting the official and common language of Quebec, French.