In the West, there are only two countries whose linguistic minority has a weight comparable to that of the French minority in Canada (21.4% in 2021). These are Belgium (whose French-speaking minority represents 39% of the population) and Switzerland (French-speaking minority: 23%). To tell the truth, no Western linguistic minority is as threatened as the French minority in Canada, whose very survival is in danger.
Neither in Belgium nor in Switzerland, the central government and its bureaucracy would not show the profound carelessness that has been observed in this matter in Ottawa since Ottawa exists. Canada has to offer its French-speaking minority nothing but ‘political aid in dying’ amid soothing rhetoric, empty promises and Supreme Court battles aimed at defeating any attempt by the Quebec government to stick its head out. some water.
Canada’s immigration policies have always been dictated by the English-speaking majority and, often, by its most “Orange” current, and they have had, in cabinet secrecy, the objective of drowning French-speakers and leading them to assimilation pure and simple.
The constitution that has been imposed by force in Quebec and the judges appointed by Ottawa who interpret it do not care about the survival of the French community in America. The only things that count in their eyes are multiculturalism, the protection of the English minority in Quebec and the sacrosanct individual freedom.
Everything is used to put the dying person to sleep: the supposed need to equally treat the bloodless French-speaking minorities outside Quebec (the largest of these minorities, that of Ontario, is about to disappear from the radar!) and the ultra- spoiled from Quebec; equalization payments, the myth that economic development necessarily passes through English (of the ten countries with the highest GDP per capita, only two are English-speaking); the supposed impossibility of attracting French-speaking immigrants and foreign students, etc.
The solution adopted in Switzerland and Belgium consisting in creating linguistic regions within which a single language is used in education, from primary to university, and in public services, is never even considered, whereas that this solution has proven itself in these countries.
If Ottawa does not care about the tragic decline of French despite its denials, its priority being the resurrection of the more than 60 indigenous languages victims of the federal genocide, Quebec governments “are sleeping on the gas”. As assimilation is a decades-long process, our governments swallow the pills of our decline one by one every five years and quickly move on.
We imagine “moderate” laws aimed at slowing down the inexorable process, knowing full well that the federal government, its judges and its courts will butcher and emasculate them. The important thing is to win the next election by counting on the pusillanimity of the population.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, people are dying to save their nation, their culture, their language, their democracy and their existence as a sovereign people.
The most eloquent sign of our resignation is found in the behavior of English-speaking Quebecers. The latter adopted bilingualism the day after the first, then the second referendum, when they saw that we were raising our heads. This ended between 2016 and 2021.
Since the disappearance of the Parti Québécois, English unilingualism has once again become the norm. Between 2016 and 2021, in just five years, English unilingualism has increased by 20% in Quebec, which is huge! Our Anglos don’t take us seriously anymore.
Only the Parti Québécois is alarmed by the bad news from the 2021 census and points out that the CAQ reforms are doomed to invalidation by the judges and are nothing but sandbags trying to stop the tsunami.
But who listens to him, while all day long, we are intoxicated by infantilizing advertisements extolling the talents of thaumaturge of our chief anesthesiologist, François Legault? Who among us really believes that the Act respecting the official and common language of Quebec, French (PL 96) will change our destiny?
A true leader would urgently convene the Estates General of the North American Francophonie to save it before it is too late, and this leader would tell us: “If Quebec’s independence is really necessary to survive, let’s do it. »