Complaints double about French
TVA says here that complaints have doubled over five years about not getting served in French in Montreal. Given that feelings about this are stoked regularly by TVA’s owners, we shouldn’t be surprised. There’ll be some columns about this over the weekend, too.
Blork 12:52 on 2021-03-05 Permalink
Yeah, more complaints doesn’t necessarily mean more of that colonial devil talk being used, it just means more people are feeling agitated and need something to complain about.
Ephraim 14:19 on 2021-03-05 Permalink
What is the OLF going to do when all the boomers are gone?
Kevin 15:12 on 2021-03-05 Permalink
I know we live in the whiniest age in human existence, but people need to find better hobbies.
Jack 15:12 on 2021-03-05 Permalink
This article is perfectly emblematic of how Quebecor creates discourse and ultimately public policy. Take a look at how this article is framed, who speaks, and who is given authority.
One of the first things about this article that requires a bit of clarity is the complaint process of the OQLF. You or I can sit down and fill out multiple complaints, so if they divided the complaints by authorship one would be stunned to see how many come from the same hand full of people, who are retired boomers with an ax to grind i.e. Gilles Proulx
The creation of the fear of the disappearing French language is a trope that has been repeated non stop for 60 years. My favorite was sitting in class at Universite de Montreal and watching the film “Disparaître” by Lise Payette. In the last scene, in what can only be described as a shockingly xenophobic film, Gilles Vigneault looks at the camera and says ” By the year 2000 it will be over, we will have become Louisiana.” Sad music maybe a tear, fade to black, that was in 1989.
The film was described and promoted this way ” D’ici à vingt-cinq ans ( 2014) tout au plus, prédisent certains démographes, la nation canadienne-française sera moribonde. PUIS, ELLE DISPARAÎTRA.”
This is getting old.
Ephraim 10:53 on 2021-03-06 Permalink
Reminds me of a class that I took. One student got up and discussed how bad immigration was for Quebec. The professor looked at him and asked if he wanted to stop Quebec’s growth and do the jobs that new immigrants filled. And how would he fill this jobs, if we didn’t take in new immigrants? And that’s the point. It’s a game of chess, you need to think a few moves ahead. There are two types of government, those that deal with the immediate, and those that lay down long term plans based on the future…. those that build on fossil fuels and those thinking about how we reduce dependence, increase the middle class and set a larger tax base for the future. None of these is built on snitching on someone who wrote a word with an apostrophe s or worried about using chien chaud instead of hot dog. There are hundreds of languages out there, all managing to survive. There are still people speaking Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) in spite of the Spanish Inquisition.
Blork 18:20 on 2021-03-06 Permalink
And oh, the irony. That student probably thought of him or herself as very lefty and progressive, not realizing that their nostalgia for the purity of de souche Quebec is pure MAGA-think and conservative AF.
JaneyB 20:20 on 2021-03-06 Permalink
If people don’t want immigrants, fine, but at the very least they need to have more kids to fill the population gap. I don’t know how many Montrealers are ready to raise 3-4 kids in their 20s, like they did in 1965 but that’s the deal. People who are not doing that are part of the decline problem.
As Ephraim pointed out, immigrants right now do the bad jobs so the Anguished would need to work for much less and/or pay more for everything. Likewise, many immigrants are needed to fill jobs requiring a lot of advanced education which many average Quebecois do not want to do (Franco male high school drop-out rate of 50%). There need to be some real conversations about what Francos are contributing to the survival project if they are not having families in their 20s, going to grad school or working hard at basic wages. We have a fabulous daycare system so there is even a family-friendly infrastructure but it’s not really helping the population decline.
Language protection is important but the big problems are elsewhere, imo.