I was speaking with a guy from Calgary and his take on the seccession matter was that Quebec was actually a liablilty for Canada-taking more tax money than it put into the system and that provinces like Alberta would be better off without Quebec. He had no problems with a Canada without it's Francophones. I got the feeling that in Houston North most people could care less about anything other than oil money.
Well, Earl, the only two provinces that don't take out more than they put in are Alberta and Ontario. Quebec is among the provinces that get equalization payments, and it gets quite a bit, since its population is 7.5 million, or just under a quarter of the total Canadian population.
In strict financial terms, Alberta
would be better off without Quebec, or B.C., or Saskatchewan, or Manitoba, or New Brunswick, or Nova Scotia, or Prince Edward Island, or
Newfoundland (special note to my buddy Earl ... that's
one word, not two:tongue:.)
But what would that Calgarian have? Nada for a country.
Albertans, some of them, do have a kind of insular view of the world, I think. But many don't.
He also mentioned that French bilingual language education is not mandatory except in New Foundland which was surprising to me considering the government's stand on including French as a national language.
Is it mandatory even in Newfoundland? I didn't know that.
The people who
have to be bilingual are those offering services in federal government offices across the country. Now, not everyone in a federal office in Calgary, say, would have to be bilingual, but there would have to be arrangements so that a francophone could deal with someone in his mother tongue in that office. (I'm sure there are reasonable exceptions allowed.)
This rankles some people. It makes it difficult for a unilingual anglophone to obtain certain federal civil service positions, and the top levels require the capacity to deal both in French and English. (This would not normally, I don't think, be a great problem outside of Ottawa, the capital, in Ontario.)
This requires extensive training for those anglophones who elect to go that route, and it also puts them at a disadvantage with francophones from Quebec and other places (there are even francophone communities in Alberta, you know), who more or less automatically have a good command not only of French, but of English, the language they probably live in outside the home and in which they may very well have received a good part of their education.
So the
really bilingual people probably have French as their mother tongue.
Quebec itself is not officially bilingual, by the way. The only officially bilingual province is New Brunswick, of which roughly a third are of Acadian heritage and often speak French at home. (Like Quebecois French, it has a good many touches of English vocabulary and literally translated expressions, though many people can speak a quite standard French when they're dealing, say, with French people from Europe.)
Oddly, the province with the largest percentage of elementary and high school students in French immersion programs happens to be ... wait for it, Earl ...
ALBERTA.
Astonishing, no?
Although the movement may have given many Quebecois pride in thier heritage there probably were many negative repercussions because of the unpredictable political situation - the decline of Montreal in particular as a financial center of Canada and the exodus of business investment to Toronto.
Those repercussions were felt mostly in Quebec, of course.
But across Canada, many people have grown weary of the incessant political uncertainty. This has been going on for four decades.
If someone was telling you for 40 years that they were going to divorce you, you might finally not know which would be better ... a continuing of the uncertainty, or a divorce that would allow you to get on with your life.
But I'm not implying that Canadians want Quebec to go.
In large majority, they really don't.
And many, like me, would be deeply wounded if that sad prospect ever darkened ...
ended, really ... the history that united, we hoped generously, two solitudes.
But I cannot speak for the Quebecois. They will decide to go, or the impulse will one day wither and die.
I always thought you were Quebecois Rubi.
You had a very knowing look, Earl, that day you saw me eating sugar pie (
tarte au sucre).
I've lived in Quebec for a while, both in Quebec City and in Montreal.
I love Quebec.
But sit down, Earl. I have a confession.
The francophile you're talkin' to, this guy Rubi ... he's an
Albertan born and bred, living now in Ontario.
