Ensuring Harmony

Repressive societies clamp down hard, mercilessly so on the minorities among them. Those minorities have scant status; occasionally denied citizenship, and whose presence is tolerated, nothing more. They are the oppressed, the wary, aware that the future promises them little but they endure for there is little much else they can do. The tyranny of the majority in most countries of the world provides scant comfort for the minorities living among them.

But those are mostly in traditional have-not countries, economically emerging countries, socially and technologically backward countries. Countries all too often where religion itself plays a huge part in stifling equality. In such countries minorities may not speak their own language. The language of the majority is required to be spoken. A minority religion, culture and heritage is forbidden to be valued, celebrated, respected and practised.

Those draconian language laws forbidding the use of languages not approved by totalitarian governments represent the most backward of global communities. Religions that must be practised in secret because they are deemed illegal in a country ruled by a tyrant withholding such privileges from those he rules represent a social and lifestyle stricture that many people in many countries are familiar with.

Just as well that North America is so removed from such oppressive tactics whereby human nature is given free reign to impose restrictions upon the vulnerable. So it is strange indeed that within Canada a province that prides itself on its culture, heritage, language and uniqueness as a nation, forbids the use of a language other than their own, other than within special circumstances.

Canada, after all, is a country dedicated to the egalitarian ideal, to freedom of religion, thought, communication, gender orientation. A country that goes out of its way to encourage diversity. A country that guarantees under the law freedom from persecution on the basis of religion, ethnicity, gender, ideology, culture or any other human social variable.

Within Canada the Province of Quebec, however, sees itself as a country dedicated to a vision of cohesive monotony; harmony in the social sphere with everyone acceding to laws demanding that French be spoken, given prominence and respect above all others; the linguistic commerce and communication tool of first choice through legislation.

Children may not be educated in English without some very precise qualifications. The English-language school board in Montreal is facing a dilemma whose "main enemy is the Quebec language laws", according to one of its representatives. Their enrolment has been steadily declining, threatening the very existence and future viability of their schools. Most English-language school boards in Quebec see increasingly fewer students altogether.

The provincial association cites a drop of over 150,000 students since the 1970s. Simply put, the province's parochial outlook and xenophobic horror of English swamping French has ensured that French would thrive and English would shrivel in its use; not by popular public choice, but by legislated decree. "We're not getting enough new oxygen into our system", said the president of the Quebec English School Boards Association.

Its very existence is under threat of eventually disappearing. Bill 104, following on the province's original restrictive language bill 101 that caused a mass exodus of Anglophone Quebecers from the province into Canada's other welcoming provinces, was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada. but even this was ineffective in halting the bleeding of English-language educational opportunities.

Canada itself is an officially bilingual country. Where numbers dictate, French is available to all who demand to be served in the language of their choice. Respect is given to French, even by those who are monolingual, viewing it as one of the founding languages of the country. In Quebec there is no respect whatever for English; signage, documents, translations, English-speakers are not readily available; not on highways, in hospitals or other public institutions meant to serve the entire community.

A strange social anomaly within a province which imperiously evokes its right to respect and recognition of its presence within Canada as a unique community, a nation unto itself, a culture and a history and a language apart from any other, proud of its heritage and determined that those outside the province must acknowledge all of that, and more.