Sean Hayward

There was already a thread on this exact issue, wasn't there? Anyway, my position is clear. I support immigration to the extent that it benefits Canada, and this proposal by the Conservatives will further that principle in the immigration system. Is there a real debate on this proposal or do we all agree that it's a good thing?

Once again, it depends what he means by "bilingualism". Does he mean that not every Canadian speaks both official languages? Then obviously any knowledgeable person would agree. I do agree that its seems to have produced no unity and had a considerable financial cost, but to reverse it now would be fatal for national unity. I don't know what he means when he says it has "produced no fairness", but then again I am not a member of the special political group, generally residing west of the Ontario-Manitoba border, that sees how not providing services in French to French-speaking Canadians is fair.

You are mistaking wealth for money. What is wealth? Is it a bunch of pieces of paper with words on them or small pieces of metal? No. They only have that meaning because we have place that meaning upon them. The money is transferred, but the wealth is generated. If there was a society somewhere that had piles and piles of cash but no goods or services for it to be spent on, would that society be wealthy? Of course not. The generation of wealth occurs through production of goods and performance of services. Money only exists because we need some kind of currency of exchange, since we no longer use the barter system.

There is a difference between an expansive program of official bilingualism, like what seems to be the policy of the federal government right now, and a more limited policy, which I am in favour of. All this business with restrictive sign laws, government jobs disproportionately going to francophones, and ridiculous packaging requirements, I am totally opposed to. Those I would consider "expansive official bilingualism". What I am arguing for, a "limited official bilingualism", is that the federal government, governing a population with more than 20% francophones, should provide services in English where there is SIGNIFICANT DEMAND and in French where there is SIGNIFICANT DEMAND. Holding a referendum in the rest of Canada on whether to keep Quebec in Canada is a good idea. I am sure it would be a victory for the keeping Quebec side, but it would give the people of English Canada a chance to express their opinion. It would confirm that Quebec is not the only voice to be heard in this debate over what Canada is.

Ah! That's the whole point of bilingualism: let the French be French and let the English be English. I find it hard to express my frustration. There is such misunderstanding here. If that's not what you think official bilingualism is, then what do you think it is? Can someone on the anti-bilingualism side please clearly explain what they think official bilingualism is, why they are opposed, and what their proposed alternative is. That way we can see if there really is a disagreement here or if this is just a mutual misunderstanding. The following questions are a starting point. Are you opposed to the concept of a government having official languages? If so, what is your alternative? If not, are you opposed to the federal government providing services in French? If so, how do you deal with the 20% plus of Canadians who primarily speak French?

Exactly. Labour laws and unions are both serving the same purpose, protecting the workers. It is redundant to have both in our society.

The real question is: are the multiple spouses really in the relationship of their own free will? Probably not, especially if the marriage took place in some backward third world society. Whether polygamy should or should not be legal is a very difficult question. But they certainly should not be receiving any kind of financial support from the government.

This thread is showing the very reason that a socialist government is a bad idea. Socialists see a market economy as a system that constantly screws over the workers (however they define that group) in favour of some mythically arrogant rich people whose only motivation is to retain their status and who never contribute to society. They don't stop to think about who generates the wealth in society, they just take it for granted. They talk about fairness, but they don't explain how it is fair to give everyone the same quality of life regardless of how much or little they contribute to society. Simply listening to Jack Layton for a few consecutive minutes shows that he doesn't understand reality.

The great irony here is that the so-called Human Rights Commissions, dedicated to the cause of human rights, are, unintentionally, one of the most restrictive and abusive forces on human rights in this country.

The Toyota workers have seen why they have jobs and, to an increasing degree, the (former) Ford/GM/Chrysler workers don't. The unions have served to speed up the decline of the auto industry in North America. Every time they secure a concession from the corporations, they put another nail in those companies' collective coffin.

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that there is little support for official bilingualism on this forum, and, to my knowledge, in English Canada. My basic reason for supporting official bilingualism is as follows: To decrease divisions between English-speaking Canadians and French-speaking Canadians, to recognize the large French linguistic community which has existed for centuries within Canada, and to make it clear that French-speaking Canadians have a home in Canada. I know that these arguments will be rejected immediately by many of you reading this, and I do no expect to convince you. Having lived most of my life in English Canada and witnessed the contempt for French-speaking Canadians there and being cognizant of the resentment that many Quebecers have of English-speaking Canadians, I am now starting to believe in Lord Durham's assessment that Canada is "two nations warring within the bosom of a single state". With policies such as official bilingualism, I believe that perhaps we could forge one nation from the situation we have inherited. However, looking back through history, it seems that every time an attempt to reconcile the differences between English-speaking Canadians and French-speaking Canadians, such as with official bilingualism, it only serves to drive a wedge between the two groups and divide us further. Are these two nations destined to always remain seperate? Are the differences between them irreconcileable? I say with a heavy heart, perhaps the answer to both these questions is yes. For the time being we should retain official bilingualism, but if this arrangement (Quebec within Canada) continues to deteriorate and becomes more unworkable, then perhaps we need to rethink what Canada is. If Quebec does secede, taking almost all French-speaking Canadians with it, then the attempt to forge a bilingual nation has failed, and Canada will be a nation, a great nation, but not the same as it was before.

How is that twisted logic? Official bilingualism is meant to ensure that French-speaking people aren't confined inside Quebec and English-speaking people outside Quebec. If Quebec secedes some day in the future, then there will be no purpose for bilingualism and it can be abandoned, but with 20% of Canadians speaking French primarily, how can you justify denying them services in their language? It doesn't mean the 20% are equal to the 80%. Can't you get it through your head? How does it make them "equal"? It simply says that they are entitled to receive services in their language, not that they are elevated to some higher level. If you want to see Canada divided along linguistic lines and divided up then of course you will be in favour of alienating the French-speaking Canadians and isolating them in Quebec. So Argus has agreed that his opposition to bilingualism is based on his opinion that "my language is better than yours". I know that both policies (official bilingualism at the federal level and French-only in Quebec at the provincial level) benefit French, although not necessarily at the expense of English. And that just illustrates my point, you are against both because they benefit French and that goes against your "English is better" philosophy. Don't you think some French-speakers believe that French is better. Official bilingualism is about making both French-speaking Canadians and English-speaking Canadians believe that Canada is their home. The opposing view is that Quebec is the home of the French and every other province is the home of the English. In other words, isolation. There seems to be a widely held attitude here that it's us (English) against them (French). I do not expect to convince you if that's your attitude.

You are mistaken fundamentally on the issue of official languages. The federal government is officially bilingual, in Quebec as in the rest of Canada. Almost all (except New Brunswick) of the provincial governments are officially unilingual. Therefore your statement that official bilingualism is arranged asymetrically to benefit Quebec is completely false. On the point that the collective will is often not well represented by government, that is a problem to be addressed by democratic reform, not a fundamental, un-fixable problem. What I mean by social engineering is society engineering their government, which then engineers society. In other words, society is able to engineer itself according to its collective will, through government. There is a difference between individual will and collective will. The individual will is, as you said, "what will occur with or without government not because of it". The collective will is the combined will of the community, as a community. Can you clarify your allusion to multiculturalism? I don't think you understand that all government policies are, in some way and to some degree, social engineering. If you want to be completely free of social engineering, you must give up all government.

This person is very confused. If you don't understand the issue at hand, please refrain from commenting.

You leave a thread alone for a couple days and it can get so off topic.

Is it the task of government to engineer society, to build a nation? In general, yes. Nation-building projects must be undertaken by governments simply because the individuals cannot undertake these projects alone, and the federal government is the manifestation of the collective will of the nation. Nation-building requires a degree of co-operation and co-ordination that individual citizens are not capable of without government. If we want to establish anarchy and never have any kind of government in our lives, well then that's a different question. But if you agree that we should have a government to hold us together as a society, then you must agree that there needs to be some degree of social engineering. If Canada is to become a nation in the full and true sense of the word, we must abandon this isolation of French in Quebec and English outside Quebec, and accept that Canada is bilingual from coast to coast. Leafless appears to be so confused I don't know where to start. There IS an English-speaking minority in Quebec. If you have any knowledge whatsoever of Canada, then one of the first things you would learn is that Quebec has a French-speaking majority and an English-speaking minority. The English-speaking minority of Quebec is part of the English-speaking majority of Canada. Maybe that is where I lost you. I can assure you I would never support any racist law of any kind. Quebec's language laws are in no way racist. They discriminate against languages other than French, but they do not discriminate against any race. I was not taking a position on those laws by mentioning them, I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy of criticizing French-only laws in Quebec while promoting English-only laws in the other provinces. Do you understand the concept of an official language? You say "Quebec's monolingualism was implemented by the government of Quebec". Of course it was implemented by the government of Quebec! Who else would Quebec's language policies be implemented by? What role has the federal government to recognize or not recognize provincial language policies? I must have failed to understand your point because I can't think of any embarassing questions this brings up. Would you like to ask them to me directly?

That's a good point. By putting people on trial for "speech-crimes" we are giving them a forum to voice their opinions and turning them into martyrs around whom civil liberties groups must rally. On the other hand, if we just left them alone, they would languish in obscurity, and be ostracized by society and rejected by their peers. I understand that the Human Rights Commissions and the hate speech provisions of the Criminal Code are different things, but they are highly related in the sense that they are both attempts to censor free speech in Canada.

I agree that denying the Holocaust should not be a crime. If you start saying its a crime to suggest something in public, what kind of a society have we become? Are we so insecure about our society's judgement that we have to use the force of law to prevent certain ideas from even being suggested in public? I personally despise Holocaust deniers, but I accept their right to express their opinions, just like everyone else.

I think your question is not valid at this time. Have you seen the recent byelection results? NDP roughly tied with Green Party in 3 of the 4. It would appear to me that the NDP may be on the brink of a meltdown similar to the one in the 1993 election, where they went from about 40 seats to less than 10.

No I do not believe in your version of assimilation, where we would value English above French and attempt to cleanse Canada of its French-speaking elements. Both languages should be treated equally by the federal government and certain provincial governments. Your assertion that French linguistic communities outside Quebec receive aid while the English linguistic community inside Quebec does not (while I doubt its truthfulness) is something that I too am concerned about. We should promote these communities to ensure that, in the future, Quebec does not remain "the French-speaking province" and the other nine provinces do not remain "the English-speaking provinces". That should be our objective, promoting linguistic duality within each province. The federal government should attract English-speaking people to settle in Quebec and attract French-speaking people to settle in the rest of Canada. I would support holding referendums on official bilingualism, as long as the questions are clear and fair. That way the Canadian public could express their support for the policy and we could get on with the task at hand, building a nation. Those of you who are so against official bilingualism, what about the English-speaking minority in Quebec? I find that beneath the arguments used by the anti-bilingualism people, such as "it wastes our money" or "it's just pandering to an interest group", the real reason for the resentment of official bilingualism is a feeling that English is just better than French. The same people who criticize official bilingualism in the rest of Canada are those who criticize official monolingualism in Quebec, presumably because in that case it benefits French at the expense of English.

There are major problems with public healthcare systems, such as the Canadian system. There are also major problems with private healthcare systems, such as the American system. What we need to do is look at both and develop a hybrid system combining the best elements of both. That is the best way to solve our current healthcare problems.

It's not a question of whether people in Quebec learn English too. I personally think that's a necessity for interprovincial and international business. The issue is the presevation of French as the "common language" of Quebec, the language used by people in daily activities. As someone else said, it is an expression of their identity as Quebecois.

The concept of restricting freedom of speech on the basis that it might offend someone is not only a mistake, it is a dangerous mistake. The potential for abuse in such a system threatens democracy itself. I recently looked into the case of Ezra Levant, the publisher of the Western Standard, who was brought before the Alberta Human Rights Commission in response to a complaint by a Muslim leader over Levant's publication of the Danish cartoons. Levant was forced to pay his own legal expenses throughout the several month process while he was investigated by the taxpayer-funded HRC. As Ezra Levant said himself, "The process is the punishment". Even if the charges are dropped eventually, the accused has still been put through hell. After all, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear" (George Orwell), and "Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're in favour of free speech, you're in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favour of free speech" (Noam Chomsky).

Can you explain how this is discriminatory against English-speaking Canadians? Your credibility to objectively assess bilingualism policies is tarnished by your obvious "English-only" vision of Canada. The fact that the Bloc is against these recommendations should show you that it is a policy that is good for Canada and national unity. What specifically do you want a referendum on?

OK but you have to realize that the situation in Montreal is different from the situation in the province as a whole. The percentage of the Quebec population speaking French was 80.9 in 1996 and 81.2 in 2001, and it is likely that the level of French use in Quebec is remaining stable. Other factors to consider are that a large proportion of immigrants to Quebec come from French-speaking countries and so they will obviously just continue to use French rather than learning English, and that the majority of immigrants going into Quebec are selected by the government of Quebec, which uses knowledge of French as a primary requirement.