Mr. Rae said that since Liberal MPs support the Harper motion he doesn't see a need to "gild the lily" with further discussion at the convention. "I don't know why one would want to prolong the discussion," he said, while denying Mr. Ignatieff could claim any advantage from how well Mr. Harper's motion was received. "Look, the day I need to be vindicated by Stephen Harper, flip me over."I'm convinced Rae would have won if he had made it to the fourth ballot, but his team was outflanked when they failed to prepare for Kennedy's endorsement of Dion. Ah Politics.
[t]he key issue is and always will be language. The government of Quebec would better serve its citizens if it focused the negotiations on such a critical issue, instead of bringing on the table vague notions (distinct society) as it did during Meech Lake, or instead of demanding almost everything as it did after Meech Lake (the Allaire report).posted by russilwvong at 4:02 PM on December 4, 2006
It is hard to exaggerate the destructive effect on French-English relations of the Supreme Court’s broad interpretation of Charter rights [in 1988]. with respect to language. Probably most Canadians in the [rest of Canada] believe that the Court’s decisions with respect to Bill 101 have been minor, largely justified limitations on the excesses of Quebec linguistic protectionism. But for most of the Québécois, the Charter now appears as an ill-defined threat to their language laws.Why is Bill 101 such a big issue? To Quebec francophones, whether nationalist or federalist, the key issue is the survival of French as the predominant language in Quebec. Elsewhere, it's a lost cause. "Outside Quebec, French is declining as a language of use. With the exception of the bilingual belts of eastern Ontario and Acadia, regions adjacent to Quebec, French is not intergenerationally surviving as a home language." And Bill 101 is seen as vital to preserving French in Quebec. In 1996, 39% of Quebec francophones thought that Bill 101 should be strengthened, 23% that it should be left as is; only 32% thought it should be relaxed.
Even as convinced a federalist as Stéphane Dion has articulated this fear: "Since the [Supreme Court] judgments have been issued, one may think that the survival of [Quebec language] policies is secured. In fact, nothing is less certain. A Supreme Court might decide someday that denying the right of a new immigrant or of a francophone to go to an English school, when English speakers have such a right, is contrary to the Charter of Rights; the Court could invoke...Article 15 prescribing legal equality of all citizens. Such a judgment may seem unlikely today, but who knows for the next generation?"
Ironically, Bill 101 was probably a principal reason for the PQ’s defeat in the 1980 referendum. Many moderate Québécois nationalists, reassured over linguistic matters, voted “no.” Why incur the uncertainties of sovereignty if the prospects for a French Quebec were reasonably secure?The importance of language as the key factor driving Quebec nationalism is not well understood outside Quebec.
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posted by jimmythefish at 4:48 PM on December 2, 2006