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<h1 class="entry-title">The English-Canadian media's selective outrage on bilingualism</h1>
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<div class="gmail-author-container gmail-wire-author">David Webster, Associate Professor of History, Bishop's University </div>
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<p>November 28, 2018<br>8:58 AM EST</p><p><span class="gmail-dateModifiedLabel">Last Updated</span><br>November 28, 2018<br>8:59 AM EST</p> </div>
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<h1 class="entry-title">The English-Canadian media's selective outrage on bilingualism</h1>
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<div class="gmail-author-container gmail-wire-author">David Webster, Associate Professor of History, Bishop's University </div>
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<p>November 28, 2018<br>8:58 AM EST</p><p><span class="gmail-dateModifiedLabel">Last Updated</span><br>November 28, 2018<br>8:59 AM EST</p> </div>
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<p>This article was originally published on The Conversation, an
independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from
academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original
site.</p><p>——</p><p><b>Author: David Webster, Associate Professor of History, Bishop’s University</b></p><p>Don’t
get me wrong: It’s always nice to see folks in Ontario and the rest of
English-speaking Canada say a few words in support of the
English-speaking minority here in Quebec.</p><p>But there are far more
endangered, far more precarious, French-speaking minorities in Ontario,
New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and all nine majority-English provinces. In
fact, those minority groups — English-speaking in Quebec and
French-speaking in the rest of Canada — are what make this country what
it is.</p><p>There
is a huge amount of work still to do on recognizing Indigenous rights
and fostering Indigenous languages, of course. Important work is
happening on that front, though the country has a long way to go. Maybe
it’s time to declare Indigenous languages to be official languages.</p><p>In
the meantime, however, it’s worth protecting the minority official
language communities. But to read leading English-Canadian media, you
would think that only one of those communities — Quebec’s anglophones —
were under threat.</p><p>Take the Globe and Mail, the country’s national
newspaper. When Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently slashed services to
Ontario francophones and axed plans for the province’s first
French-language university, the Globe ran a total of five articles by
Nov. 21, according to a search of the Canadian Newsstream database.</p><p>As
La Presse columnist Patrick Lagace wrote — in English — that’s barely a
fraction of the coverage given to the silliness of the “pastagate”
story in 2013, in which an inspector from Quebec’s French-language
watchdog criticized the use of the word “pasta” in a Montreal restaurant
(the watchdog quickly backed down and changed its rules). Canadian
Newsstream finds 12 articles in the Globe on “pastagate.”</p><p>The
Globe also issued a stern editorial against a Parti Quebecois motion in
Quebec’s National Assembly that criticized the ubiquitous greeting
“bonjour-hi.”</p><p>The motion was misplaced, but was non-binding and
has changed nothing. Was it really — as the Globe editorialized — a call
for the word “hi” to be “killed with fire, its ashes buried in lye and
the location forgotten?”</p><p><b>One op-ed in support of Ford’s cuts</b></p><p>This
sort of hyperbole is too common in the English-Canadian press. The
Globe has so far issued no editorials against the Ford cuts to
francophone services — though it did run an opinion piece in support of
Ford’s move written by the president of Trent University.</p><p>The
Globe, of course, should not be singled out. A Postmedia editorial
published in the Ottawa Citizen and other newspapers, called the loss of
the position of French Language Services Commissioner “unfortunate” in
the eighth paragraph of a nine-paragraph editorial.</p><p>Otherwise, the
newspaper database finds no editorial comment of any sort — let alone
the sort of scathing denunciation that descends when Quebec’s language
laws make headlines in English. “Pastagate” was mentioned 311 times in
the Canadian Newsstream index in 2013, the year it made headlines;
Ontario francophone services rate 96 mentions since Ford’s cuts were
announced.</p><p>In some ways, Quebec language policy serves as an
“external enemy” for English-speaking media. Mocking the periodic
outbreaks of Quebec language-law foolishness sells papers — or in
digital terms, poking fun at pastagate is great clickbait. Criticizing
the powerful in Ontario when they attack minorities does not produce the
same results.</p><p>Quebec’s anglophone community has chided Ford. The
English-language Montreal Gazette criticized the francophone services
cuts. The Townshippers’ Association, a group of anglophones in the
Eastern Townships region of Quebec south of Montreal, pointed out that
the cuts were “a significant setback for the development and vitality
not only of Franco-Ontarians, but for minority language communities
across the country as well.”</p><p><b>Anglophone universities in Quebec</b></p><p>Let’s
not forget, however, that Quebec’s anglophone community has spawned
three universities, and that the Quebec government has made no moves to
shut down these minority-language universities — in fact, a revision to
Quebec’s university funding formula this year helped Bishop’s University
in the Eastern Townships, where I teach history, more than any other
institution in Quebec.</p><p>Outside Quebec, there is only one full
French-language university, in Moncton, N.B. (A few French-language
colleges exist inside English-language universities or in affiliation
with colleges, and there are a handful of bilingual institutions.)</p><p>Quebec’s
anglophones have fought to protect their institutions. When the
previous government led by Philippe Couillard announced plans to
amalgamate school boards, the English-speaking community mobilized to
save English-language school boards, successfully. It may need to fight
the same battle in the face of renewed plans by the new government under
Francois Legault to shutter local school boards.</p><p><b>Protecting recent gains</b></p><p>Given
this history, it’s no surprise that the Townshippers’ Association
announced its “solidarity with our French-speaking counterparts in
Ontario” as they mobilize to defend their own institutions and protect
recent gains.</p><p>The Ford government’s cuts are not primarily about
money, as a recent article by French-speaking university professors
points out. Fiscal arguments are a “smokescreen” for a rejection of the
very concept of minority rights. (To its credit, the Globe reprinted a
translated version on Nov. 21.)</p><p>This is part of a renewed attack
on the French in Canada by the rising populist right, exemplified by
Ford’s Ontario government and the New Brunswick’s People’s Alliance,
which props up the incoming New Brunswick Conservative government.</p><p>Anti-Francophone sentiment is nothing new in Canada, as University of Guelph historian Matthew Hayday has written.</p><p>But
it seems to be on the rise — and that will only empower those in
Quebec, chastened by recent declines in their public support, who might
want to crack down on the anglophone minority.</p><p>——</p><p>This
article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons
license. Disclosure information is available on the original site. Read
the original article:</p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-english-canadian-medias-selective-ou" rel="nofollow">https://theconversation.com/the-english-canadian-medias-selective-ou</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/" rel="nofollow">https://theconversation.com/</a></p> </div>
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</div></div></div></div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div></div>