MONTREAL - Bill 14 is a dangerous piece of legislation.
But you don't have to take it from me.
It’s so easy for the ethnocentric nationalists in the PQ to discount the voices of what they view as alarmist anglos.
So don't take it from me.
How about taking it from the Quebec Human Rights Commission?
The commission told Madame Corky that her plan is wrong because the protections for French within the current Bill 101 are quite sufficient.
The right to live and work in French is not a human right, as the PQ believes.
Just listen to Gaetan Cousineau, the head of the commission.
Perhaps the language minister should travel to some dark regions of the world where human rights are really an issue.
Quebec regulates language more than any place in the world.
Bill 14, the commission points out, would replace democratic values with so-called Quebec values.
What is that supposed to mean?
That somehow the values de chez nous are superior to internationally-recognized democratic ones?
So please don’t take it from me.
How about from the Quebec Bar Association which knows something about the law?
It says the bill is dangerous, as it would contravene human rights charters and strip Quebec minorities of their rights.
It uses the term “obligatory assimilation” to describe the goal of Bill 14.
From daycares where babies would be force-fed French, to CEGEPs where discriminatory admission criteria would be promoted, from having to justify speaking English at work, to language inspectors with power of search and seizure, from armed forces families losing language of education rights, to historic bilingual towns and cities losing the ability to serve their citizens in English.
This is nothing short of a war against English.
Bottom line, here is what Bill 14 all about: it designed to reduce the presence of English in Quebec in public life and in private life.
One goal - and this is important - is to ensure than unilingual francophones never have to speak another language, that bilingualism will never be necessary, even in a rapidly-changing world where the lingua franca is English..
English is the enemy and suppression is the weapon.
The second goal is to use the language crisis in the fight for separation.
This is not all happening by chance. It has all been planned and the minister won’t back down.
After all these weeks of hearings and arguments, she isn’t about to change her mind on anything.
So why did anyone bother? Because even in regimes which don’t listen, voices still need to be heard.
And we are waiting for the CAQ to do the right thing and be heard loud and clear.
Because Mr. Legault, we will remember.
This is a government which is trying desperately to hold onto power and to satisfy the hardliners within the PQ and to promote a unity crisis.
And you don’t have to take it just from me.
