When I speak of tyranny of the majority, it is usually a lot more metaphorical than this. In this case, being a minority means the government does not have to communicate with you. Sure, there are plenty of places where governments do not try to communicate with their linguistic minorities, but the strange thing here is that the local governments wants to keep communicating with all of its residents and the provincial government is the one restricting it. Non! Quebec says to Huntington.
Ah, but the story gets better. Sort of. Stéphane Gendron, the mayor of Huntington, is innovating so that Quebec cannot (well, we shall see) stop his town from communicating to all of its residents. The innovation:
Over the next few days, the Town Council will be setting up an independent newspaper with a not-for-profit mission that will provide bilingual information from the town to its residents. The corporation, led by a group of committed residents, will ensure the dissemination of relevant information to the community, for and on behalf of the town and various community organizations in our region.Because Bill 101 does not apply to such an organization, we will circumvent its application on our territory and continue to serve our people, as they should be served, in both official languages. Debate at the council meetings will continue to be in both languages, and our citizens will still be served in the language of their choice at the reception desk and through our different departments. And the council will be able to get back to the business of focusing peacefully on the development of our town.
That is some clever legalese on the part of the mayor. Kudos to him for standing up to the Bill 101 bullies. The recent anti-halal brouhaha is rather unnerving, especially given the fact that Ms Le-Pen's National Front were, if not the originators of the halal fearmongering than at least one of the most vocal proponents of it. Funny how that fact is not considered against QC "values"!
ReplyDeleteyes, the Halal campaign is, indeed, plagiarized from Le Pen. But stealing xenophobia from France is actually a two-fer for a Quebec nationalist party: imitating the homeland and being xenophobic!
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