The French-english divide

Recently, I had the pleasure of accompanying my wife on a business trip to Toronto. I needed a little break and thought a change of scenery would be nice.

What I saw astounded me. Toronto is booming! I was on a rooftop bar close to downtown and I counted no less than 20 construction cranes. Amazing! So, while Montrealers are debating whether the clerk at the dépanneur said “hello” or “bonjour,” or which overpass or bridge to fix first, Toronto is trying to figure out where to spend all the money. Nick Chrysanthakopoulos

St-Léonard

I am a bilingual English Quebecer. When I am in a French milieu, my language of communication is French. I have always viewed bilingualism as an asset, not a liability.

Whether Quebec Immigration Minister Diane de Courcy likes it or not, the international language of business is English. Any company operating on the international scene would require at least some, if not all of their employees to be able to conduct business in English.

When I hear people like her spout inanities, such as French should be the common language in the workplace and that English should not be a requirement for hiring, I cringe.

While French unilingualism may be acceptable in some areas, should the Parti Québécois wish to attract international business to Quebec, it had better rethink its strategy to conserve the French language. Should it continue in this vein, it will have much bigger worries than English creeping from the workplace into society. Cynthia Jarjour

St-Lambert

It seems Premier Pauline Marois’s top priority is an anti-corruption bill. And of course Bill 101 revisited to make life difficult for small businesses. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, the top priority of western governments is high unemployment, health care and education.

The two U.S. presidential candidates have a list of top issues, both including how to help and promote small businesses, which all experts worldwide unanimously declare is the key to economic growth ameliorating unemployment.

At eight per cent, Quebec has the highest unemployment rate in Canada west of the Atlantic provinces. In Montreal, it’s even higher, at 8.2 per cent. Yet Pauline (Nero) Marois fiddles while the province burns. She wants to focus on less critical issues: corruption and making sure we all speak French.

Rather than doing everything she can to help small business, she is making life difficult for them, and plans to impose expensive and oppressive language conditions that will send them away to other provinces. Alan Mew Baie-d’Urfé

Re: “The issues of language” (Letters, Oct. 27)

For Jean-Pierre Grenier’s edification, there are bilingual signs in St-Eugène, less than a 45-minute drive from Montreal, and in most Ontario communities near the Quebec border. There are bilingual highway signs in Toronto, with French the same size as English. Contrast that with Quebec, where highway signs are mostly in French only.

And you should try speaking English to a police officer in “the regions” in Quebec. André Bordeleau

Kirkland

Jean-Pierre Grenier’s letter contrasting Canada’s treatment of its 23 per cent francophone minority with Finland’s treatment of its 5.4 per cent Swedish minority is an excellent example of the lack of understanding of the distribution of language in this country. Statscan’s 2011 figures show that only four per cent of the population whose mother tongue is French lives outside Quebec.

Anyone entering into a discussion of bilingualism in Canada would do well to remember that the vast majority of francophones in Canada live in Quebec. Maybe the reason it is difficult to find highway signs in French in Alberta is because only two per cent of the population is francophone. Michael Libby

Montreal

Quebec and Montreal are taking it right on the chin. We are being stigmatized as corrupt and intolerant when it comes to language and cultures other than French. Every day, the commission on corruption in the construction industry unveils new and very disturbing testimony reflecting poorly on elected politicians and high-ranking officials in our city’s administration.

All last week the publicity was negative, from the transit workers who refused to speak English to a customer to direct implication by witnesses of our city officials. Montreal is being cast as a troubled city. This week, a transit worker was involved in a physical altercation over the refusal to speak to a customer in the other official language of Canada, English!

As this bad press spreads, the prospect of Montreal becoming a tourist capital is quickly diminishing.

When the tourist dollars dry up and we no longer are part of the hospitality industry, how will we be able to call ourselves a world-class city? Glen K. Malfara

Beaconsfield

Re: “Bilingualism emerges as an issue on Parliament Hill” (Gazette, Oct. 27)

Kudos to the NDP for promoting bilingualism. Now, what are their plans for language in Quebec? Ted Surowaniec

Montreal