Reflections on the Quebec anglo

Re: “Speaking English can be controversial” (Letters, April 18)

Given the number of adults that may be conversing in that foreign language (English) while walking the streets in the Pointe-Claire Village, it is interesting to note that this language bully chose to vent on a group of children.

Personally, I think this bullying attitude is being encouraged by the current government’s constant attack on the English citizens of this province.

Tom Jory

Dorval

Recently, I had reason to contact the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec. When they reply, there is a message that the RAMQ communicates in French. I ignored that and managed to get instructions (push 1, push 2, etc.) in English.

I got someone, and I started to explain, in English, my problem. She interrupted me and asked, in English, if I was going to continue in English. When I said yes, she transferred me to someone else and I was able to sort out my problem in English. (I hope).

As former premier Lucien Bouchard once said: “When you go to the hospital, and you’re in pain, you may need a blood test, but you certainly don’t need a language test.”

The same applies in this case. The RAMQ serves all Quebecers, of whatever origin.

Louis Vroomen

Châteauguay

In our appearance before the commission studying Bill 14 last week, the question of how many English-speaking Quebecers are working for the provincial civil service was raised.

Counting Quebec’s English-speaking minority population is a tricky business, because who gets counted depends on who is counting. Using data from the Canadian census, there are generally three ways to count the English-speaking community of Quebec: mother tongue, corrected mother tongue and first official language spoken. Of course Canada has two official languages (English and French), while Quebec only has one (French).

The government of Quebec defines anglophones as citizens whose mother tongue (first language learned and still understood) is English. The data from the 2011 census was 599,225 people. So people using this approach say there are 600,000 anglophones in Quebec.

But life is more complicated, because there were 152,820 people in the 2011 census who had multiple responses to the question, “what is your mother tongue?” For this reason, the mother-tongue number of 600,000 is refined to include half of the people who responded “English and French”; half of the people who responded “English and a non-official language”; and one-third of those who responded “English, French and a non-official language.” Roll in these additional folks, and the English community is 647,213 people.

But that does not account for a third group: those individuals whose mother tongue is a “non-official” language. Quebecers refer to this group as allophones. Because Canada has two official languages, this group is split between French and English by considering three factors: knowledge of the two official languages; mother tongue; and, language used at home. Counting this way, 1,058,250 people belong to the English-speaking community of Quebec.

Statistics are just numbers, so understanding what numbers are being used to tell you something is important. For example, using the Quebec government’s definition of “anglophone,” you can say that less that 0.9 per cent of the province’s public service employees are English-speaking. If you expand the linguistic minority’s definition to include English-speaking allophones, then the percentage rises to 2.8 per cent, the number used by Statistics Canada.

What matters is that the makeup of Quebec’s public service does not reflect the linguistic diversity of the province’s population, and that’s a problem.

Sylvia Martin-Laforge Director general, Quebec Community Groups Network

Montreal

Re: “CEGEPs give bill a failing grade” (Gazette, April 18) While I certainly appreciate that many of the groups and individuals at the Bill 14 hearings are against the bill, I was confused with the somewhat mixed message of the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse.

I was nodding in agreement with their conclusions, as listed in The Gazette, until I came to “people belonging to ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities have the right to have their own cultural life, practise their own religion or use their own language with other members of their group.” Actually it’s the last 10 words in their proposed amendment to Article 43 of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms that bother me.

Can this really mean I would only have the right to speak my “own” language to someone from my “own” linguistic group? Would I be subject to some sort of fine if, as a member of the anglophone community, I was caught speaking English to a member of the Greek community?

Of greater concern is how one would define an anglophone — by whether their ancestors came from English-speaking countries prior to implementation of Bill 101, whether they have English surnames, whether they speak English at home, whether their children have certificates for English schooling, etc.? When meeting someone for the first time, would we be expected to establish our linguistic heritage before starting a conversation? Would the government help with some sort of visible linguistic identification?

Groups of young people, from assorted ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, effortlessly switching between multiple languages in the same conversation, must be very upsetting to some. Personally I find it a positive sign of the multiculturalism that should define Montreal.

Lorraine Hodgson

St-Laurent