The Quebec language laws
March 18th, 2013 at 4:00 pm by David FarrarIn Quebec it is actually an offence to have a sign in English (or any other language) and not in French. Personally I think this is ridiculous and we have seen why. The Economist reports:
On February 19th, Massimo Lecas, co-owner of an Italian restaurant, Buonanotte, in Montreal, wrote that he had received a letter from the office warning him that there were too many Italian words (such as “pasta”) on his menu. This was a violation of Quebec’s language charter, he was told, and if they were not changed to the French equivalents (pâtes in the case of pasta) he would face a fine.
Think how much money they spend on enforcing this stupid law. I wonder if they’d warn a place that has a quote in Latin!
Other restaurant owners who had received similar letters—a fish-and-chip-shop owner who was instructed to call his main offering poisson frits et frites, a brasserie owner who was asked to cover the “redial” button on his telephone and the “on/off” button on his microwave—came forward, an indication this was not an isolated incident.
You can’t make this up!
Journalists happily uncovered more extreme examples, such as the owner of a sex shop who tussled with inspectors over the English-only instructions on a sex aid. She offered to translate the safety instructions into French and place a sticker over the English warning, but this did not satisfy the inspectors. The case went to all the way to the Superior Court of Justice. (I wonder if the lawyers were able to keep a straight face.) The owner ended up with a C$500 fine.
She got fined $500 because the sex aid only had English instructions! I love this extract from the more detailed story:
The product in question, she wrote, is a ring used on the male sexual organ to enhance a female partner’s pleasure. During Mr. Picard’s first visit, he noted that the packaging and safety label were in English only. Ever vigilant, he made three subsequent visits and noted “partial corrections” but not enough to make the product conform to the law.
The poor bureaucrat – had to visit the sex store three times and inspect all the gear for correct language instructions!
In testimony at trial, the store manager said no similar product was available with French text. Under cross-examination, the Crown inquired about a Trojan product sold in drug stores with bilingual packaging, but it was established that the Trojan product was different because it vibrated. Store records introduced as evidence established that 16 of the Super Stretch Sleeves were sold over 12 months.
What a great trial this must have been.
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- How dare a Frenchman speak English
- New language for Labour
March 18th, 2013 at 4:08 pm
This is not a simple matter and goes all the way back to George III being nice to his French subjects who had lost a bitter war.
Multiculturalism is a nonsense being foisted on us Anglos.The Frogs are fighting to retain and protect their culture ,which is a good thing.
A few years back they were told to take the Crucifix out of their provincial assembly as it wasn’t inclusive or some such bollocks.
Now the Quebeckers are not particularly hard line Catholics,but they don’t like being told what to do. so they said it’s part of our culture so fuck off.
On that basis I say Good on the Froggies.
We surrender our culture every day while they fight for theirs. Whose the idiot?
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 4:16 pm
“Multiculturalism is a nonsense being foisted on us Anglos”
Examples?
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 4:24 pm
There is a delightful bilingual sign at Vancouver airport which points to the “Restaurants”, but because airports are federal institutions in Canada the sign must be bilingual, so, yes you guessed it, it needed the appropriate wording underneath in French, which as you have guessed by now was “Restaurants” … – all to satisfy some jobsworth that there was a direction sign in both French in English,
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 4:27 pm
Pity the referendum didn’t succeed in 1995.
Would have been a bumpy road to independence, but would have made things so much easier for the “Anglos” and “Francos” long term.
You probably wouldn’t have this absurd seige mentality by the Quebec bureaucracy if it were an independent country.
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 4:37 pm
See why the people of Ontario like me (which shares a long border with Quebec) complain about the Quebecois a lot? My mum did and she was from Quebec!
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 4:51 pm
I don’t know why we as New Zealanders should point the finger at the state of bilingual idiocy found in Quebec. A simple visit to the Inland Revenue website reveals that the ancient Maori institution is named Te Tari Taake & should I be confused by the greeting in English the translated version of “Kia ora haere mai” is included.
At least a few million people speak French as opposed to our expensive Stone Age language spoken only by a few separatist gimme merchants.
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 5:01 pm
We can laugh now but just wait until we get out shiny new ‘Constitution’ (Currently being drafted covertly by a group of Maori Activists)…
Vote:You ain’t seen nothing yet.
March 18th, 2013 at 5:52 pm
There are separate French and English school boards in, for example, Montreal. Anyone not born of Anglophone parents in Quebec (so anyone from outside Quebec) must attend the French schools. The Montreal School Board brought in some rules some years ago forbidding students in the schools from speaking any other language aside from French. (Quebecois is really a dialect of old provincial French that has evolved over 400 years.)
That rule wasn’t aimed at English speakers. It was aimed at Cambodians, Vietnamese, Haitians … whose second languages were French. Quebec is one of the most xenophobic societies. Just imagine if they had gone from a 20 % minority in a bilingual country, to a 5 % minority (if that) in a mostly English and Hispanic North America! The siege mentality mentioned earlier would have been even worse!
The comparisons to New Zealand and Maori don’t fly. You have no idea how absurd and xenophobic Quebec society can be.
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 6:40 pm
Guess before you start labelling laws of other countries/places as stupid, perhaps you could apply the mantra you have been banging on about in the gay marriage proposed law!!!
Some in NZ say its stupid, you think its fair and reasonable.
Voila, who is stupid?
PS. Spent 2 months in Montreal last year on vacation, one of my most favourite cities in the world (and have been to a fair chunk of them)
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 6:43 pm
I wonder if Mr Picard issued his instructions and then said “Make it so”. I’m damned sure that if that was my name I would, to the infinite aggravation of everyone I encountered.
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 7:51 pm
Weihana at 4.16 asks for examples of “Multiculturalism is a nonsense being foisted on us Anglos.”
Special rights for minority groups is multiculturalism’s prime Utopian nonsense. Our Anglo tradition has been based on individual rights.
Multiculturalists argue that toleration of group differences is not enough. Seeking this, they try to square the circle by making all groups “equal” while at the same time keeping them “different”.
Canada, with Will Kymlicka as the multiculturalists’ version of Marx, leads in multiculturalism, championing super-rights for Canadian Indians and Eskimo (the First Nations) and the French Canadians.
In Quebec you see a flaw of multiculturism. It fails when two or more minority groups’ interests clash. For example, Diane Sokolyk, a lawyer for the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, Quebec, says on the Net that indigenous Canadians fear the Quebec government is “operating within a narrow colonial paradigm that would effectively erase all gains that have been hard won with the Federal Government and the Courts in the past hundred years.”
Minorities are not frozen in time. They grow or shrink, move, die, or are absorbed into the big gene pool.
The South Island’s Ngai Tahu tribe is reportedly accepting into membership people with as little as one thirty-second Ngai Tahu “blood.” That is people with just one Ngai Tahu great-great-great grandparent. Membership of the tribe is no trivial privilege. Ngai Tahu has substantial assets thanks to settlements and thanks to the group-charity status that allows its businesses to operate tax free, just as Seventh Day Adventists’ Sanitarium does. Ultimately, either Ngai Tahu will die out, or everyone in the South Island will be in the tribe.
Multiculturists have made huge advances in the West. However, in the new super power, China, they count for very little. Tibetans, Uighurs, ethnic Mongolians from Inner Mongolia, and the Manchu are being genetically absorbed into Han China. These minorities count for little except in propaganda featuring their songs, costumes and the like. Beijing has made Mandarin the dominant language of the country, downscaling the role of huge regional languages such as Cantonese.Similarly in Russia ethnic minorities are being absorbed or (as in Chechnya) walled out.
If multiculturists facilitate Chinese becoming the dominant ethnic group in New Zealand, they will be disappointed at how minority rights are then handled. Multiculturalism will be devoured by multiculturalism.
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 8:03 pm
Canadians are rather quirky at times, you can see why south park makes fun of them.
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 8:33 pm
In support of my (7.51) post that included multiculturalism’s low standing in China:
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/outrage-over-beijing-restaurants-racist-sign-20130228-2f7ib.html
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 8:43 pm
Air Canada announces everything twice. That includes mildly witty pilot banter when there is a bit of time to kill waiting for a gate to free up. I’m sure the French version, which came second, was much less fun. This was in Calgary, not Quebec. I don’t remember things being quite that nuts outside Canada on that airline, but it might be.
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 9:16 pm
Shame on her. I would have thought satisfying the inspectors would have been a matter of professional pride for the madam in question
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 9:33 pm
Which is easier?
Put up with this law, or with the bombings that would otherwise happen?
Not a joke.
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 9:41 pm
I like Quebec. I was treated really well when I went there. Even my bad college French didn’t offend them. I can understand them not wanting to be overrun by the English, after all, they’re French.
Montreal is one of the world’s great cities.
Poutine and Montreal bagels FTW!
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 10:15 pm
I lived in Montreal for a couple of years. My French isn’t much use either. I was told in one shop that I would not be served unless I spoke it. I turned to go and then the guy said wait, and went out the back and brought out a Chinese guy, who was quite happy to converse in English.
I got him to translate for me and told the shop owner that as he had been conquered by the English, he had no right to demand that someone of English descent should speak French. This really sparked him up, and he began talking English to me directly.
Eventually we had a meal and a few drinks together and became friends. The French in Montreal/ Canada are crazy bastards for sure.
Vote:March 18th, 2013 at 10:25 pm
I agree with nasska. Quebec may be crazy in many ways, but there is at least some chance a French translation will enable people to understand it who otherwise couldn’t. With Maori translations in NZ there is zero chance of that.
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 9:31 am
Anglo tradition? Given that Ngai Tahu (and other Maori tribes) were in New Zealand prior to the arrival of Europeans, and given their traditions were based on communal ownership, exactly who has forced what upon whom?
Though the premise that “our anglo tradition has been based on individual rights” is such a ridiculous oversimplification that it becomes meaningless… a tiresome cliche advanced from a modern ideology without regard for the complexities of history as it was actually lived.
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 11:10 am
“Jack5 (2,868) Says:
March 18th, 2013 at 8:33 pm
In support of my (7.51) post that included multiculturalism’s low standing in China:
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/outrage-over-beijing-restaurants-racist-sign-20130228-2f7ib.html”
If you read the story, you’ll find your example has nothing to do with multiculturalism.
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 11:25 am
Weihana posted at 9.31am:
Ngai Tahu had no concept of land ownership in any modern legal sense. They occupied it. Ngai Tahu had no concept of title, no land registration, no system of land transfer except by force. They sometimes sold land to settlers more than once. Did they own the South Island? The communal ownership system of Maori and lack of any title let alone transferable title meant Ngai Tahu could never have the coastal fringe of land they occupied as leverage to raise capital.
With technology extending the range of northern war parties, Ngai Tahu might even have been wiped out if European settlement had begun half a century later.
Where Ngai Tahu were badly treated in land deals with the Government, there have now been three “final” settlements over the centuries by the Government.
Today Ngai Tahu tribe members are privileged. Apart from cash settlement,they have perpetual – that is, for ever — first and second purchase rights to Crown assets in the South Island, and their large and growing businesses operate tax free (because the tribe has group registration as a charity).
Modernity was inevitable for pre-settlement NZ. Until foreign ships arrived, Maori were locked in the 13th and 14th centuries, with no written language, no technology to speak of (not even the wheel), and in isolation from all civilisations.
British settlement was in many ways fortunate. If settlement had been by the Spanish, as in South America, by now Ngai Tahu would probably be now just notes in an anthropologist’s workbook.
The biggest threat today for Ngai Tahu is intermarriage with non-Ngai Tahu.
Why else would the tribe share its privileges with folk with as little as one thirty-second Ngai Tahu blood? Ngai Tahu are still a minority among Maori in the South Island. (In North America, one-quarter ancestry is usually the minimum for membership of a tribe, though the Utes require five-eighths, and many require 50 per cent. The Kaw, who have lost their language and have no full-blooded surivors, require one-sixteenth genetic quantum.)
Diminution and marriage inevitably mean that, eventually,either everyone born in the South Island will be Ngai Tahu, or Ngai Tahu will be as extinct as the Picts are in Scotland.
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 11:29 am
Shazzadude posted at 11.10:
Yeah? The outrage the sign generated seems to be mainly in Vietnam. Can you imagine this sign being allowed in multicultural Canada or multicultural New Zealand?
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 2:10 pm
I lived in Montréal for a year while I did a Masters at McGill. Its a great city, aside from the weather. Although we hear about the French language issue, in fact Montréal is one of the most multicultural cities I have lived in, thanks to the Canadians and their generous immigration policy. On the point about language, to avoid having to have it done in French and English, my Masters degree is in fact in Latin!
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 2:29 pm
Sean (2.10 post): good on you for doing your master’s in Latin. That would be a big challenge to most of us. Your discipline wasn’t computer science or electronics, or you would have found it even more challenging.
I’m pleased you enjoyed Montreal’s multicultural atmosphere, but if you,too, were a multiculturist, wouldn’t you have written your thesis in Esperanto? Latin’s a bit Western-oriented for multiculturism.
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 2:34 pm
Is the legitimacy of their customs dependent upon whether or not they conform to European standards?
Has the Crown made full and final settlement several times?
Ngai Tahu restated its grievances over the Kemp purchase to the Native Lands Court in 1868 and the court agreed that the Crown’s failure to allow Ngai Tahu to keep the best lands of Canterbury, the Waitaki and elsewhere (eg Moeraki) was a breach of the Treaty.
The court ordered the return of only about 4930 acres – not enough to feed the hundreds of dispossessed people.
A single station is typically that size.
That 1868 judgement also did not make redress regarding mahika kai or kainga nohoanga.
It also did not address underallocation of reserves in all the other areas of the South Island, where, according to Mantell, “they wanted the best lands reserved for themselves”.
He wrote “I reduced these lands as much as possible.”
Indeed: from hundreds of thousands of hectares to just a few thousand hectares!
At the 1868 hearing, Mantell conceded that he had “acted with a high hand”.
A government inquiry found in 1891 that “only 9.1% of Otago Ngai Tahu had sufficient land” to feed themselves.
The 1906 South Island Landless Natives Act sought to make some redress, but the lands conferred were remote and uneconomic for farming.
Even a government MP denounced it.
In 1944, Ngai Tahu was awarded compensation of 10,000 per year for 30 years, which, spread among thousands of people, was very little.
Also, although the Act which arranged this was entitled “to effect a final settlement of the Ngai Tahu claim”, Ngai Tahu was not consulted at all, until after it was passed by Parliament.
Can it be considered a “settlement” at all?
The 1973 Act merely continued this annual payment. By then, it was worth 1 per person.
In the 1998 settlement signed by Ngai Tahu, compensation was estimated at roughly 2c in the dollar of the value of resources wrongly taken.
A 1991 valuation of one Canterbury block Ngai Tahu wanted kept was $370 million.
These lands could have allowed Ngai Tahu to build the kind of economic self-sufficiency that European settlers have enjoyed – for more than a century.
Does $170 million shared among more than 20,000 iwi members really achieve just compensation?
http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/210847/ngai-tahu-under-yoke-delayed-justice
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Weihana, re your 2.34 post:
1.
You dodge the issue of Ngai Tahu having no concept of “ownership” comparable to other nations, no concept of legal title, no registration of title, no transfer of occupation rights except by war. With a few exceptions in Nelson-Marlborough and odd spots such as Mataura in Southland, Ngai Tahu inhabited only the fringes of the South Island. Did they even hold occupation rights to the whole island. There is a vast gap between customs and land ownership.
2. The three settlements, which you say Ngai Tahu disputed. What has changed? Did Sir Mark Solomon recently say there will never be final settlement of Waitangi Treaty claims?
3.
No, it would have been largely unproductive land. Apart from their enterprise and farming skills, two key things that allowed settlers to thrive and develop the South Island were there ability to raise (that is borrow) capital using their land as security.What bank or other lender would accept communally owned land as security. Farmers were also soon able to take liens on stock, providing shorter term finance, but this money would have come from banks or other lenders with whom they had established relationships because of mortgages over their land.
Ngai Tahu could not have obtained such finance without breaking up the tribe’s communal ownership.
Problems with communal land as security have been one of the problems with housing on communally owned Maori land in the North Island. It has been difficult to get mortgages because the land couldn’t be used as security.
4.
You aren’t counting the almost unparalleled right to eternity for first and second purchase options on South Island Crown assets.
You aren’t including the settlement relativity clause which allows Ngai Tahu to 16 per cent of the value of other Maori claims over the threshold of $1 billion measured in 1994 dollars. This could bring Ngai Tahu as much as th eoriginal $170 million.
You aren’t counting the tax-free operation of Ngai Tahu’s many flourishing businesses under its group registration as a charity. You aren’t acknowledging that this has helped the settlement $170 million grow to more than $800 million in assets.
You aren’t counting the sole right to greenstone in the South Island. You aren’t counting Maori claims to a stake in wireless frequencies for TV and cellphones. You aren’t counting Maori claims to beaches, foreshores, rivers, and above all, water.
You aren’t counting the Ngai Tahu additional claim because the emissions trading scheme may have reduced the value of its forest assets.
You aren’t counting Maori claims to undersea oil and gas, which are related to the foreshore claims.
You disregard counter-views such as this:
If this is true, were Ngai Tahu robbed, or were they robbing the pakeha because they knew they would get paid again, and again, and again.
Vote:March 20th, 2013 at 1:03 am
1. customary title is a common law doctrine. But it is irrelevant anyway. Maori, like all human beings, have and have had interests which are tied to their possession and use of land. I see no reason why these interests are deemed illegitimate because they do not conform with foreign concepts of ownership. They were here first ergo their interests should have been respected and agreements honored.
2. What has changed is that settlement was reached after negotiation and agreement.
3. I agree with your point re communal ownership. But that is their choice to make and no amount of speculation on alternative realities should deny Maori reasonable compensation. Perhaps they wouldn’t have made good use of the land. But that is irrelevant. I don’t use my Xbox360 every day or even every week. Does this justify theft of it by someone who will use it more and gain more value out of it?
4. I agree certain claims without any customary basis are rubbish but I think the settlements in general are reasonable. The value of these settlements still appear a small fraction of the value that we as a nation have realized.
Vote:March 20th, 2013 at 11:00 am
Weihana, before European settlement Maori had virtually no concept of ownership at all that compares with most countries. It was occupation right by force.
You say:
Who isn’t honouring agreements? We’re on our third or fourth settlement and some Maori concede there will never be final settlement.
You also say:
THat’s emotional claptrap.Surely, you don’t deny that Ngai Tahu ever sold land?
You also say:
With the top-up, with the to-eternity first and second first rights to buy South Island Crown assets and the huge tax-free concession, the settlement will run to billions. Not bad when someone else has done much of the work: the slashing gorse by hand, felling bush, pit-sawing timber by hand, ploughing behind horses, digging gold, slogging in sawmills.
Then there are the super rights of guaranteed seats in Parliament, and on scores of local institutions from universities and polytechnics to some councils, and special entry to some university courses such as medicine.
I concede much of the blame for the situation lies in piss-weak NZ Governments. It’s relevant that the chief of the Govt negotiations with Ngai Tahu ultimately was Sir Douglas Graham, who has shown in the commercial field, just how poor he has been at governance.
Vote:March 20th, 2013 at 12:58 pm
This view that property ownership in European society was based principally on individual merit and work is a pleasant fiction. In reality the concept of individual property ownership and the capitalist economic system has a far more complex evolutionary history than you appear ready to admit. Nevertheless I have already acknowledged the nature of Maori land occupation and use and concluded it is irrelevant. I do not agree with the ethical principle that since Maori engaged in tribal warfare and conquest that this excuses the Crown from honoring agreements with such peoples.
The need for a settlement presupposes an agreement not honoured. That some people are dissatisfied with a settlement does not imply that the settlement was unreasonable.
Of course not. But a fraudulent agreement is the same in principle: it deprives a person or group of their legitimate interests and expectations.
Again, if someone steals my car and modifies it and improves it, that does not negate my interest in my property.
Vote:March 20th, 2013 at 1:12 pm
Weihana, why do you bring in capitalism? What’s that got to do with it? Surely you’re not saying Maori had a socialist society, well before Marx and the anarchists and social democrats and Christian socialists?
You repeatedly suggest the South Island was stolen from Ngai Tahu.
Consider it this way. You have a block of land. You sell it to someone. They have seen potential you haven’t and build something that generates wealth – a hotel or shopping complex, or a set of factories or something like that.
Your children see what has been built, and are pissed off they don’t own it and are angry at the price you accepted for the undeveloped land. So they cry theft and demand compensation. A bleeding-heart child of the developer gives you some extra cash. Then your children demand still more compensation, and so on it goes through generations.
And what becomes of blackmail societies? Look at Chechynia, Albania, Afghanistan, early Sicily. Back-waters for ever.
Vote:March 20th, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Jack5,
I do not believe that your narrative is an accurate portrayal of history.
Vote:March 20th, 2013 at 3:18 pm
Weihana, I thought our discussion was about the present.
I hope you base your interpretation of history on written evidence, rather than on just oral records.
It matters not. With intermarriage we South Islanders will either all be both Ngai Tahu and Pakeha, or Ngai Tahu will be diluted into history, like the Picts, the Sarmatians, the Scythians, the Hsing-nung, and closer to home, the Moriori.
Vote: