Blackmail Most Foul

There it is, the single province in Canada that recognizes only one official language, plaguing the rest of the country with its tedious, tiresome, troubling demands for singular recognition as being culturally, traditionally different; a nation unto its own right. Quebec is still a province within confederation. Yet, bafflingly, infuriatingly, it insists on labelling all of its provincial institutions as "national" in character.

Its parks are not provincial parks, but national parks. Its legislative body is not a provincial authority but a national one. It offends the rest of Canada for not wishing to fly the flag of Canada, but insisting that the Quebec flag has overall precedence. Alone among the provinces it enjoys special privileges not given to the others. Yet none of this is sufficient to allay the sense of perpetual grievance that emanates from that province like a sneaky ordure of social malaise.

Provinces throughout the country are tasked with providing bilingual documentation, signage, civil servants, commercial services to satisfy the demands of a minority population, as a result of Canada's official bilingualism status. Yet the province of Quebec seems to feel no reciprocal obligation toward the many Anglophones and Allophones living within the province.

Quebecers see it as their right to be served and serviced in the language of their choice - whether or not they are personally proficient in English - yet there seems to be no obligation to serve English-speakers in Quebec with translated documents. In the most obscure corners of the country with few French-speaking residents, an effort is made to live up to the accepted obligation to serve French-speakers.

In contrast, a grudging Quebec government cannot see its way clear to serving the entire population of its citizenry. In hospital settings that can be inimical to peoples' health. In legal systems it can be seriously injurious to their status and their finances. Signage not sufficiently obedient to the strictures upheld in Quebec's language Bill 101 brings down the wrath of the official language police.

Official bilingualism comes at a horrendous cost to the country. Not only in terms of the financial burden associated with translation and double printings of every manner of documentation, but through employment inequities, societal grief and grievances. Yet the goodwill evidenced by most Canadians in their willing acceptance of bilingualism as the cost to maintain a comprehensive country speaks to the value seen to the country in keeping Quebec.

Yet the never-satisfied sovereigntist movement in Quebec sharpens its resentment of the rest of Canada, determined to ultimately become successful in persuading Quebecers that they are not appreciated by others within the country, that the English-speaking majority has a secret plan to eventually wipe the French language out of contention. They insist they are entitled as no other segment of the population is.

They recognize nothing of the primary importance relating to the contributions within Quebec of the non-francophone population, in founding schools, universities, hospitals and museums, enriching the province as equal contributors to the province's well-being. They tendentiously nourish a vision of English-French "apartheid", with the English being the oppressors.

The sovereintists have been so singularly successful in demonizing the English that when a group of ango-Quebecers recently agitated for equal treatment in language availability for official documents, a fringe group naming themselves "ligue de defence nationale" threatened to "put lead in the heads" of West Quebec Anglos insisting on English translations of Gatineau by-laws.

The French demographic within Canada could do with a realistic treatment for their insurmountable insecurity.