'Feels like harassment': Montreal café owner says years of language inspections taking a toll (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 2 days ago by RandAlThor@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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[-] SleeplessCityLights@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 day ago

For those who don't know, they forced everyone to speak French, then ran out of money for teaching people how to speak French and made French classes inaccessible for many people.

It was never about preserving French culture, it's about punishing English speakers, when everyone speaks French after being here for 5 years.

The fucking CAQ should be punished for the people's lives they ruined with new immigration rules and making immigrants pay out of pocket to learn French so they can keep living here.

[-] gyoo@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Although I agree that the CAQ is doing a terrible job at the moment and that the bureaucrats at the OQLF sometimes exagerate without considering themseleves if there exists an alternative, it is about culture and has always been. The politics in Quebec have always rotated arround the defense against english assimilation.

[-] SleeplessCityLights@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

If this was about culture they would be providing a way for people to assimilate. Since they don't, they are showing through their actions that they don't actually care. I know people that went back to France because it was easier than dealing with the CAQs policy. People who's native language is French. Meet and talk to some real people and you will see what is going on.

[-] villasv@lemmy.ca 1 points 20 hours ago

they would be providing a way

This line of reasoning doesn't work. Policies and funding are not perfect representations of ideals, unfortunately.

[-] gyoo@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

As I said, the CAQ is doing a particularly bad job at the moment. They have made very poor financial decisions over the past decade and now they have to claw the deficit, blaming the problems on everything else, you know, the usual political stuff. So now they cut funding for everything, promising that nothing will be affected and they create new laws to make it appear as if they're doing something before the next election drives them in the ground.

I will conceed that there is a background of xenophobia in a lot of these movements, but it is not mainstream. And remember that the CAQ is not the OQLF and it is not the population. The CAQ's poll rating are devastating right now. And when that story came out, pretty much everybody reacted saying "yet another stupid decision from the CAQ".