But often not in a good way:
A supervisor at a Quebec IGA store who told a 17-year-old employee to only speak French on the premises has been suspended.
Store owner Louise Menard said Thursday she had suspended the head of human resources, who was recorded saying the employee break room would become a “ghetto” if languages other than French were spoken.
Menard chalked up the incident to a miscommunication.
Yeah.
Meanwhile over in the Imperial Capital we shake our heads in disbelief. Half the population of Toronto was born outside of Canada. It is hardly unusual to walk into a store or the TTC and hear a gaggle of languages. Strangely the city has not collapsed. Do parts of Toronto have a ghetto feel to them? Yeap. A neighbourhood here and there does seem unfriendly to non-residents. By contrast the entire province of Quebec seems actively hostile to non-Francophones. Instead of parts of a city being a ghetto, we have an entire province insisting on ghettoizing itself against the rest of the world.
One of PET's few redeeming characteristics was his understanding of Quebec nationalism's intense parochialism. This was not simply a minority wishing to preserve its culture, the Quebecois of 1960 were among the most successful and secure ethnic minorities in the world. The tribalists who sought the province's independence were driven by a fear and hatred of the Other. That Other was mostly the English in the 1960s. But Canada, even Quebec, is now a more diverse place. If this was just a matter of holding a grudge against the Anglos it would stop and end with the English. But the die-hards don't seem be fond of anyone but their own kind.
Ethnic nationalists are like that.
Now let us imagine a scenario. Indeed a great deal of imagination is required to keep the kabuki theatre of Quebec nationalism going. Let us think of a retail manager in Toronto who, for the sake of preventing ghetto formation in the world place, decided to insist on employees speaking only English. How long do you guess before the cops show up? Minutes? The camera crews would probably be there faster. The Toronto Police Service is renown both for their zeal in traffic enforcement and their obsequiousness toward politically correct nostrums. Chief Blair would be hailing the arrest as a victory for diversity by late afternoon.
Your humble correspondent takes, as you might expect, a more contractual view of the matter. If the owner and management of a firm wishes to insist that its employees speak a certain language while on company premises, that's between them and the employees. It sounds like a damn stupid business decisions, but stupidity is not yet a criminal offense. If it were it would be easier to house the innocent in prison and let the guilty roam free.
A private individual may discriminate to his heart's content. If a shop wants to have only English spoken on the premises, even when not dealing with customers, then it has every right to do so. I also have every right not to shop there and make my displeasure known. I have a right to tell my friends about such a ridiculous practice and encourage them to go elsewhere.
In the wake of this story the Quebec government was clear that it was not illegal to speak English in Quebec. Not yet anyway. A pure laine nationalist can dream, can't he? This story has resonance because it captures the status of Anglophones as second class citizens in their own province. It's linguistic bigotry that would be tolerated nowhere else in Canada. The last acceptable bigotry in modern Canada.
All Canadians are equal. Those who speak French are just more equal than others.
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