If you want any federal job, you must speak French. /quote]Officially, but not in practice.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/budget-cuts-hurting-bilingualism-languages-watchdog-says-1.1201720
Harper nominated non-bilingual judges to the supreme court. The supreme court! He nominated an unilingual Auditor-General. And that language ain't french. He nominated an unilingual minister of *drumroll* culture. I guess there is just one culture in Canada.
Canada has two languages on paper, that's it.
I've never seen any data reporting difficulties of French Canadians attending university or any other education for that matter.
Now, but before the
Quiet Revolution is was very different. The Catholic Church didn't really value education and promoted a slave mentality. Ambition was evil and if you were born poor, you were ment to die poor. Born for a small loaf of bread was the expression. The government was under Church control, so it didn't manage education. It just gave money to the Church to manage it. Except for priests, our elite returned to France after the conquest of 1760, so we didn't have rich people who finance prive universities or education. It is more of a British tradition. Loyalists did finance universities. McGill come to mind, but those were english insitutitions. It wasn't in anglopohone interest to finance french schooling either. First we were a dumb inferior ethnicity.Second, we were easily exploitable cheap labor. This in why in 1960 only 3% had a university diplomas and most bureaucrates were anglophones.
Money was needed to change that. Lots of it.
Again, I've never seen any reports of French Canadians being targeted by police for special attention (well, other than during the FLQ crisis I suppose). Nor is being French Canadian any sort of an impediment to getting a job.
Violence as stop, but it isn't the only criteria for racism.
As for jobs, well, that has improved. Before the Quiet Revolution, not being bilingual ment you couldn't get some jobs. You couldn't talk in french at work and to customers. A The Bay clerk who was french couldn't talk to a french customer.
Speak white, remember? This is why laws against that sort of discrimination needed to be implemented and still need to be there to prevent the return to systematic discrimination. Regulating signs comes from that time period. People need to know what is written on them, so they need to be in french.
That being said, only speaking french is still an impedement. There are still job environments where english is the only language used. You're not bilingual? Too bad, no job for you. The provincial Liberals have been blamed for shrugging at the situation.
It is also why we need institution that are in french. This way unilingual people can get good paying high qualification jobs, and unilingual people can get services in a language they understand. Take Québec's Financial Markets Authority. It is responsible for financial regulation in Québec and provides assistance to consumers of financial products and services. I think each province has one, but Harper wants to merge them into one, and most provinces are ok with it. We, as usual, oppose that for the reasons I've mentioned above. Plus it becomes a tool of passive assimilation. Learn english or be excluded from jobs and services.
Building institutions from the ground up cost money. This is why we wanted in the constitution a clause that let Québec refuse to join in national institution and programs with full financial compensation.
So, what racism? In what way are French Canadians being treated inferior to English Canadians? I'd say that the special treatment of Quebec is largely responsible for the negative reactions of the rest of Canada.
This response makes me think of some comments about black people in the US. A lot of people see black people as a class with special benefits and rights when it is the oppiste. Québécois do not face the same blight as black people in the US do, but we too face the perception that we get special benefits and rights when we do not.
You mention Manitoba and other provinces that receive considerable equalization payments - you do realise that people DO call them freeloaders right? That the Have provinces resent everyone for taking their tax dollars. Quebec isn't special here.
Oh we have a special place in haters' heart. Just tune in some talk radio show or read a Sun newspaper, and you'll hear Québec bashers.
In what way is Quebec being oppressed? Your culture is strongly protected, far more than Aboriginal rights are and they DO have far more legitimate claims to oppression and racism. What oppression?
It isn't a competition. There isn't a level of oppression that needs to be met before someone can object to it. Any oppression is bad. Some have it worse than others. Aboriginals have it pretty bad, that is for sure. Right now e face racism and continued passive assimilation tactics.
