Québec bill 195
 

Bill 195

In October 2007, PQ deputy Daniel Turp authored Bill 195, the "Quebec Identity Act", which included a requirement that immigrants must learn French to obtain rights, including a putative Quebec citizenship and the right to run in elections at all levels. The draft legislation concedes, though, that since Quebec is not sovereign, it does not have any jurisdiction over citizenship. Article 49.2 of the draft notes landed immigrants cannot obtain the status of "Quebec citizen" if they are not also Canadian citizens. The bill also proposed the fundamental values of Quebec that should be taken account in a future constitution, including equality between sexes and the predominance of French.


Not to bash Québec or anything, but I always thought Canada was more about diversity not assimilation.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

As did I.
I find this interesting.
Although, I can't say I blame them. We have an entire country, USA, doing the same thing with Mexican immigrants.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

Quebec is not indicative of the greater Canada. Hell, Quebec still operates under common law instead of judicial law. It is kind of a weird place. I would say there is your typical Canadian, and then there is your typical Quebecois, and the two are vastly different.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

I live in quebec myself most of the people here are french and hate canada themselves. Quebec also tried to separate from Canada on multiple occasions. My girlfriend works at Wal-Mart and they ad to destroy alot of there stock because it didn't have french instructions. Also if you ask a frenchman out of Quebec what nationality he is he will say proudly "Je suis Quebecois" not I am canadian. Most people here don't even celebrate Canada day. It's a shame to because we have the largest province with the second most population so a separatist party is always in parliament. But Quebec people are not really racist to Immigrants they just passed that law because they want the french in their province to live on.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

Most of Quebec citizens are PQist, pretty obvious, and there are no reasons why french should be the one and only spoken language in Quebec. French isn't going to disappear here.

I got to say this: English is WAY easier to learn than french.

Quebec IS still a part of Canada, and I (personally) am against Quebec not being a part of it anymore, because it is!

I agree with this. The typical "Quebecois" will tend to copy others, and I know what I'm talking about.

I hope Quebec will become/stay open-minded.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

they have this mentality that they can't afford to lose their french language (same applies for french acadians here in new-brunswick) even though they're a majority. This happens even in montréal where there is a great english population (mainly used for commercial purposes). I know some people who don't speak a word of french in there. This means they have no rights even though they're canadian citizens. It's like saying someone from quebec who doesn't speak english moves to ontario but doesn't have any rights cuz he's french. Lots of discrimination in that bill


I speak french and english and legally I can speak any language I wish weather it be german polish or spanish. We live in Canada and Québec, weather the bloquistes agree or not, is part of it. It's not another country therefore Canada's federal laws should still apply there. Any Canadian citizen within the country's limits should have the same rights no matter which province they live in. Inuits and PQ's have the same rights in other words.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

Except you don't need to speak English to be a U.S. citizen with full rights.

That bill is crap.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

The number of french speaking Quebecers keep decreasing over the years. I heard that french speakers represent 2% of the population in North America.

English already tried to assimilate us a few times.

I mean, we were here first XD




Except USA has about 40 times more people than Québec.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

Forced assimilation hasn't been an issue for quebec since the confederation. By being assholes to the rest of canada, they're not seen as good people by others. France hates quebec even though they're both strictly french and quebec comes from a french colony.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

What? France doesn`t hate Quebec.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

Yes, There's the West mount part in Montreal, no french there.

And yes again, people consider Quebec as another country way too much.

Yes, I went there once, Some of the cashier weren't acting nicely with us, because "We're from Quebec and we're vulgarizing french"

Re: Québec bill 195
 

for the most part, they hate the separatists. If you're not, they won't mind you.


Last time i was in montreal, the west part (mcgill) was 100% english, I wasn't even spoken to in french once. The east part was full of separatists with picketing signs =/

Re: Québec bill 195
 

I guess it really depends on the person. I spoke with a few french and they didn't look like they hated us or anything.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

The President of France just went on public record stating his support for a unified Canada, and opposing the idea of a seperate Quebec. While he might not hate Quebec, he's certainly not visibly in support of the seperatist movement.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

I'm not french, have never lived in Quebec, but if there were another referendum about having quebec separate, I'd probably vote for them to do so. It's stupid and against one's rights to keep people part of a country when they don't want to be. If Quebec wants to be about assimilation, let them be that way. That's no different from most of the world's countries. However, I do think it's overboard to make speaking french a necessity. If french is that strong a language there anyways, no one who couldn't speak it would be able to run in an election, and you'll need to learn some french to live there anyways. If french isn't that strong, then you shouldn't enforce it. Hey, it's like I think common law should run Quebec :-p

I do recall one incident I was pretty upset at though. I had stopped in Montreal while traveling on the train, and was walking around during my stop-over, and asked a lady 'Es-ce que vous avez le temp?', and she got all bitchy at me that I said it wrong, saying "l'heure". Talk about no respect. I didn't even live there, I might'nt have even been Canadian, and yet she felt justified to get upset at me. If she hadn't been rude about it, I wouldn't be upset about it to this day.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

They've had more than one vote and voted to stay. Clearly nothing approaching a strong majority of people in quebec want to seperate.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

Being a Quebecer myself, I would like to correct some points.

Totally false. The political party governing Quebec is the Liberal Party. PQ got 36 seats (out of 125) and they got 28.35% of the vote. So no, not the majority of Quebecers are PQists. Moreover, I can say it is mostly older people from the time where the PQ was stronger that are PQists. It has difficulty reaching younger people.

Let's say they don't exactly like us. It's all coming back from colony time, where we decided not to be part of the USA and to continue supporting England while France took the American side.

Now, I would like generalizations to stop. We are not all in that line of thought.

The PQ directive line is to promote the separation of the Quebec from the rest of the Canada. It is normal that it will try to pass such bills. They passed twice in their history a vote for independence. Twice it failed. And now, the PQ is even weaker, having less than half the seats they had 10 years ago.

It also has to be noted that the Liberal party rewrote a good part of that bill in order to remove the nonsensical measures.

Us Quebecers are not generally fund of that kind of ideas. We also like English. We like the rest of Canada. We are only speaking another language at home. That's all.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

This bill was passed because the French language constitutes the foundations of everything that makes a Quebecer a Quebecer. Thinking and speaking in French is the fundamental element in being different in the sea of English-speaking North America. I think it's a great way to keep the language alive.

Ironically enough, though, most Quebecers that will whine about being "Assimilated" by the English can't even speak French properly themselves. It's very hypocritical, if I may say so.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

I think that officially, any legal document should be in both languages. As far as not getting rights because of language is absolutely retarded. Canada is known for its diversity rather than assimilation, quebec is no exception. Quebec has been mostly french for centuries and I doubt it'll change any time soon. So why would they try to assimilate people within their province? It's still Canadian soil and laws should be respected as such.

I have lots of quebec roots. If i were from quebec, i'd rather say that i'm a french canadian than strictly a quebecois. English and French languages can work together. The city I live in is a perfect example. We're the only officially bilingual city in Canada as of 2002. 40 years ago, the french population here was hated just like the english hated people from quebec (here was worse we were being compared to nazis). To this day, both languages live in harmony and knowing how to speak them fluently is a huge advantage.

If only quebec could learn to harmonize with the english population like acadians do, maybe other provinces wouldn't think so badly of quebec.

Re: Québec bill 195
 

"Ironically enough, though, most Quebecers that will whine about being "Assimilated" by the English can't even speak French properly themselves. It's very hypocritical, if I may say so."
It's not hypocritical if they want to speak french properly, whatever you mean by 'properly'. You can look at it as that they're whining that they ARE being assimilated by English, instead of worried that they will be.