Following his victory over the Oath of the King of England, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon was set to continue his offensive to force François Legault to act on other matters that the CAQ government should have acted on long ago while he doing it at the moment shows an unacceptable timidity and forbearance.
Secrets of the stolen 1995 referendum
As tensions with the ROC mount, the Parti Québécois – with the support of the opposition parties other than the Liberals, if possible – must demand that the Legault government take steps to make the entire archive of the Grenier Commission public. So we could find out how Jean Chrétien stole the 1995 referendum by illegally funding the No campaign in defiance of Quebec’s electoral laws.
These documents are currently subject to an unlimited publication ban. PSPP and PQ must lead a national mobilization on this issue. It is to the advantage of the Parti Québécois and all of Québec – even the CAQ – that they are finally being uncovered.
- Listen to Normand Lester’s editorial on Richard Martineau’s show QUB radio:
University graduates do not speak French
It is a national humiliation that one can leave college in Quebec without speaking the local language. In “normal” countries, educational institutions aim to integrate newcomers into the majority. Here we are becoming a minority in our own country with our tax money. It’s unique on the planet. For our government, failure to intervene is a pathetic manifestation of our national masochism. Enough to make us the laughing stock of the whole world.
Another humbling reality: how many countries in the world cannot treat patients in the local language? In anglophone hospitals, it is often francophones who (in English) ensure the administrative running of these facilities, while monolingual English speakers (doctors and nurses) take care of the patients.
Give way to pseudo-English speaking cities
In Quebec, a community can achieve bilingual status if it is 50% Anglophone, a quota that Montreal has yet to match. But it’s coming fast: Anglophones just have to wait a few more years.
Nearly 90 parishes in Quebec have this status, but—shoo! – Don’t tell anyone: it’s a lie. Only a minority of these cities actually have a majority of English speakers. We even give them the choice. This is how Otterburn Park wants to keep its status, even though only 5.7% of its population is English-speaking. How many times in our history have we been given the justification for worshiping in French for our minorities outside of Quebec: only where numbers justify it?
One consolation at the end of this political year is the dramatic demise of the Liberal Party, the spearhead of what René Lévesque called the “White Rhodesians”, backed, to use Jacques Parizeau’s phrase, by “money and the ethnic vote”.