Canada PoliticsQuebec language watchdog resigns just weeks after ‘Pastagate’
The Quebec government has confirmed that Louise Marchand, Quebec's language watchdog, has resigned her post, effective Friday morning.
The resignation comes just weeks after Marchand's office faced ridicule for the pastagate incident where the Quebecois de la langue francaise ordered an Italian restaurant to remove the word “pasta” from its menu.
"These episodes had an undesired effect on the businesses, the Office personnel, the public, and Quebec in general," Diane De Courcy, Parti Quebecois minister responsible for the French language, said on Friday morning according to the Canadian Press.
CP adds that the minister "wasn't very proud" of the attention Pastagate drew from international media.
[ Related: Quebec language police duck fight against Italian restaurant ]
So, the government has pulled a mea-culpa on Pastagate.
But Pastagate is just the tip of the iceberg.
Somehow, De Courcy gets away with not being questioned about other government policies that seem to be cultivating an anti-English language culture.
After all, isn't this the same party that introduced Bill 14?
As explained by CTV Montreal, if passed, Bill 14 would strengthen Quebec's Charter of the French Language, also known as Bill 101.
Those changes included giving the Minister of Language the unilateral right to strip municipalities of their bilingual status if the percentage of mother tongue English speakers dipped below 50 percent.
The PQ was also proposing that francophones in the military, who are often subject to transfers across Canada, would no longer be allowed to send their children to English schools.
Bill 14 also called for all companies with 26 to 50 employees to obtain Certificates of Francization, indicating that all their internal communications and workplaces were predominantly French.
And, on Thursday, as Yahoo!'s Steve Mertl reported, the PQ government cancelled an intensive program that would have seen Grade 6 children spend half the year learning their regular subjects in English. According to the province's education minister, the 'English immersion' was partly cancelled because the previous Liberal government 'never properly studied the effects of their English initiatives.
[ Related: Quebec government cuts back program to help Grade 6 kids learn English ]
And who could forget the story from November about the language watchdog challenging companies like Walmart and Costco to change their names or add French tag lines to their signs.
So how are these initiatives going to effect, as Diane De Courcy says, the "businesses, the Office personnel, the public, and Quebec in general"?
I think everybody understands that the province is trying to maintain it's language and culture within a continent dominated by the English language. But are the PQ putting ideology before good policy?
Pastagate got all the international attention, but there is so much more happening.
And, remember, this has all happened with the PQ in power for only 6 months. Imagine what would happen if they actually earned a majority and had four or five years to implement their policies.
A scary scary thought.
(Photo courtesy of the Canadian Press)
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