I'm Québécois from birth (Trois Rivières). I voted in the incredibly close '95 seperation referendum. In my view, separation or sovereignty would be bad for us.
Separation is mainly predicated on the idea that Québécois are culturally distinct from the rest of Canada, and that our values would be better represented independently. We mostly speak French, and the rest of Canada is predominantly anglo (my New Brunswick Acadian mother in law would have me point out New Brunswick is officially bilingual and has many Francophones). Separatists would argue that there are substantively deeper differences, but having lived abroad in several countries over a decade and returned, any differences seem to me razor thin. We have vastly more in common than separates us. Breaking from Canada to underline these minor differences would come at a tremendous cost.
But creating a movement around identity is easy. So every now and again separatist ideas gather steam. We'll pay through the nose for a Québécois Nation and be no better off for it.
> Breaking from Canada to underline these minor differences would come at a tremendous cost.
Unfortunately, I suspect that the renewed separatist movement is making a lot of people rethink potential futures in Quebec.
For example, my wife and I would easily meet the requirements to immigrate to Quebec. We have francophone family in Montreal, we speak French (one of us natively), and we have valuable professional skills. We would have no objections to sending our kids to francophone schools. And Montreal is one of my favorite cities on the planet, despite the horrible traffic and interminable road construction.
But looking at law 66, there's a certain cruelty to the details. As I understand it, new arrivals will be forbidden from receiving any government services in a language other than French after 6 months. Montreal's respected English-speaking universities will apparently be placed under strict language rules, with the obvious intention of weakening them. And there's talk, once again, about separation from Canada.
An independent Québec without Canadian human rights guarantees, and with ever more desperate extensions to law 66, would likely weaken the robust international economy of Montreal. I suspect that even some bilingual professionals would start thinking about moving to Toronto?
One interesting part is that government offices are generally forbidden to provide English versions of written texts in most situations. There are quite a few exceptions, including tourism, communicating with foreign governments, dealing with First Nations, etc. The most important of these is a health, public security and "natural justice" exception:
> «22.3. Un organisme de l’Administration peut déroger au paragraphe 1°
de l’article 13.2 en utilisant, en plus du français, une autre langue lorsqu’il
écrit, dans les cas suivants:
> 1° lorsque la santé, la sécurité publique ou les principes de justice naturelle
l’exigent;
When dealing with new arrivals to Quebec, government offices may provide written materials in other languages for the first six months. After that, apparently all communications must be solely in French?
Quebec actually has a system for helping immigrants learn French and adapt to life in Quebec. For example, see https://www.quebec.ca/education/apprendre-le-francais/cours-.... From what I've heard, it's not great, but it's better than what's available in some countries. But cutting off all access to bilingual written materials after 6 months (which is my understanding of this text) is obviously going to make it harder to help people assimilate.
> Selon le regroupement d’entreprises technos, la nouvelle loi 96 « impose un délai irréaliste, car les nouveaux arrivants doivent jongler avec de multiples défis reliés à leur intégration au sein d’une nouvelle culture et à un changement de vie professionnelle »
Basically: You can't move house, start a demanding new job, adapt to a new culture and reach a high level of French in 6 months. This puts Quebec software companies in a tough place, in terms of recruitment. Probably they'll end up recruiting in other locations.
Born in Montreal, fully bilingual, lived here for majority of my life - came back 8 or so years ago to a peaceful situation that was broken apart because nationalist extremists freaked out when greeted with "Bonjour, Hi!".
Now I have a government openly saying other cultures don't matter:
Nope - this is a real issue inside our domestic borders. The country has two official languages but only one region that legislates one of them as second class.
Additionally - Quebec's insistence on "protecting their distinct and unique culture" tramples all over the rights of other demographics important to the formation of the country. Ex: Montreal sits on unneeded Mohawk land and the insistence on French (very Quebecois French, see numerous stories of relocating citizens of France not passing the competency requirements) but you can't get served in any Iroquoian language and in much of the north many citizens speak dialects of Cree as a first language.
So you have Indigenous people who were trampled, those who signed treaties that were then broken and/or ignored, the Metis who at least got a slightly better deal having negotiated later and spent a lot of blood, and then the Quebecois who were (basically) on the loosing side of a war & abandoned by the mother country in favour of sugar plantations in the Caribbean.
And of course they get the best deal with untenable consequences and have to be entertained every time there's a complaint that can't possibly be backed up. Whether a referendum ever actually passes the province simply can't afford to separate so, uhh, yeah. Sweetheart deals (when compared to everyone else) because, simply put, racism.
So keep some of the context in mind when Canadians complain that the province will outlaw "bonjour-hi" but you can still be served in English at nearly every fast-food joint in Montreal but might very well not get admitted to a hospital because your French isn't proficient enough.
You've crossed into name-calling and personal attack repeatedly in this thread. Can you please not do that? It's against the site guidelines and we ban that sort of account.
I'm sure you have strong feelings on the topic for completely legitimate reasons, but we need to avoid flamewar here.
Quebec was part of France for more than 200 years before it was forcibly incorporated into British North America. Most French Canadians today are descendants of 800 French women who settled in Quebec from 1663-1673: https://www.cbc.ca/2017/canadathestoryofus/most-french-canad...
Yes, it’s part of Canada now. But maintaining its independent French identity was a fundamental part of the bargain of that union.
>Unfortunately, I suspect that the renewed separatist movement is making a lot of people rethink potential futures in Quebec.
How about those Curfews and other insane covid responses?
>But looking at law 66, there's a certain cruelty to the details. As I understand it, new arrivals will be forbidden from receiving any government services in a language other than French after 6 months. Montreal's respected English-speaking universities will apparently be placed under strict language rules, with the obvious intention of weakening them. And there's talk, once again, about separation from Canada.
So lets say I go to Northsec in Montreal, awesome experience. Since I cannot prove I went to an english school. I would only be served in french if I ended up in hospital. Parles pas francais.
So what? I just die in the hospital? I've been to a quebec hospital before. I waited 16 hours in the waiting room because I didnt speak french.
Obviously I'm not going to Montreal anymore. Northsec is awesome but guess not anymore.
>An independent Québec without Canadian human rights guarantees, and with ever more desperate extensions to law 66, would likely weaken the robust international economy of Montreal. I suspect that even some bilingual professionals would start thinking about moving to Toronto?
What you are seeing as a negative the quebec separatists see as a positive.
Do you think the current crop at the top of the current separatist movement really wants to leave or do you think they are just stoking tension to maintain the crazy subsidy program we have had in place for the last several decades in the face of increasing western objection to the large transfer to Quebec (and several other provinces, most notably the maritimes and territories) and the strengthening separatist movement in the prairies driven by these transfers? Or alternatively, in conjunction with the above do you think it's tension stoking to try to maintain their seats in parliament rather than the slow decline of Quebec federal power as population shifts west? Or is it none of the above and the guys running the show over there really do think it's a good idea to leave?
It's not about power. It's about purity. The hardcore members of the independence movement bandies about what translates as "the pure wool". Today, their arguments are referred to elsewhere as "the great replacement theory".
A small minority that would have won independence if it weren't for the money and the ethnic vote [0]. Nevertheless they've been able to circle the wagons [1].
It's not about power with Canada, it's about power within the borders to ensure the "pure wool" is not just preserved but any contaminating factors eliminated
Sounds like Canada proper would benefit greatly by letting Quebec go, then? Thus they would't bear the heavy burden of these concessions that they are continuously forced to do.
It would be interesting to see polling about how the rest of Canada feels about Quebec separating now compared to 1995. I was just a child at the time and didn't want Quebec to separate, but now as an adult, I feel much more ambivalent.
Is there any notable difference between flashing a GSI vs flashing AOSP from source or is the latter just done to ensure a degree of control over what one puts on one's device?
They compared across breeds ("51 dogs of various breeds", 9 of which were pugs or 'small' [1]), but some breeds are... dumb as hell. I'm skeptical the statement holds across all breeds. My friend's pug will run full speed into a wall for no apparent reason, hardly the most perceptive of creatures.
It seems presumptuous to speculatively be outraged and it seems unfair to assume that because a person was once employed by Facebook, their efforts at Mozilla will be corruptive. Lets wait and see.
I think this is unlikely, but should it become the case, you can easily install an alternative launcher, something presumably impossible on the sheild.
Also, the default launcher happens to be something heavily customized by each OEM (likely extending the AOSP launcher which will never have ads or more typically extending a shared base launcher[0]), and I think routing ads through OEMs would be both a technical and logistical impossibility.
The phone space is such a competitive market, and the cost of switching (launchers/to a different Android phone/to iOS) is so low, and the risk to future sales so high, I really doubt you'll see ads on the launcher.
> I think this is unlikely, but should it become the case, you can easily install an alternative launcher, something presumably impossible on the sheild.
Separation is mainly predicated on the idea that Québécois are culturally distinct from the rest of Canada, and that our values would be better represented independently. We mostly speak French, and the rest of Canada is predominantly anglo (my New Brunswick Acadian mother in law would have me point out New Brunswick is officially bilingual and has many Francophones). Separatists would argue that there are substantively deeper differences, but having lived abroad in several countries over a decade and returned, any differences seem to me razor thin. We have vastly more in common than separates us. Breaking from Canada to underline these minor differences would come at a tremendous cost.
But creating a movement around identity is easy. So every now and again separatist ideas gather steam. We'll pay through the nose for a Québécois Nation and be no better off for it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Quebec_referendum