Quote:
Originally Posted by MonctonRad
I was being intentionally hyperbolic, and this is obviously not the situation on the ground in Quebec right now, but, the intent of LeGeault's Bill 96 is clearly this.
If you move to Quebec, you are expected to learn French within only six months, and if you can't, well, then God bless you. You're on your own. You can either deal with it or leave (in other words, fuck off).
No other province in the federation has this approach for immigrant non English speakers, no matter where they come from.
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It's not actually like that though. The six month thing is in regards to immigrants and isn't totally unfair. As someone who works in government, I can tell you that Quebec does a lot more to serve people in English than most other provinces do to serve in French with the exception of NB, a few parts of ON.
If you move to Quebec, you should be expected to learn French if you are there to work and use many services. But Quebec overall is pretty good to Anglophones and immigrants. You can get service in English in a number of regions and people will often speak to you in English at all sorts of places. But you can't go there expecting service in English for everything. If you want to belong in Quebec society then speaking French is a must.
I totally agree that immigrants should be learning French to immigrate and live in Quebec. It's the language of business and society there. There has to be pressure and incentives. I feel that the federal and Quebec governments need to do more things to actually have potential immigrants learn French before they move to Quebec and even to other parts of Canada.