Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[New Brisavoine]

In New Caledonia, only the people who were resident of New Caledonia for more than 30 years could vote in the independence referendum. Was anything like that ever suggested in Québec?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

In New Caledonia, only the people who were resident of New Caledonia for more than 30 years could vote in the independence referendum. Was anything like that ever suggested in Québec?

Oh we'd never do that here.

The rules for voting in the Quebec referendum were 1) being a Canadian citizen and 2) having resided in Quebec for six months prior to the vote.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

In France "agent" only refers to members of the secret service, or to US federal policemen in the context of US TV series.

Mulder and Scully?

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

Mulder and Scully?

Par exemple.

[Acajack]

We even have L'Agent Jean!

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=5d...zUQtKgLegQIDRAB&biw=1280&bih=613&dpr=1.5

[Kilgore Trout]

Originally Posted by Acajack

C'est quatre trente sous pour une piasse = c'est du pareil au même

(Six and one-half dozen of the other)

Two expressions I've heard of before, but both boggle my mind. Old people speak.

[New Brisavoine]

^^Thinking of it, since PSPP now talks of Québec having its own currency, the piastre ("piasse" in colloquial pronunciation) could be quite a legitimate name for that currency of an independent Québec. Piastre was just the colloquial French name of the Spanish (later Mexican) silver dollar, whose value was similar to the French écu d'argent, itself worth 6 French £, i.e. 120 sous, hence a quarter of a dollar is 30 sous, as explained yesterday.

[urbandreamer]

That would be interesting, and finally make Quebec affordable to a ROC invasion.

[Acajack]

According to the latest poll by Léger, francophones are evenly split on sovereignty.

13% of non-francophones support sovereignty.

Since we can assume that almost no anglophones support sovereignty (less than 5%), than this means that the allophone share is considerably higher than 13%. I am not a statistician, but I do know that polls like these generally have roughly equal numbers of anglophones and allophones in the "non-francophone" sample.

Still, allophone support for sovereignty is well under 50%. As always.

https://twitter.com/JeanMarcLeger1/status/1783110471429574923

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

Two expressions I've heard of before, but both boggle my mind. Old people speak.

"Trading four quarters for a dollar" makes a lot of sense as an expression (to illustrate a pointless maneuver that produces no net result), you must mean it's the old-style words that you find strange, not the concept

[Zeej]

Originally Posted by Acajack

According to the latest poll by Léger, francophones are evenly split on sovereignty.

13% of non-francophones support sovereignty.

Since we can assume that almost no anglophones support sovereignty (less than 5%), than this means that the allophone share is considerably higher than 13%. I am not a statistician, but I do know that polls like these generally have roughly equal numbers of anglophones and allophones in the "non-francophone" sample.

Still, allophone support for sovereignty is well under 50%. As always.

https://twitter.com/JeanMarcLeger1/status/1783110471429574923

Digging further into the numbers, 408 of the 1026 (39%) people polled were from the Montreal RMR, which polled 31% OUI and 59% NON. Given that Montreal RMR is roughly 50% of Quebec's population, there is a possibility that the overall support for the NON (53% NON, 36% OUI) has actually been slightly under-represented.

I assume this under-representation is actually reasonable insofar as provincial ridings might be concerned, yielding a more accurate portrait of party voting intentions. Nonetheless, it skews the sovereignty numbers slightly towards the OUI where every vote has equal weight.

https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/11679-275-Politique-Avril-2024-FINAL-23-avril.pdf

Eager to see if Pallas Data also polled on support for sovereignty.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Zeej

Digging further into the numbers, 408 of the 1026 (39%) people polled were from the Montreal RMR, which polled 31% OUI and 59% NON. Given that Montreal RMR is roughly 50% of Quebec's population, there is a possibility that the overall support for the NON (53% NON, 36% OUI) has actually been slightly under-represented.

I assume this under-representation is actually reasonable insofar as provincial ridings might be concerned, given a more accurate portrait of party voting intentions. Nonetheless, it skews the sovereignty numbers slightly towards the OUI where every vote has equal weight.

https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/11679-275-Politique-Avril-2024-FINAL-23-avril.pdf

Eager to see if Pallas Data also polled on support for sovereignty.

Maybe accounting for non-citizens? Montreal's population was about 10% non-citizen in 2021, and that figure is certainly higher today.

And of course the % of non-citizens is way higher in Montreal CMA than anywhere else in Quebec, with the possible exception of Gatineau.

[Zeej]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Maybe accounting for non-citizens? Montreal's population was about 10% non-citizen in 2021, and that figure is certainly higher today.

And of course the % of non-citizens is way higher in Montreal CMA than anywhere else in Quebec, with the possible exception of Gatineau.

Interesting possibility! Could very well be.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Acajack

According to the latest poll by Léger, francophones are evenly split on sovereignty.

13% of non-francophones support sovereignty.

Since we can assume that almost no anglophones support sovereignty (less than 5%), than this means that the allophone share is considerably higher than 13%. I am not a statistician, but I do know that polls like these generally have roughly equal numbers of anglophones and allophones in the "non-francophone" sample.

Still, allophone support for sovereignty is well under 50%. As always.

https://twitter.com/JeanMarcLeger1/status/1783110471429574923

As Parizeau said the money and ethnic stopped a yes vote.

Chicken and egg a little. Reaching out to them could persuade the francophone allophones to increase support. A lot are of course afraid of any conflict that could result from their own histories. But there are certainly arguments that could be made if someone was willing to do it.

I have heard arguments Quebec could liberalize language and other laws if independent so that oculd be one argument.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

As Parizeau said the money and ethnic stopped a yes vote.

Chicken and egg a little. Reaching out to them could persuade the francophone allophones to increase support. A lot are of course afraid of any conflict that could result from their own histories. But there are certainly arguments that could be made if someone was willing to do it.

I have heard arguments Quebec could liberalize language and other laws if independent so that oculd be one argument.

I doubt that argument would hold much sway. In my experience allophones (even those more oriented towards English) are much much less irritated by Quebec language policies than true anglophones are.

Even those who prefer to use English often just "ride with it" and even consider it normal for Quebec to be mainly francophone and to have to bump into French in their everyday lives.

It's not seen by them as a personal and community affront like it is by many anglos.

As for true anglophones, obviously they're dead-set against independence no matter what, so hypothetical abolition of Bill 101 in an independent Quebec may as well be political fiction for them.

I mean, an independent Quebec might well think that Bill 101 is no longer necessary, but that same independent Quebec might get rid of stuff like an independent, fully-funded K-12 anglophone public school system like they have now.

[Acajack]

Some more rebalancing of the eternal bad guys vs good guys debate:

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2066555/hopital-ottawa-franco-ontarien-services-francais

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Acajack

As for true anglophones, obviously they're dead-set against independence no matter what, so hypothetical abolition of Bill 101 in an independent Quebec may as well be political fiction for them.

I mean, an independent Quebec might well think that Bill 101 is no longer necessary, but that same independent Quebec might get rid of stuff like an independent, fully-funded K-12 anglophone public school system like they have now.

It's possible that the "divorce treaty" between Canada & Quebec would have clauses in it about reciprocal minority language rights - although for various reasons I don't think that would actually happen. I doubt Quebec would be willing to indefinitely commit itself to things like an anglophone public school system post-independence just to hold off the assimilation of francophones outside Quebec, plus many Anglo-Canadian populists would likely see Quebec independence as a way to get rid of "bilingual stuff" once and for all & not like such a reciprocal commitment either.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

It's possible that the "divorce treaty" between Canada & Quebec would have clauses in it about reciprocal minority language rights - although for various reasons I don't think that would actually happen. I doubt Quebec would be willing to indefinitely commit itself to things like an anglophone public school system post-independence just to hold off the assimilation of francophones outside Quebec, plus many Anglo-Canadian populists would likely see Quebec independence as a way to get rid of "bilingual stuff" once and for all & not like such a reciprocal commitment either.

Yeah, francophones in the nine provinces of Anglo-Canada and/or in the nine provinces of post-Quebec-sovereignty Canada (same thing), are in the long term on their way out whatever happens; why would Quebec commit to stuff when the trade off is... nothing?

[Acajack]

PQ governments of another era considered reciprocity agreements with the ROC provinces in terms of services and institutions for anglophones (Quebec) and francophones (ROC).

I believe the first evocation of it was rejected by the ROC provinces who didn't want to do more for French. This would have been under Lévesque.

Then some years later a less nice proposal came out of the PQ, to reduce English accommodation in Quebec to the levels of French in the ROC. This would have been under Parizeau I think.

But it was ruled out and I think Parizeau might have said: "Come on now, we can do that to our anglos. That would be way too mean."

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Acajack

According to the latest poll by Léger, francophones are evenly split on sovereignty.

13% of non-francophones support sovereignty.

Since we can assume that almost no anglophones support sovereignty (less than 5%), than this means that the allophone share is considerably higher than 13%. I am not a statistician, but I do know that polls like these generally have roughly equal numbers of anglophones and allophones in the "non-francophone" sample.

Still, allophone support for sovereignty is well under 50%. As always.

https://twitter.com/JeanMarcLeger1/status/1783110471429574923

If the OUI camp wants to win the referendum, they should try to convince the allophones. Support among the Francophone can only take them so far. There will always be many Francophones afraid of the big step in the unknown, so they'll never have the 75% or 80% of oui-voting Francophones needed to offset the Anglophones and allophones voting NON.

Therefore their only chance is to convince a far higher share of the allophones to vote OUI. The Scottish Nationalist Party was quite successful in embracing recent immigrants and enticing them to vote YES in their last independence referendum.