> Travis wrote:
>
> > Yoshie, Quebec has control (constitutionally) of education and
> > immigration. So to argue that the status of "diversity" in
> > Montreal or Quebec for that matter is the the Feds fault is simply
> > inaccurate.
>
> I don't mean education policy in Quebec. I mean education policy in
> Canada in general.
This is part of the flawed logic of the BI&BI commission: the feds have no jurisdiction over education, that is, education is a beast of the provinces. So the Feds tried using its spending power to coax provinces into establishing bilingual programs. The provinces were never committed to the project, particualrly he western provinces. So what you have today is a scattering of french language schools throughout the country which maybe, at best, could serve 5% of the k-12 population. There is french being taught in highschools but unless you are going to go to university you do not need more than grade 10 french to graduate and in some places less (and in many places french language instruction does not start until grade 7). The Feds have however been good at demanding french language competence and training for individuals in their employ including the military.
Unless all Canadians are educated to become fully
> bilingual wherever they live and immigrants are also encouraged to
> become so, I think immigrants (most of whom either are English-
> speaking or speak neither English nor French) will choose English as
> their Canadian language of choice and gravitate toward English-
> speaking regions -- English, not French, is the global business
> fashion anyway. If I were to immigrate into Canada, I'd probably try
> Toronto, not Montreal or any other French-speaking city, as I can
> only read French and can't speak the language.
>
Fact is most Allophones (neither english or french) will adopt english because
it is the international language and in the context of North-America the
language. This is the other part of the flawed logic of the BI&BI commission.
> As for Quebec's control over immigration policy, what does it
> actually amount to? E.g., can Quebec accept immigrants who wouldn't
> be qualified to immigrate into the rest of Canada? Canada has a
> system called "Provincial Nomination," but Quebec isn't listed in the
> Provincial Nomination page: <http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/skilled/
> provnom/index.html>.
>
Yes Quebec is not listed because quebec has full control over immigration
whereas the other provinces share jurisdiction with the Feds. Formally speaking
so does quebec but the Feds have devolved their responsibility to Quebec in an
atttempt to appease Francaphone concerns.
Travis