It’s electoral mathematics. There are simply many more francos than non-francos, controlling many more seats in Parliament and the Assembly.
“It’s because you don’t count.”
That’s what a francophone journalist told me back in 2003, after I remarked to him that the non-francophones who were the Quebec Liberal Party’s most loyal supporters were underrepresented in Jean Charest’s new Liberal cabinet.
A denunciation of members of minorities who complain of their treatment in Quebec as “enemies … of French-speaking Quebec.”
With it, a call to “extinguish these hotbeds of intolerance,” in a message the writer acknowledges might be used by the “hotheaded and violently prejudiced.”
Just another rant from someone in the online hate community hiding behind a pseudonym, exceptional only for its lack of spelling mistakes?
No, a column published in Quebec’s most-read daily and on its website, and promoted on the province’s most popular television network, all properties of Pierre Karl Péladeau’s Québecor media empire.
Even in Péladeau’s flagship Le Journal de Montréal, with its deep lineup of minority-baiting columnists, I can’t recall ever reading anything as disturbing as Denise Bombardier’s Jan. 5 column titled “Les québécophobes.”
You can read the column in French online at journaldemontreal.com/2019/01/05/les-quebecophobes, and form your own opinion of it.
You can also listen to Bombardier promote it on TVA television at tvanouvelles.ca/videos/5986318403001, where she falsely accused Quebec anglophones of not supporting francophone minorities in the rest of Canada, such as the Franco-Ontarians affected by recent spending cuts by the Ford government. In fact, the Quebec Community Groups Network and the Montreal Gazette, among others, were quick to come to the Franco-Ontarians’ defence
“Si on veut avoir des services en anglais, il faut faire attention.”
On Saturday January 7, QCGN Director General Sylvia Martin-Laforge was among five speakers on the Radio-Canada radio show called “Faut pas croire tout ce qu’on dit” with host Michel Lacombe. This show adressed the results of a Canadian Heritage survey which was first commented by journalist Philippe Orfali in Le Devoir (click here for the article).
Listen to Sylvia Martin-Laforge’s interview:
Listen to the full show:
The QCGN is funded by the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage.
