In a live interview with Breakfast Television, QCGN President Geoffrey Chambers discussed a Superior Court ruling which refused an injunction to prevent the forced transfer of two English schools In St-Léonard to the overcrowded French system as well as a cooperation agreement between QCGN and official language minority groups representing Franco-Ontarians and Acadians in New Brunswick.
Société de l’Acadie New Brunswick President Robert Melanson does not regret his decision to partner with l’Assemblée de la Francophonie de l’Ontario and the Quebec Community Groups Network. There are distinct differences between the English- and French-speaking communities, but they also fight for a common cause, says Melanson.
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Francophones in Ontario and Anglophones in Quebec should come together on pressing issues such as the modernization of the Official Languages Act and minority language education, but officializing the relationship goes too far, writes Sébastien Pierroz of ONfr.
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French-speakers across the country are standing in solidarity with Quebec’s English-speaking community as the Legault government hastily begins transferring three EMSB schools to the Commission scolaire de la Pointe-de-l’Île.
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Recent events in French-speaking Ontario have led to some comparisons between what Franco-Ontarians and English-speaking Quebecers live with daily. At first glance, their situations are very different. But the English-speaking community also has its demands.
First, the President of the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN), Geoffrey Chambers, is keen to support the latest demands of Franco-Ontarians against decisions made by the Ford government. The former Alliance Quebec member rebukes them.
For those who think that the basket of recriminations is empty for English-speaking, this is not so.
The representative of the network of 58 English-speaking organizations across Quebec agrees that “interests may be different from one region to another”. There are surely differences between a region such as Quebec, which has a population of nearly 15,000 English-speaking Quebecers and Montreal. That city has some 600,000 people who master the language of Leonard Cohen, according to the 2018 figures of the Quebec’s Institut de la statistique.
In 2019, Geoffrey Chambers sees three points on which the QCGN will have to remain vigilant. During the campaign trail, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) indicated its intention of abolishing school boards. This decision will not be accepted if it affects English school boards, as they are important for the survival of many communities.
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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
TORONTO – Alors que la communauté franco-ontarienne organise sa riposte aux coupures de Doug Ford, des anglophones font savoir qu’ils partagent leur colère. Et ils comptent se joindre aux actions qui seront entreprises au cours des prochaines semaines avec la ferme intention de faire reculer le gouvernement ontarien.
Jeudi 15 novembre, aux alentours de 13h30, le gouvernement Ford annonçait l’élimination du Commissariat aux services en français et l’annulation du projet d’Université de l’Ontario français. L’organisme anglo-québécois Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) a été l’un des premiers à dénoncer ces coupures.
«Notre organisme regardait l’Ontario comme un modèle en ce qui a trait à la manière dont on devrait traiter une communauté linguistique minoritaire», a écrit l’organisme dans un communiqué.
Selon QCGN, la formule ontarienne se base sur trois piliers qui sont indissociables: «Une Loi sur les services en français, qui protège les droits des Franco-Ontariens. Un Office des Affaires francophones qui s’assure que des services en français sont offerts. Puis, un Commissaire aux services en français qui s’assure que ces droits sont respectés».
Selon le groupe, on ne peut pas s’en prendre à l’un d’eux sans provoquer de graves conséquences, ce qui le motive à prendre part au mouvement.
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Under normal circumstances, Quebec Premier François Legault might have found a lot in common with Doug Ford, his Ontario counterpart, during their first tête-à-tête in Toronto Monday.
Both are businessmen-turned-politicians who have arrived in power by unseating long-entrenched Liberal governments. Both are fiscal conservatives with populist tendencies. Both have concerns about immigration. Both are at odds with Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on major priorities. Both have threatened in their brief tenures to use the notwithstanding clause should the courts stand in the way of their legislative agendas.
But looming large over a meeting between the next-door neighbours, which was supposed to focus on strengthening economic ties, was the Ford government’s unfortunate decision last week to sacrifice the rights of Franco-Ontarians in the name of clawing its way out of a financial hole. In an economic update, the Ontario government cancelled plans for a francophone university and axed the province’s French-language commissioner, absorbing its functions into the ombudsman’s office.
The QCGN is funded by the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage.
