Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!watmsg!sccowan From: sccowan@watmsg.waterloo.edu (S. Crispin Cowan) Newsgroups: can.general Subject: Re: Canada -- One or two cultures Message-ID: <28168@watmath.waterloo.edu> Date: 4 Aug 89 18:18:33 GMT References: <89Aug3.145600edt.10404@neat.cs.toronto.edu> Sender: daemon@watmath.waterloo.edu Reply-To: sccowan@watmsg.waterloo.edu (S. Crispin Cowan) Distribution: can Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 93 In article <89Aug3.145600edt.10404@neat.cs.toronto.edu> lesperan@ai.toronto.edu (Yves Lesperance) writes: >Portions of Bill 101, 158, and various provisions of the Meech Lake Accord >have been largely viewed in English Canada as arbitrary restrictions on >individual rights. What need to be recognized in Canadian political >culture, are the rights of linguistic communities. Both communities >associated with Canada's official languages currently have some geographical >area where it is possible to largely lead one's public as well as private life >in that official language. Each linguistic community is large enough to >generate a lively cultural environment. It should be part of the Canadian >raison d'etre that this state of affairs should continue in the future. >But the situation of each community in this respect is widely different. >Assimilation has decimated the French community throughout the course of >Canadian history. Immigrants come to Canada looking largely for a less >imperialistic version of the American way of life and culture. Unless >they speak French before they arrive, they will chose to integrate into >the English community in the absence of measures to incite them to do >otherwise. Therefore, if the survival of each linguistic community is >to be assured, the legitimacy of taking such measures must be recognized. I have come to the conclusion the the terms 'community rights' and 'individual rights' are mis-named; in fact, they are backwards. The rights that we call 'individual rights,' such as freedom of speech, assembly, non-discrimination on the basis of race, sex, etc. are really community rights. Why? Because they apply equally to everyone under the law. Read my lips: APPLY EQUALLY TO EVERYONE. How much more community-oriented can you get? So-called 'community rights', as spelled out by Yves, are really individual rights. Why? Because they are really privileges demanded by small-but-vocal groups of people, who insist on getting their way 'for the good of the community.' Yves claims that the 'community right' of the Francophone community to push immigrants around and sucker them into investing their lives in the Quebec French community (instead of the much larger and more economically viable North American English community) for the good of future generations of Francophones, so they will be able to live in their own community. BUNK! Anyone who does not emmigrate (with a few exceptions) gets to live in their own community. Just don't leave your community, and you get it. Whatever the language of future generations of Quebecers is, they will, by definition, get to live in their own community. What Yves is crying for is the right to impose his idea of what that community should be like; Yves' individual right to push other people around. All attempts to define 'linguistic community rights' are really attempts by certain individuals to impose their preference for a particular language on groups of other people. If everyone is given freedom of speech (read, write, post signs in whatever language), and freedom of association (associage (read work for, employ, party with), then everyone will get what they want in their life, and the community will be happy. If individuals get to push other people around, then there will continue to be strife (@*$&^*@ XXXphones won't let me post my sigh in YYY; I hate those XXXphones), and the community will be unhappy. > >Now, there may be disagreement about the extent of the threats to the French >community's continued viability and about what incitative measures >are reasonable and appropriate, but not on the goal itself, nor on the >principle that individual rights must sometime be traded off against >collective linguistic rights. If you don't think collectivities can have >rights think of them as the rights of future generations to be able to >live in their official language (and as the rights of their currently living >parents to have that be the case). Future generations will always get to live in their language of choice, if the likes of 178 are defeated. Only if it succeeds will people be forced to live with the tyranny of a language that they did not choose. > >To me (and most French Canadians I would think) the goal of ensuring >continued viability of the French community is more important than the >right to education or other government services in one's language in areas >of the country where the other linguistic community is dominant. Does it perhaps tell you something that you're having to use the big government club to get people to stop drifting away from your community? To get people to join your community? Do you really believe that FORCING people to partake of the French culture is for their benefit? The people ARE the community, and when you force the people to do something, you are OPRESSING the community. >Yves Lesperance lesperan@ai.toronto.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Login name: sccowan In real life: S. Crispin Cowan Office: DC3548 x3934 Home phone: 570-2517 Post Awful: 60 Overlea Drive, Kitchener, N2M 1T1 UUCP: watmath!watmsg!sccowan Domain: sccowan@watmsg.waterloo.edu "Everything to excess. Moderation is for monks." -Lazarus Long