Path: utzoo!attcan!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: can.francais
Subject: Re: Sault Sainte-Marie officiellement unilingue anglophone
Keywords: Sault Sainte-Marie Kapuskasing
Message-ID: <90521@looking.on.ca>
Date: 6 Feb 90 04:14:59 GMT
References: <1990Feb5.182925.2005@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Distribution: can
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 28
Class: discussion

I don't know why they would rule against a city being bilingual, unless
it was a taxpayer revolt, and we hardly have many of those in this
country.

I think the soo's decision is being blown out of proportion.  Some people
are writing that the soo declared itself "officially unilingual" or something.
As though city hall is the city.  Far from it.

All they did was say, as far as I know, was that in the interests of
conserving money, city services would only be guaranteed available in
English. 

It's not as though they went overboard and prohibited french storekeepers
from putting up signs in french!  :-)

How many unilingual french speakers are there in the soo?  Anybody
must realize that beyond a certain point, it's a tremendous waste of
taxpayer's money to pay to have every city service available in
French.  If I lived in Que'bec I wouldn't complain if they wanted to
make some city services available only in french.  In fact, I wouldn't
be surprised if this isn't the case already.

Now, if a city had a large number of unilingual speakers of a given
language, then it would be proper for them to offer all services in
that language, or make translators available.  But there has to be
some limit to this.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473