Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!lamy
Newsgroups: can.francais
From: lamy@cs.utoronto.ca (Jean-Francois Lamy)
Subject: Re: Sault Sainte-Marie officiellement unilingue anglophone
Message-ID: <90Feb6.070900est.6208@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Keywords: Sault Sainte-Marie Kapuskasing
References: <1990Feb5.182925.2005@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <90521@looking.on.ca>
Distribution: can
Date: 6 Feb 90 12:09:27 GMT
Lines: 19

As far as I understand it, there is strictly no reason to pass such a motion,
because Ontario municipalities plainly aren't covered by bill 8, which
mandates French services in Provincial Government administrative areas where
French population exceeds 10% of the population or where the number of
Francophones exceeds a certain threshold.

Sault-Ste-Marie and Niagara Falls were never asked to provide services in
French (and would not even qualify *even* if bill 8 applied to municipalities,
as they have resp. 6 and 2% Francophone populations).  Some cities in Eastern
Ontario might qualify, but those aren't the ones passing the laws.  I can just
barely understand why some people in the Loyalist belt who still fly a Union
Jack on their front lawn would feel like wiping their feet on a Que'bec flag
in front of TV cameras, and carry signs saying "Stop the French Take-over".
Yeah, right.  Not much point arguing with people like that.  I find immensely
more worrying to see such a movement among elected officials of much larger
cities, and a movement that appears to be spreading, at that.

Jean-Francois Lamy               lamy@cs.utoronto.ca, uunet!cs.utoronto.ca!lamy
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4