Talk:Demolinguistics of Quebec

Contents

1 "required to finance" 2 "not fully recognized" 3 allophone immigrants 4 nomenclature 5 Demolinguistics 6 To insert somewhere eventually

"required to finance"

I took this out until its meaining could be clarified:

Prior to this, Quebec was the sole province required to finance the educational needs of its religious minority. (The majority was historically French-speaking and Catholic and the minority English-speaking and Protestant).

Seems to me Ontario was required to finance its minority education. Or am I misinterpeting "required to finance"? PBrain 17:23, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Prior to Ottawa putting a line on linguistic minority education in the Constitution of Canada, only Quebec was constitutionally "forced" to take care of the educational needs of its (protestant) minority. -- Mathieugp 18:54, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

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"Section 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867 requires the Ontario government to fund Roman Catholic separate schools. This section was the result of an historical compromise crucial to Confederation." [1] (http://www.ontariocourts.on.ca/ojen/court&class/resources/significant2002.htm)

So now maybe we're disagreeing about the meaning of "forced". PBrain 21:48, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

And here's the text of section 93:

Section 93 [Education] In and for each Province the Legislature may exclusively make Laws in relation to Education, subject and according to the following Provisions:
(1) Nothing in any such Law shall prejudicially affect any Right or Privilege with respect to Denominational Schools which any Class of Persons have by Law in the Province at the Union:
(2) All the Powers, Privileges and Duties at the Union by Law conferred and imposed in Upper Canada on the Separate Schools and School Trustees of the Queen's Roman Catholic Subjects shall be and the same are hereby extended to the Dissentient Schools of the Queen's Protestant and Roman Catholic Subjects in Quebec:
(3) Where in any Province a System of Separate or Dissentient Schools exists by Law at the Union or is thereafter established by the Legislature of the Province, an Appeal shall lie to the Governor General in Council from any Act or Decision of any Provincial Authority affecting any Right or Privilege of the Protestant or Roman Catholic Minority of the Queen's Subjects in relation to Education:
(4) In case any such Provincial Law as from Time to Time seems to the Governor General in Council requisite for the Execution of the Provisions of this section is not made, or in case any Decision of the Governor General in Council on any Appeal under this section is not duly executed by the proper Provincial Authority in that Behalf, then and in every such Case, and as far as the Circumstances of each Case require, the Parliament of Canada may make remedial Laws for the due Execution of the Provisions of this section and of any Decision of the Governor General in Council under this section.

Roman Catholic schools in Ontario already had the right to funding as a result of laws passed by the legislature of the Province of Canada.

PBrain 22:14, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

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I will need more time to look into this issue. You are bringing up things I will need to double-check. Right now, I think the confusion comes from the "Constitution Act, 1867". Does it mean the constitution as it was drafter originally in 1867 or is it not the constitution of Canada proper just before it was sort of replaced by the 1982 one? I know for a fact the Charter of rights is what forced all provincial governments to respect minority language rights. I know for a fact that Ontario started to be serious about the educational rights of the Francophones in the 1960s. Prior to that, it is legal battle over legal battle.

I think it may just be that the basis of a constitutional right was always there, but it was not fully recognized by the Ontario government. In which case, you would be entirely correct in correcting me. We will need to clarify all this anyway to keep improving this acticle (and start putting stuff in Demolinguistics of Canada). -- Mathieugp 03:21, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

As for francophones, I'd say Ontario started getting serious in the late 1980s. The Constitution Act, 1867, is the name the BNA Act was given when the new constitution was brought in.

This is from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"At Confederation the British North America Act conferred on the province power to deal with education, saving rights and privileges, with respect to denominational schools then enjoyed. During the union of Protestant Upper Canada (Ontario) and Catholic Lower Canada (Quebec), from 1841 to 1867, provision was made for denominational schools for the religious minority in each province. The Ontario Separate Schools law, fundamentally as it stands to-day, was enacted in 1863. The rights then conferred on the Catholic minority are therefore constitutional." [2] (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11254a.htm)

And a little more detail is provided by Renfrew County Catholic Board at [3] (http://www.rccdsb.edu.on.ca/cathedral/significant_events_in_the_histor.htm)

I'm looking for more defintive material. To us Ontarians, the constitutional status of separate schools is a fact of life, but it's interesting how little seems to have been written about it. PBrain

"not fully recognized"

As for the educational rights of Catholics not being fully recognized, there are some pretty big Catholic school boards in Ontario that have been around since the 1850s. If you're talking about the rights of francophone Catholics I can see your point, but, even though I may be splitting hairs here, I see that as a separate issue. PBrain 12:17, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, you are right. I tried to avoid controversy by writing in terms of religious minorities because the question of language was not explicit in the constitution before the 1982 Constitution, but if it means it is innacurate, it should be fixed. I guess I didn't think of the distinction because here in Quebec a Catholic was generally a Francophone and a Protestant was generally an Anglophone for most of our history.

How about we write a full article on the language legislations in Canada? If you read French, I know there is a lot of data on this here:

Législations linguistiques adoptées au Canada (http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/amnord/cnd-lois_ling.htm)

Not related but maybe of interest to you, the history of the English language here:

Histoire de la langue anglaise (http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/monde/anglais.histoire.htm)

-- Mathieugp 14:53, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. The chief benefit I've got out of Wikipedia is undertaking exercises like that which let you find the truth behind the official story. I'll check the link and get back to you about it.

This also means we now know what to put in this article, eh? PBrain 19:03, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree. I'll leave the final wording to you :-). For the full article on policies, how about we just name it Language policies in Canada? A while ago, I created Language policy and I contributed some info to Charter of the French Language. I always wanted to get back to it, but I had no motivation. If we are two people and we share the sources we find, we should be able to write good NPOV articles.

The best source I found for everything that pertains to language is here:

http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl

This site is a gold mine. If we can find a second source like that (in English), it will be even better. -- Mathieugp 20:30, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The more I think about it, the more this seems like a great idea. The problem in Canada is finding discussions of these issues which are not utter rubbish. And anything which appears in the Canadian media is almost certain to be wrong. Talk about two solitudes -- most anglophone journalists don't speak French, and most Quebec francophone news organizations don't have offices in English Canada outside of Ottawa. Anyway, I'll look for English sources. Wrangling over this issue has really clarified it, and I think we may actually be able to produce something reasonably definitive. PBrain 13:51, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I tried to restore the pasage I excised with a clarification. It probably could be clearer yet. One issue I didn't get into was schools for anglophone Catholics, although maybe I've just thought of a way of doing it. I hope to get working on the other project next week. PBrain 12:48, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ok. I will start to write some basic data in Language policies in Canada (dates, law names etc.) and try to workout a structure for the article. I will write the structure in the talk page of the said article so you can look at it. -- Mathieugp 13:39, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Google turned up a large number of pages in English about Canadian language policy, and I'm wading through it looking for good stuff. PBrain 00:05, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Great. :-) -- Mathieugp 02:35, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

allophone immigrants

I have read some news articles lately which suggest that a law has been passed, or soon will be, that requires the children of allophone immigrants to enter francophone schools. Does anybody have information to support or deny this?

The Charter of the French Language requires that all Quebec children who attend public school do so in the French network. This means all Quebec born children or the children of immigrants to Canada residing in Quebec. An exception to this general principle allows for children whose parents' attended English school in Canada to attend the publicly funded English language schools. -- Mathieugp 19:54, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

nomenclature

Concerning the naming of various allophone groups, would it not be better to refer to them as "Chinese speakers", "Polish speakers" etc rather than "Chinese", "Polish" or whatever. You might be a Canadian citizen of Singaporean birth and still be a Chinese speaker. On a related note, does "French Creoles" mean Haitians? QuartierLatin1968 00:12, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it would be better to put "Chinese speakers" rather than Chinese. Unfortunately, the data provided by Statistics Canada does not always allow for this. If I am not mistaken, the most recent census data doesn't give us that information. It might be worth looking into this though. Since this article is about demolinguistics, it would make more sense to deal with linguistic groups rather than national groups.

For French Creoles, I presume it means Haitian creole speakers + speakers of other antilles creoles.

-- Mathieugp 03:26, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Demolinguistics

This might seem frivolous, but I'm curious about the word "Demolinguistics". I understand its meaning, but how common is its usage? Google only turned up about twenty sites that weren't this article, its Canadian counterpart, or a copy of the two, and all of the sites seemed to mention it only in passing. A search through the usually comprehensive online OED returned nothing. Is its usage primarily confined to the sociological/demolinguistic field? Is it just a pretty word that nobody really uses? When was it coined? If I used it, how many people are there who wouldn't go "what?" --Words to sell 23:04, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I suspect that, like much of this article, it is a phrase that is common in French but unusual in its English translation. I know it's in the dictionary, but I don't recall reading it anywhere but here. HistoryBA 03:27, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The word is not common in French I can assure you. It is scientific jargon. "Demographics" entered the vocabulary of a lot of people over time, but like numerous other words, it started as a scientific neologism contructed with Greek (or Latin) roots. I'd say it was coined in French as démolinguistique a branch of la linguistique specializing in language groups statistics. Then it was used in Quebec (we have an army of linguists here). Then it passed over to Canadian English as "Demolinguistics". This is just a guess though. No hard evidence. -- Mathieugp 13:52, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

To insert somewhere eventually

• 9,178,100 for knowledge of French (Canada)
• 6,739,050 for knowledge of French (Quebec)
• 6,864,615 for French mother tongue (Canada)
• 5,844,070 for French mother tongue (Quebec)

-- Mathieugp 22:33, 22 May 2005 (UTC)