GMCDI In the News

April 12, 2007
Testy anglos ponder their future in Quebec
The Gazette
Jeff Heinrich

“Can you hear me?"

The chairman’s question – wondering whether his microphone was working – was apt.

Opening a public forum Wednesday night on the future of Montreal’s 700,000 Englishspeakers, Don Taylor could have been speaking for an entire community.

Anglophones and English-speaking allophones need to make their voices heard in Quebec, organizers said, and there was plenty of talk at the meeting, attended by about 200 people at a downtown hotel.

Not all was harmonious.

“There seems to be some animosity (among groups) in the anglophone sector, and I think it’s time we stopped fighting each other,” Taylor said at the outset.

“It’s time we started working co-operatively, for the success of our kids.”

The forum was billed as a “conversation” about what’s happening in the anglo community, but sometimes it sounded like a dialogue of the deaf.

The audience included West Island city councillors and anglophone community leaders past and present, including lawyer Brent Tyler, the last president of the now defunct lobby group Alliance Quebec.

The forum was organized by the Greater Montreal Community Development Initiative. It’s part of the federally funded Quebec Community Groups Network, which links 24
volunteer organizations.

Distancing the network from the more politically garrulous Alliance Quebec, which disbanded in 2005, executive director Sylvia Martin-Laforge said anglos now “aren’t making demands in the hard sense of the word.”

Rather, she said, “they’re taking stock” – and that’s what last night’s participants began by doing, laying out studies and data for an audience that got frisky with the long wait to express itself.

About 700,000 anglos live in Quebec, but of those, only 523,000 speak English as their sole language at home. The rest speak English and French or a variety of other second
languages, especially Italian.

More recent immigrant groups, especially Indians and Pakistanis from South Asia, have changed the profile of the community and made it more diverse.

But these new anglos also encounter problems, especially economic ones. Finding a job in Quebec with weak French-language skills or no French at all is difficult, and that’s a preoccupation of anglo leaders these days.

In education, the anglo community’s “best and brightest” tend to depart to study elsewhere, leaving less-accomplished students behind here, studies presented last night
show.

In health care, anglos are under-represented in the job market (especially among nurses). And elderly anglos resent not being served in English whenever they want in hospitals and CLSCs. Last night, those concerns got a chance to be aired – sort of.

A ripple of discomfort went through the meeting 40 minutes in, when a man in a back row heckled the speaker at her podium to complain about her long PowerPoint presentation, which detailed the latest research on Montreal’s anglo community.

The presentation continued for another 15 minutes before anyone in the audience could get a question in – and only as a point of clarification on the presentation.

And when the first one came, the frustration was palpable.

“How is an anglophone defined for the purpose of these statistics?” one man in the back
row said. The response: first official language spoken, whether it’s still spoken or not.

A man with a British accent then stood up and said the Quebec government defines anglophones one way, and the network another.

“Are anglophone residents of Montreal East more bilingual than anglophone residents of Montreal West?” another man wanted to know.

No one had the answer.

“You referred to the English community’s numbers as being stable. What was your reference points for those numbers?” another asked.

The answer: The trend was observed between 1996 and 2001, the two census periods.

“Are we in a position that we in the community are suffering from linguistic apartheid?”
another man, Geoff Trivett, asked from the back.

Ask that question later in the meeting, he was told.

“”Did you have any discussions with visible minorities about their representation (as 26 per cent of all Montreal anglos)?} a man with an Indian accent wanted to know. “Have
you taken just for granted that they’re supporting you?”

The response: The network “has tried to be as inclusive as possible.”

Others complained there was no mention of private school boards. Another began talking
about Alliance Quebec, but was interrupted and told to ask his question later. Another in
the back asked about Montreal anglos working in the civil service, while another asked
about wage disparities between older anglos and younger anglos.

“I actually gave up taking a French class this evening to voice my opinion, to voice my concern, actually, because our community is being dissolved, it’s being physically dissolved,” another man said, standing up from his seat.

“What is your organization going to do for us? Are you a rubber stamp, like Alliance Quebec was? Or are you going to be something that has some staple to it?”

Clearly irritated that the meeting was bogging down, the moderator took another question instead. And the meeting moved on, with a long line of people lining up at the mike to
make speeches.

A man named Gandhi, who came to the meeting with his wife and young children, was applauded after he said it seems “English is a dirty language in Quebec” and that
anglophones have to stand up for their rights.

Another made a plea for anglo leaders to make “political action” that is “loyal to Canada” in Quebec – and said the Liberal government of Premier Jean Charest does not meet that pro-federalist need.

In stores, “we don’t feel comfortable or totally accepted, unless we say it in French,” Laval resident Harold Forrester said.

“English people are accepted as long as we’re not too vocal. We need some kind of advocacy,” he added, saying anglos want to get along with French Canadians but are
often stymied.

Another Laval resident, who said he used be with Alliance Quebec, said, “I’m very happy to see that disorganization exists,” and was applauded when he said the network will probably exist forever because it stands for nothing.

“What is your position?” he asked the organizers. "Are you just going to be peaceful and quiet and organize these lovely meetings?”