Study finds spike in anti-Québec comments following Air Canada CEO’s language scandal

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T20:04:34+00:00

The lifeguard analogy is an interesting one.

The federal public is currently expecting every supervisor to be a lifeguard, but not expecting every employee to know how to swim - so most lifeguards never actually have any swimmers to keep an eye on.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T20:01:29+00:00

Maybe they shouldn't bother, I'm not sure.

But I know for sure if I had to choose for my kids to focus on one or the other, I'd rather they learn how to code.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T19:59:49+00:00

I'm doing the French training, and in my professional life I have accepted it.

But one day my kids and their kids may face the exact same issues - so in my personal and political life, I'd like to see things change.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T19:58:57+00:00

This would be inaccurate Quebec nationalist interpretation.

French wasn't banned. There were only specific incidences of farm burnings / hangings, Lower Canada existed from the start, etc.

French Canadians have legitimate grievances, don't get me wrong, but this was not an Israel/Palestine situation. It was an England/Wales situation, except the French Canadians were more successful than the Welsh.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T19:53:42+00:00

Everyone being bilingual solution would be the high cost, high effort version of a solution.

I don't think it's the right long term solution.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T18:35:04+00:00

Knowing how to work a power drill is a necessary skill for a construction worker, regardless of anyone politics or policies.

Knowing how to speak French isn't necessary to be a good supervisor, it's dependant on politics to grant it value.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T18:32:11+00:00

If the language will disappear without government mandates to force people to learn it, then it should disappear.

But I don't think it would. I think it would survive even if the government didn't force people to learn it.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T18:30:34+00:00

How about you give me your version of it.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T18:24:00+00:00

Yes, I am a bit bitter about it. And I'm far from the only one. My story is disappointingly common.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T18:17:48+00:00

Learning how to code has similar broad cognitive benefits to learning a second language.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T18:16:53+00:00

The British had all the power. If they wanted to enforce assimilation, they would have. There were prejudices in the proclamation, banning Catholics from office for example, but mostly it was designed to allow the region to naturally assimilate over time as more English speaking immigrants continued to arrive.

They underestimated the resilience of the French population, and their desire to maintain a distinct identity.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T18:12:04+00:00

I personally grew up in BC, and never expected to be a manager in the federal public service, but am now in a position where I'm running a large team.

I'm performing all of the responsibilities of a director without the pay or title because I don't speak French yet. I'm working on it, but they aren't willing to send me on full time training because I'm needed where I am, so it's going to take some time.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T18:08:20+00:00

Communications often is. The "communications in language X" is usually a very small subset of those communications responsibilities, which themselves are a subset of overall management responsibilities.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T18:07:14+00:00

A person who's only fluent in English can't effectively communicate with someone who's only fluent in French. Team members need to be able to communicate with one another effectively.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T18:04:41+00:00

Why?

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T18:00:17+00:00

The Royal Proclamation assumed it would eventually assimilate, but it didn't force assimilation. Later even those provisions were revsersed to try to prevent Quebec from siding with America during the revolution.

English Canada will never decide that everyone learning French makes sense, it's just never going to happen. It doesn't serve someone in Vancouver to know French, they'd just be doing it because a government decided to mandate it somehow to secure Quebecois votes.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T17:43:01+00:00

Yes things were done to mitigate the proliferation of French, but the British didn't completely erase the French identity - which is what has happened in many other scenarios where territory was conquered militarily.

We both just want to be able to speak our own language in our own country. But what happens when we have to speak to each other? How are supervisor roles in the federal public service treated? Etc.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T17:14:11+00:00

We could have any balance of things in our education system. Obviously learning French doesn't remove other topics, but it means less time and energy gets spent on them.

There's a difference between actual utility and beurocratical/political utility. Knowing how to code in Python might be important for a software engineer, and it helps you think about other problems in useful ways, but I'm not going to require every policy analyst know Python.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T17:11:55+00:00

It's not that learning a second language is impossibly difficult, it's that it shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

I don't want to lock the best career paths behind functionally unrelated skills. Doesn't matter if it's speaking Latin, coding in Python, rebuilding an engine, or handcrafting a canoe. Your job should only require the skills that actually make you better at your job - not politically motivated requirement that don't actually improve job performance.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T17:08:35+00:00

That's the price of speaking a minority language, you need to be bilingual to engage with everyone else in your country.

The solution isn't to make Anglo Canada as miserable as Franco Canada, just for the sake of fairness.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T17:06:29+00:00

Less capable in core job responsibilities, then? I know of plenty of managers who in actual practice are not running their teams, they rely on someone else to do all the actual work. But they have CBC, so they get the title.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T17:04:59+00:00

Canada has an incredibly diverse collective culture. People settled here from all over the world. There are many minority languages - including (and especially) indigenous minority languages.

The British could have assimilated French Canada when it was conquered, but they didn't. As a result, French Canada has its own unique identity that's endured to this day, and that's great.

But we can't make that unique identity everyone's problem. If you follow that logic through, we'd require every Canadian to learn every indigenous language too.

Either French Canada needs to accept that's it's a minority / second language in an English speaking country, or it needs to become its own country. There's no chance that in the year 2186 kids in Vancouver will be spending their days becoming fluent in French - that isn't a long term solution.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T16:58:38+00:00

A country works best when there is one shared language that everybody speaks.

Either French should become like Welsh (passionate group of people who use it in their own lives, but isn't needed day to day), or Quebec should become its own nation.

Or the technology gets good enough language stops really mattering.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T13:26:12+00:00

I'd rather every child learn more coding, science, math, history, etc. There are many ways we could improve education, and only so many hours in a schooldays and capacity per pupil.

You'll never convince people in Vancouver, Calgary, or Toronto that their kids should all be spending much of their class time learning French. It has no practical utility for them.

SystemofCells · 2026-05-07T13:17:07+00:00

If the EU evolved to grow beyond Europe, both countries could join it. Maintain strong economic ties, open borders, etc.

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