Saturday, May 29, 2010

What's Bad About Quebec

1. Taxes.

2. Separatists who believe they need to preserve the "purity of race." (Not all separatists are like that, of course. Some are great, intelligent people. But there is a bunch of Nazis that gives all Quebecois a bad name.)

3. Weird language laws that discriminate against immigrants.

4. The system of higher education does not follow the liberal arts model. This means that students can get a degree taking only courses in their discipline. As a result, you sometimes see people with university degrees in business who never took a single course in Humanities.

5. You sometimes see women in burqas or women being led around on leashes.

6. The overexaggerated welfare system which believes that people who don't feel like doing a stroke of work their entire lives should have this "basic right" protected and guaranteed.

7. The structure of society that rewards the lazy underachievers and punishes the hardworking and the driven individuals.

Once again, feel free to add to the list. But be careful because I love Quebec passionately in spite of all the above-mentioned. :-)
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22 comments:

Anonymous said...

For now, I will only comment on number 6. Since the nineteenth century at least, life is structured around the notion of work with wages. We MUST work for (low) wages. Since then, there has also been unemployment. There is no society without unemployment. It is a structural part of a capitalist society, and this is the reason why we have welfare systems.

We may complain about what you deem an overexaggerated welfare system, but lets not forget this structural truth: there has always been unemployment and welfare exists as a necessary security net for our capitalist societies.

Besides, why should people have to work for ridiculously low wages? Why would people pride themselves on being productive when they barely receive enough money to make a decent living. I'd rather stay home and receive welfare money.

Ol.

V said...

I guess that's exactly where where the borderline should be drawn - the welfare money should not be so generous that people "rather stay home and receive welfare money". The welfare money should exist and should be enough to survive, but not be enough to "rather stay home"

Anonymous said...

5. That is not true- there are women who wear hijabs, a few who wear niquabs ( allot more rare) but i have never in my 28 years of life in Montreal ( where the Muslim community is mostly)seen a Muslim woman on a leash. And I am of Catholic descent, so it's not like I'm batting for my own team here.

Clarissa said...

Anonymous: I don't mind accepting that I was particularly unlucky but I did see this horrible sight and more than once.

cringe-all said...

"women on a leash" sounds more sadomasochistic than islamic.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Darlington+sex+slaves+Bizarre+suburban+cult+where+women+let+a+man...-a0145986453

Anonymous said...

Number 7: I agree all the way. I would even say that Quebec is suspisicous of intellectuals.

Number 6: the differecne between welfare money and minimum wage is so thin that I would rather stay home than, say, working every might in a depanneur like I did as an undergrad. Minimum wage should be way higher than welfare money. This, however, is structurally impossible in a capitalist society that also wants to guarantee a minimum level of quality of life to all its citizens.

Ol.

Anonymous said...

Number 3 number 3 number 3... sigh. That complain I will never understand. If I move to a country/region/state where a particular language is the official language, I will learn and use that language... and I will be proud of doing it.

Besides, we should look at the historical, geographical, and cultural peculiarities of Quebec in order to understand why linguistic laws should be reinforced in that province, and especially in Montreal.

If anything, linguistic laws are not severe enough in Quebec.

Ol.

Ol

Anonymous said...

OK! A last one!
Number 4: I agree and I disagree. I agree because some university programmes look more like technical programmes. Universities often do not hone critical minds.

I disagree because CEGEPs are here to provide this general, liberal arts, education. Unfortunately, foreign students of older students who go to the university without having studied in a CEGEP cannot take advantage of the CEGEP system. Every CEGEP student must take courses in literature, second language, and philosophy, even if they want a technical diploma. Besides, CEGEPs have the same criteria, if not more severe, than most liberal arts colleges in the US. Oh! And CEGEP professors are not afraid to give accurate assessments to their students, unlike US liberal arts professors who are trapped in a mercantilist system.

You forgot to mention that education is cheap in Quebec.

Ol.

Anonymous said...

Oh... you put the cheap university education in your good list. Sorry!
Ol.

Anonymous said...

Quebec is a car-oriented society. Not really green-minded.

Anonymous said...

No one can argue with the fact that it is essential to speak French in order to be a productive member of society. One would find it beyong challenging to find a well-paying job without French. That's the way it is supposed to be. HOWEVER, discrimination against English speakers cannot be justified. Forcing immigrant children into French schools promotes further seggragation.

Clarissa said...

"That complain I will never understand. If I move to a country/region/state where a particular language is the official language, I will learn and use that language... and I will be proud of doing it.

Besides, we should look at the historical, geographical, and cultural peculiarities of Quebec in order to understand why linguistic laws should be reinforced in that province, and especially in Montreal."

-Sp people should be forced to do stuff for their own good? :-) Sounds like you are in favor of a paternalistic government that takes care of its citizens as if they were wayward children. I'm bothered by that picture, to be honest.

Clarissa said...

"Quebec is a car-oriented society."

-Depends on what you compare it to. Compared with the US, it's super green.

I somehow can't imagine a police car stopping me in Montreal asking why I'm walking on foot. In the US, that happens all the time. Walking people are seen as freaks, or in the worst case, as dangerous.

Anonymous said...

Ol: with all due respect, your view of the welfare system is idealistic. More often than not, ppl go on welfare and work under the table. In the end, they can afford country houses, fancy cars and lavish vacations more than once a year. When offered a job at a decent wage they decline. It's hard to beat condo-style government housing in the heart of the city, paid cable and Internet, dental allowance, paid transportation, free courses and even free coffee at coffee shops. Welfare should be on a case-by-case basis and certainly requires more investigation into it's recipients' lifestyle.

Anonymous said...

Ol, education is cheap in qc but not for long. Recent talks suggest that each school will be able to set it's own tuition and make cost as high as the states, or other provinces at the least. No talks about lowering our taxes though! On the contrary, the sales tax will be going up.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:
A welfare system based on a case-by-case system is also idealistic. But since I am an idealist I agree with you:)

Regarding education, I think tuition should follow inflation. But I don't think it will rise dramatically soon though.

Ol.

Anonymous said...

I think I wrote somme comments on that topic in your blog, but anyways...

My vision of the government is not paternalistic. Citizens have the right to speak whichever language they want. I only argue that the French language should be more present in the public sphere. French is the official language of the province. I also believe that living your life without French in Quebec is somehow to live a cloistered life. It's sad. It may be a choice, but it lacks intellectual scope. This is why I believe that French should be promoted.

I do wonder which 'rights' you are talking about. To receive an education in English? To be provided health care in English? To communicate with the government in English?

Historically, many immigrants in Quebec received education in English. There are many factors to explain this. For instance, if I remember well, education in French was not provided to non Catholics (sigh). I'm thinking about Jewish people and Greeks, for instance. The Quebec government had to correct these mistakes later.

Besides, lets not forget that many francophones in Quebec (if not the majority of them) support language choice in education. And so do I theoretically, as long as English and French are well taught and learned, which is not the case, unfortunately. Bilingualism is among Quebec's greatest cultural force, but one language should not substitute the other.

Clarissa, the perennial linguistic debate in Quebec is striking again these days. I invite you to read about Bill 103. Read about it in French and English!

Ol.

Clarissa said...

My vision of welfare: if HEALTHY people want to receive welfare for more than 3-5 months, they should provide public service in return. That would be fair and reasonable. But nobody should get money from the state for decades and not provide any work for that.

Ol.: I believe there should be no language laws at all. If some people are willing to suffer (as they will) because of their unwillingness to learn French, let that be there problem. But I cannot accept ANY governmental interference in matters of language. As a philologist I believe that one's language is a very intimate thing. We don't accept governmental intrusion into matters of religion, do we? The same respect, in my opinion, should be accorded to linguistic expression.

Anonymous said...

No government intrusion into lingusitic expression, I agree with you. But do you really see government intrusion into linguistic expression? Really? And who are the Quebecois people who force immigrants or English-speaking people to speak French in the public sphere?

The 'interference' as you call it has nothing to do with linguistic expression. Maybe it has to do with education and the mere fact that it is sensical to learn the language of the majority in public schools to work and thrive in a given society. If not, we may see more linguistic enclaves and ghettoization. That is the role of the state to provide such a basic public education in the language of the majority.

Besides, children of immigrants who are native speakers of English may go to English schools in Quebec. And everyone is free to study in English in CEGEPs and universities. When you speak of unfair laws that discriminate against immigrants, are you referring to the children of immigrants who must go to school in French? Signs that must be written in French (and whichever language pleases you) in the public sphere? What exactly is unfair and discriminatory here? Are you thinking about other discriminatory aspects that I fail to see? I have been thinking about that discrimination thing since yesterday, and it puzzles me to no ends.

Linguistic reality in Quebec is extremely complicated. As a philologist I believe that language is an intimate and a political thing.

Your idea about welfare is really good by the way!

Ol.

Anonymous said...

Language: an intimate, political, and economical thing. Look at Bill 103.

Ol.

Clarissa said...

Yes, I think that the government should definitely not try to regulate business signs. That's just wrong. If businesses want to put up signs in Esperanto or whatever, they should be able to do that. And if they lose customers as a result, it should be their problem. The same with schooling. I think that people should be completely free to choose the language of their schooling, any language. Once again, if they suffer as a result, as I'm sure they will, that should be their problem.

This part of an article on Bill 103 is especially telling: "
The three-year requirement would be only the first hurdle facing parents who want to transfer their children to English public schools. Once they cleared that one, their applications would still have to be approved individually by the Education Department after an evaluation that would be partly subjective.

Parents could consult the guide that civil servants would use in the evaluations. But, Education Minister Michelle Courchesne told me in an interview, "the person who will conduct the analysis might raise questions that the parents hadn't thought of when they read the guide."
http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/letters/Bill+style+Bourassa/3104614/story.html#ixzz0pouLcsIz

Yeah, let's create even more bureaucracy, even more useless pencil-pushers who will inundate people with even more endless paperwork. Probably, taxes will need to be raised even more to feed these "mangantes."

Why waste resources on that at all? Why not let people decide for themselves? I wish anybody could give me a direct answer to this question: why not let people decide for themselves?

Anonymous said...

"I wish anybody could give me a direct answer to this question: why not let people decide for themselves?"

Because there is that fear, legitimate or not (I think legitimate, given Quebec's particular circumstances), to loose social cohesion and integration if people decide which language they want to be educated in in schools. This is the reason why I firmly believe that language is eminently political.

Ol.