Gardner & His Ottawa Ilk Are Orangemen Bigots (Unknowingly?)

What I said to a supposed Liberal who's a fan of Gardner's latest - Bullshit. It's always loser anglos who are too lazy, selfish or stupid who write this shit. As Trudeau said: "Le Canada sera bilingue ou il ne sera pas." Obviously, not everyone, but institutionally, yes. I've spent many long difficult years fighting for Canada, federalism and minorities in QC, but if one thing could make me a separatist, like pretty much everyone else, it would be such a stupid bigoted view taking hold. Bigoted because when there is 3-1 to 4-1 disproportion of majority to minority, and said minority in mostly concentrated in one geo-political space, it is completely obvious that without both rules and ethos that make our institutions and workings bilingual, it will inevitably be the large majority that will win out, and by a margin larger than their proportion of the population, AS WAS THE CASE PRE-TRUDEAU AND THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGES ACT. And the geographically concentrated minority will act logically, protect their interests, and separate, in such a case. When anglos say this, what they are really advocating is affirmative action for their own large majority. So whatever egalitarian fairytale of principles they may tell themselves, they are advocating the advancement of the majority at the expense of the minority, as the real-world outcome.

Very similar to the Reaganite rhetoric and policies that hid anti-black, anti-hispanic anti-minorities policies behind the pretext of simple absolute egalitarianism of opportunity, conveniently ignoring the real-world context and the fact that the minorities, far from having the same equality of opportunity, are heavily disadvantaged and thus such policies could only entrench and worsen the outcome differences between whites and blacks/hispanics, AS THEY DID! What Gardner & you are advocating is that we return to the pre-1967 situation where there was a massive under-representation of francophones in federal institutions, and those few were almost all in the most menial positions, tea ladies, cleaners and the like. Gardner and your position is Orange Order intolerance dressed up for modernity in the robes of imbecilic decontextualised egalitarianism. Which should come as no surprise from a Carleton student as Carleton was founded so anglo protestants from the Valley could avoid having to mingle with all those Frogs and Papists at the University of Ottawa (ever ask yourself why Carleton wasn't just a 2nd UofO campus?).

And Gardner, Ottawan, in this column, is redolent of that Orangeman bigotry that has been and continues to be the blight of the Ottawa Valley: see Cheryl Gallant's contributions to the House debate during the Coalition "crisis". A question: 40 years after the Official Languages Act, in a country close to 1/4 francophone, what percentage of the Anglo Press Gallery are bilingual? And how does that affect their coverage? Poser la question, c'est y répondre. Finally, if these are your views, are you sure you're a Liberal? Randy Hillier's Ontario Landowners Association is always looking for more cranks, kooks and bigots - maybe you should check them out.