You can’t honestly claim to prioritize French while failing to properly fund and incentivize its acquisition.
The flashy campaign — essentially public relations to the tune of $2.5 million — implicitly chastising Quebecers for using “Bonjour-Hi”(a popular expression that’s developed organically in a city as cosmopolitan and multilingual as Montreal) isn’t language protection, it’s fluff. The government is once again failing to focus on a fundamental issue: education.
Defending French doesn’t mean wielding language as a weapon or vilifying Montrealers who throw in a “hi!” It means consistently and sufficiently — even generously — providing people with all the tools they could possibly need to learn a language that Quebec demands as a requirement to live and prosper here. You can’t honestly claim to prioritize French while failing to properly fund and incentivize its acquisition.
Toula Drimonis is a Montreal journalist and the author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada.