The West: Not Canadian Enough!

Mange ma bitte, Iggy!

Yep, that's the way a lot of Centralers think.  It's absurd, of course.  The further West you go in Canada, the less relevant French becomes and the more relevant other languages do — particularly Japanese and Mandarin (or Cantonese, though it's somewhat on the wane).

There are certain areas in the Lower Mainland where Mandarin/Cantonese as a second language could be the most useful thing you learn.

Garth

The ability to speak both official languages is a barrier to entry created by the LPC. Bilingualism was a mechanism to put a lock on power.

The economic engine at the center of the country is falling apart rapidly. The economic center of gravity of Canada is migrating west at an accelerating rate.

Typical LPC attempt to have it both ways, lest they piss off La Belle Nation and lose their chance of obtaining a majority.

Economics trumps everything, as every chart being produced of late shows.

The LPC have-it-both-ways strategy belies the credo of power for power's sake, so that Libranos can line their pockets with our wealth.

The West won't take their crap forever. At this rate, the Libranos will be left to suck the last bit of oxygen out of the rapidly drying up pond in central Canada.

This is an emergency, of course, which naturally requires all hands on the MSM spin machine deck to try to both kiss Western butt in the West, and demonize the West back in the shrivelling core of power. It's a mind-control sleight of hand perfected by Arafat.

Economy trumps everything. Our 'professional' journalists (LPC media relations agents) may figure that out some day - when they find themselves queued up for the dole.

To the liberals the main problem with the west is that it is not west enough, preferably mid pacific.

Don't read too much into either of these speaches...

He could likely be in Brampton next week licking the boots of the Tamil Tigers too!

It's just politics; a big show with no substance...

"Ignatieff called the ability to speak both official languages 'the essence of being Canadian'"

Geez, I knew Iggy was trying to scrub away the memory of Stephane Dion, but it seems a little harsh to slam the guy this hard...

I have no use for eastern Canada as is, simply because they have designed the government of this country to benefit them. Candid discussion of what goes on doesn't happen. Study the top down appointment of French speaking administrators in the federal government. I am well aware of a particular department which was slowly converted to French speaking even though only 5% of the work required bilingual capability. The cost to taxpayers is totally irrelvent.

Does anyone else find it utter B.S. that oilsands development went on for +30 years without any particular enviromental concern. Federal Liberal governments took a wack through equalization. They tried for more through a Dion pitch for a 'Carbon' tax. Disquised as an environmental Kyoto effort to save the planet, it simply was eastern Canada trying to take their 'cut', like always. This pretense continues today through a eastern controlled media.

What am I worried about? Efforts to tax oil have met with limited success so money is now simply being printed instead. The Feds will end up putting $10s of billions into a eastern auto sector which will not be saved anyway. Need I remind everyone that this sector was largely built with taxpayers money in the first place.

Shaken said it for me. One of the main arguments for GW is what if your wrong. Ok. Now it becomes is it worth my job, my car, and my life to allay any doubts? YOU have to pay to play now, not someone else.

Quebecers do not deserve to be in a permanent opposition in Ottawa. Their place is in power," Ignatieff said, pausing for applause.

and hands deep into the pockets of the west and thieving .

I think spanish will be the most valuable second language,as that will be our primary source of labor in the coming decades/i.e.Mexico and central america/especially in the west

I think spanish will be the most valuable second language,as that will be our primary source of labor in the coming decades/i.e.Mexico and central america/especially in the west

I think spanish will be the most valuable second language,as that will be our primary source of labor in the coming decades/i.e.Mexico and central america/especially in the west

Good comment by Ignatieff, shows how completely out of touch with the Country and the people he's become, living most of his life elsewhere.

In B.C., you would be far better off learning Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, or Japanese, than French.

French is only good if you've decided to give up on honest work, and apply for government jobs. And I've known a few people who have become completely fluent in French, and have been passed over for promotion while a person of French Canadian heritage was promoted, even though their English language skills were not up to par.

I've found Spanish a much more useful language to know than French. That will be especially so in the future as it will probably become an official language in the States.

I agree MSM is all hands on deck, if NNW is any indication. Nobody wants to talk to Harper apparently, he should have let Galloway in, he's too "Liberal."

Whatever. .1% of the population reads this stuff, 90% haven't even heard of Ignatieff, and more than 50%, IMO, are quite comfortable with Stephen Harper (despite the bleating from the "coalition") as PM.

Thanks to the blundering on the left with their minority coalition and dream on team, the federal safe harbour for Canadians will, in the next election, become a CPC majority, rather than minority.

Ignatieff made a serious tactical error when he signed the coalition agreement. That hasn't been made clear to the public yet; it will. The soft-landed LPC leader then made a strategic error when he offered he could have taken the job of PM when he wanted, but didn't feel it was good for Canada.

Oh, really Mr Ignatieff! So the coalition was still an option in Feb 09, and, in a sure slip on your part, you told Canadians you didn't think it was in their interests that he be PM!

Many gaffes, misjudgements and misstatements await, especially during an election. The Grits are having their strategy session right now (going something like this: "WIN, WIN, HOW CAN WE WIN).

Here's a hint. Raise some money, propose some legislation, repudiate once and for all any cooperation, post election with NDP and Bloc.

There is only one reason why we're not in an election right now; the Liberals know they can't WIN. They prefer to wait until the "momentum" of the voter not in an election builds. It isn't going to happen until the Liberals repudiate their cronyism and coaliton brinkmanship, convincing Canadians they are again fit to govern.

From my corner that isn't happening at all. Nick Nanos can prognosticate with his rolling averages all he wants, but we are not in an election, so polls that are somewhat close are meaningless.

If the Grits choose to go for it (everybody seems to be lining up their ducks right no), I for one am ready for it. I think Harper has learned too, tweaking the party a bit more right to isolate Liberals in large urban centres, having to fight it out with NDP in the Atlantic.

Who knows, the NDP might even get a leader and actually challenge for Official Opposition. No, never mind.

Everyone was getting alone fine in Prescott-Russell until recently there was this push for bilingual signs. Now Iganatieff is adding fuel to the fire to get francophone votes in the area.

Next there will be an Office de la Langue Française measuring signs and making sure all stores serve in both languages, instead of letting the market decide. Most businesses in Hawkesbury, for instance, serve customers in both languages, but not everybody in Eastern Ontario is bilingual.

Will Ignatieff also scold the Quebec government for taking federal money for minority languages and putting it in the general education budget, so most of the money doesn't end up going to English schools.

As usual, the Liberals and their friends on the left, still ascribe to the bilingual, multicultural monstrosity that THEY deliberately created during the Pearson and Trudeau years.

If you haven't already, you should see if you can find a copy of "The Patriot Game, National Dreams and Political Realities" by Peter Brimelow. He explains that "Canada's bilingual experiment has been, above everything else, a supreme exercise in social engineering. Its immediate effects have been highly regressive, reinforcing precisely the groups from whom power in Canada has been slipping"

Ignatieff holds to the old Liberal definition of Canada. It is the central Canadian view of Canada which dictates that the Golden (soon to be Rust) Triangle will rule over all of Canada.....that areas outside the Triangle are colonies and of little consequence...except to utilize and abuse them as the rulers see fit.

The notion is not unlike any Imperial model that we have seen in history. The prime difference is that rather than having water separating the rulers from the ruled, we have terra firma, but the model is precisely the same. The rulers go about their business with little if any regard for the colonies. Until, that is, the ruled get tired of the dictators. Then all hell breaks loose.

This guy's an internet meme begging to happen.

We've seen some pretty dishonest politicians in Canada but this guy's propensity to make perfectly contradictory statements depending on the audience is in another league.

The awesome thing? The people who agree with Kate on this the most are immigrants. Ujjal Dosanjh "broke the seal" on bilingualism when he recently questioned whether one language is hard enough for immigrants. He's right; large scale immigration seems incompatible with this Bobby Gimby-reeking anachronism which is really a job creation program for Quebeckers.

I don't often see prospects for positive change in Canada, but ditching bilingualism would seem doable, let's support it. Let the immigrants play Neil Lumsden to our Jim Germany on this one. Lumsden was said to run so low to the ground he could light a match on it, a suitable analogy for the kneecap tactics of the ethnopolitical cadre. To paraphrase Parizeau, give me one Quebecker stomping on an immigrant's flag and we've got this one in the bag.

Hang on. Most Ontarions do not speak BOTH languages, most Torontonians do not speak BOTH languages. Most Quebecers, outside of Montreal do not speak BOTH languages.

Either language I could 100% agree with, so I am sure that Iggy agrees with Jason Kenney that immigrants must have a working knowledge of one or the other.

This is faux pas that belies his "elite" status. Most bureacrats do, since it is a requirement to work there. But my he just described 98% of Canadians as not Canadian, not just Western Canadians.

My mistake, 82% of Canadians arent Canadian enough. Most of those who are Canadian enough live in Monreal, Ottawa, New Brunswick and along the Ontario Quebec Border...small concentration in Manitoba and northern ontario.

Now my kids are in french immersion but the reasons for that are complex and have more to do with giving them a challenge, the quality of an immersion school vs a uniligual school and the quality of their classmates.

Thanks for bringing attention to this, however I think the real story of the article you link to is that fact that Iggy SUPPORTS LAWS WHICH WILL MAKE IT MANDATORY FOR BUSINESSES TO HAVE BILINGUAL SIGNS.

Completely obsurd for our hostess to ascribe the trait of speaking but one of the official languages to the west alone.

dmorris -
You are so right - the important issue in civil service employment is not whether you can SPEAK French-it's whether you ARE French.

Iggy said last week in Ontario "If you asked me where I stood on the subject of bilingual signs, I’d respond without equivocation, ‘I am for it’,"

Will he make a point of saying exactly the same thing in Quebec this week-end?

Garth
Or we could ensure they speak OUR language before they come here.
Canada speaks English so should any wanting to come here! Speak English and believe in freedoms and democracy or don't come here!
Iggy can kiss my left testicle with his French language BS, Canada would be better served by a single language, it's the first move of any uniting of a country.

Our hostess ascribing to one language? We are talking about Mr.Iggy and bilingual signs.Make them legal in Quebec,then talk to the rest of us.Someday you are going to realize what Trudeau and his gang of henchmen did to this country.

Because of the ridiculous mandate that any job that's higher than "peon" in government requires that you be bilingual, a bunch of my colleagues and friends, supremely qualified and who would do a tremendous job, have been passed over.

As I tend to say every time this comes up: thanks you very much Pierre Elliott F**king Trudeau.

Stephen,
I don't believe for a second that 18% of Canadians speak, read & write both English & French, if not fluently, at least without major problems.

Generally, Canada would be much better off declaring Quebec an officially French speaking province and the rest officially English speaking provinces.
Then we should encourage everyone (especially students) to learn at least two foreign languages (potentially, but not necessarily, the "other" official language).

A very unilingual Quebecer once said to me, in the mixture of Cornflakes box English and French we were using plus a smattering of Spanish we'd both learned, that the government had told him that British Columbians were quickly learning French. He was surprised to learn there were more Chinese in BC than there were French speakers.

So it must be concluded that not only do the politicians lie to Western Canada, they lie to Quebec as well.

Which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

Well I'd be happy if more people in Vancouver actually spoke EITHER official language, let alone both.

“THE EAST IS NOT CANADIAN ENOUGH”!............Urban East anyway.

Why else would they be so willing to sell Canada out? Everything that has denied Canadians the preservation of their unique cultural history is born in the east. Everything from blind third world multiculturalism to the gun registry, from black history month to the feminist movements to eliminate hockey violence, the Leftist Liberal powers of Eastern Canada struggle to evaporate “Canadian” cultural history.

These socialist morons are Canadian sellouts, who deceive the public with grand false statements about who cares for the preservation of Canada and who doesn’t. If they had their wishes come true, the new history of Canada would be completely rewritten to include the Mexicans and Africans as the founders of the nation. Traditional families would be outlawed for people of white European ancestry unless supplemented with third world adopted babies. Sharia law would prevail over a communist style government. The deluded exception in their minds of course is that gay and feminist rights would trump all other rights for family, career and leadership in such a country.

The west needs to separate from these idiots, before they drag us down any further. The few conservatives remaining there would be welcome to come along.

Michael Ignatieff, March 14th

"the Quebec government should be involved in protecting French throughout the country alongside the federal government"

I'm a sixth generation English speaking Canadian born in Quebec(descended from United Empire Loyalists), who the h*!! is protecting the rights of English speaking Canadians in Quebec. Certainly not Iggy.....The official federal government definition of bilingualism is "French/English", if you're English/French, sorry, that doesn't qualify as being bilingual, no promotion for you.

...and a big fat "go to hell" for Iggy from this Canadian who doesn't know a word of French but is more Canadian than he is based on the amount of time he's spent in this country...by choice.

Oh, and let's not forget those speeches he gave where he referred to himself as "we" Americans.

Ignatieff needs a swift kick, and clearly for him it's all about pandering to Quebec...but, hey, wasn't that the same criticism the LPOC hurled at Harper?

Posted by: Mark>

“I'd be happy if more people in Vancouver actually spoke EITHER official language”

Sad to say, but many in the west consider that the west starts west of Ontario and ends at the Vancouver city limits. From there you have Asia.

Vancouver seems to have lost its Canadian sovereignty years ago, are you enjoying the growing Indo gang violence the police have zero control over? Not attempting to be smug, Calgary is following right along in Van’s footsteps, just saying it’s in a better position to control it at the moment, but is losing that small advantage FAST.

http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=e3f0eac7-1f33-47d3-82d7-bef6d7efb9c7

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080919/calgary_gangs_080919?s_name=medExpress2007&no_ads=

http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/relationships/Calgary+gang+violence+taking+police+other+beats/1305556/story.html

http://www.globaltv.com/globaltv/calgary/story.html?id=1389271

This is not home grown it’s IMPORTED!

This will not get better at the current immigration policies and the blind acceptance of multiculturalism by Canadians. The future does not look bright at all unless Canadians speak up and demand NO MORE!

>>in the mixture of Cornflakes box English and French

Speaking of Cornflakes boxes (and other packaging), the law of unintended consequences has made bilingual packaging discriminatory to seniors. The requirement to print both 'official' languages on packaging has resulted in the use of smaller fonts to accommodate the duplication, which are much harder to read for those who require reading glasses (many older people). Thus, it becomes necessary to carry reading glasses whenever one goes shopping, or to be constantly asking passersby and grocery clerks to read the packaging for one. Considering the great push to make our society easier for the handicapped, this is one instance where that requirement has been totally ignored for the purpose of political correctness.

Via Orville H, who adds " I am eager to hear if Ignatieff has the same message for Quebeckers this week-end..."

Why would he? He'll acknowledge that his party has blundered in its treatment of Quebec ...

"God knows this party has made mistakes out in Quebec and I know them," Ignatieff told ...

Any interest in an Upper and Western Canada Party or Western and Upper Canada Party. I used to be concerned about the Atlantic Provinces, but the continual whining and bombast from Newfoundland and Labrador; plus the contribution from the late comer to the Federation, PEI; (it is to small to warrant being a fully written name) and New Brunswick (have more children so we will get more equalization money). I do feel some angst about Nova Scotia but the important thing is when Quebec and the Atlantic Canada become the leavings the the Ontario Eastern border is adjusted so that Ottawa goes with the aforementioned leavings. Cheers; Mike Sr.

john luft: "Ignatieff holds to the old Liberal definition of Canada."

Probably because that definition is the one that was ascendant in Canada when he left Canadian shores to seek fame and fortune not as a Canadian but as a British/American ACADEMIC. That's how he defines himself in a recent speech in Winnipeg, viewed on CPAC the other night. He actually said, "I am an academic."

What a joke. 'Just what Canada needs in a Prime Minister: an ivory tower, out-of-touch-with-the-real-world, elitist.

His twitchy eyebrows and languid arrogance are deeply annoying, and his views on Canada, just regurgitated Librano lies. "Official bilingualism" is one of the most bogus, partisan, let's-keep-Francophone-Quebecois-in-power-forever schemes devised by PET to cement his and his confreres' legacy which, thank G*d, is coming unraveled under the graceless and oafish mismanagement of the present LPC "leadership."

Count Iggy's debonair Librano swagger, though championed by the Canadian MSM (how come he's not polling far higher than 3% more than the CPC in the latest Nanos poll? His numbers should be in the stratosphere with all the positive press PR ... ) is a flimsy construct which most Canadians can see through. PMSH is giving him enough rope to hang himself, and I'm pretty sure with all of The Iggster's verbal inconsistencies, he will.

Canada is the bumblebee of politics - shouldn't be able to fly, but still manages to get from right to left and back again...

Iggy employs Warnout the cat fancier. That is all I need to know about Iggy.

Iggy, baby. Take note, eh?

"I'd be happy if more people in the Canadian Government actually spoke EITHER official language"

Most don't. The anglophones are generally rudimentary in French, and the francophones are illiterate in English, even thought they believe they are not. The influx of Asian, South Asian and Middle Easterners, along with the resident Franglais have made Canada unintelligible in any language. Good luck with that EI claim talking to the punjabi FSL with the Chinglish colleague....

All this points up to an unfortunate reality about Canadian politics.....Quebec has the balance of power...thanks to the BLOC...
No majority governments are really possible without a victory in Quebec...
This was the case pre-BLOC....hence the disproportionate influence evidenced by the preponderance of "pure laine" Quebers in the cabinet and senior civil service....
The emergence of the GTA as a voting block is the result of decades of LPC social engineering....designed to be a fall back redoubt if their influence in Quebec wains....

Expert's name: "Scott Murray". "canadian".
Its not fare.
...-

"Quebecers' literacy skills lag
Last among canadian provinces. Half the population won't be able to function in marketplace in 10 years, expert warns"
urlm.in/bygj

Can there be any doubt left that Iggy and the Liberal Elite Party only cares about Ontario and Quebec? From east to west the only two provinces with any political clout are in Central Canada the rest of us matter naught.

And the scary thing is he'll likely be the next PM and he'll further Balkinize Canada.

When does the West get the extra ridings? Soon i hope! Before the next election?
(toronto resident here...)

"God knows this party has made mistakes out in the Western Canada and I know them..."

I think the most telling part of Iggy's comment is the 'OUT' in Western Canada reference. In other words, Western Canada is somewhere 'OUT' there relative to his location at the centre of the world - which is temporarily the GTA - until he relocates to Harvard after he gets thumped at the polls and loses interest -remember BelinDUH?)

Hey iggy. I'm holding up my middle finger.

Ignatieff the White man who speaks with many forked tongues. I figure certain politicians have forgotten already how pathetically easy it is to spot the lies. Its a pathetic show. All of these jokers ought to go back to actors school. Learn some real Gore like deceit.
If only Ignatieff could be TOTUS like Barry, is probably his plea to hiself each day.
The day's of talking out of both sides of their mouths are done. It will take a wee bit of time to sink in.
JMO

Iggy has never specified what mistakes his party made 'out' West so this does not qualify as a real apology or rethinking.

Peter @ 1:23...
right on!
I'll bet he doesn't have a clue that signs in Quebec are not bilingual.
Will someonoe in MSM ask the question again with reference to that quote?

Yeah, right!