Outside Quebec, French rights have been asserted primarily in the public sector, meaning within the courts, schools, police and other government-regulated institutions. The major thrusts pushing French-language expansion in English Canada are the Liberal Party and the federal bureaucracy.

Within Quebec, the provincial public sector already consists almost entirely of native francophones (about 97%). French-language promotion in Quebec targets the private workplace, forcing Anglos and immigrants to function in French. Powering this strategy is the provincial government.

Immigrants within Quebec are another crucial factor in the language struggle. The provincial government aggressively attempts to force their children to study in French. Behind that drive is the fact that Quebec's francophones have one of the lowest birth rates in the world.

There is a self-evident contradiction between Quebec's strategy to form a largely unilingual province and Ottawa's determination to create bilingualism (in practice, this means more French-language rights) across the country. Particularly noteworthy is Ottawa's failure to protect English-language rights in Quebec. The likeliest cause of that failure is the fear that Quebec voters will opt for separation if Ottawa is seen as a fundamental threat to French primacy in the province. Elsewhere in Canada, anglophones are less resistant to ongoing federal attempts to extend French usage within their communities.

"In Quebec, there has actually been a deliberate strategy to drive the English out," says Jim Kalasatidis, the president of the provincial Equality Party. It starts, he says, with blatant discrimination within the public sector. "You cannot join the federal, provincial or municipal civil services unless you speak fluent French," Mr. Kalasatidis notes.

"French is also a prerequisite for most jobs in the private sector [within Quebec], even when you do not need French to do the job," he continues. "The law requires private businesses with 50 employees or more to obtain a Frenchization certificate. The language of the workplace must be French, even if you do your sales in English. The language police from the provincial Office of the French Language come into businesses with tape measures to measure the size of notices on the notice board. French must predominate."

In perhaps the most extreme example of language-police zealousness, Mr. Kalasatidis reports, "A pet store owner was threatened with fines because a parrot spoke to customers in English only." As a result of such harassment, he says, "The strategy has worked, and hundreds of thousands of English have left Quebec."

The family of Edward Zabitsky, a Toronto stock market analyst, anticipated the consequences of Quebec's dictatorial Language policy. The Zabitskys left the province in 1976, mere months before the election of the first Parti Quebecois (PQ) government under Rene Levesque. "He came to speak at the Jewish Community Centre in Montreal. Mr. Levesque told us, `We want to be masters in our own house. You have Israel: we want Quebec. If I were you, I would move right now."'

As Montrealers had just lived through the FLQ crisis, characterized by French-separatist bombings, kidnappings and one murder, the family quickly listed their home and moved. Mr. Zabitsky says, "There was fear in the air. We asked ourselves, `Why does this have to be a consideration?"

The McCulloughs and Zabitskys joined -a refugee: flood whose scale and bitterness have rarely been publicly acknowledged in English Canada. Official figures for this migration, among the largest internal movements in Canadian history, have never been compiled. The Alliance Quebec, an Englishrights group, estimates that between 300,000 and 400,000 Anglos (the term refers to native English-speakers) have left Quebec since the rise of separatist sentiment in the early 1970s. Although Quebec's first referendum on "sovereignty association" failed in 1980, it demonstrated the growing strength of the independence movement and thoroughly alarmed the English minority. Then a second separation referendum failed by a fraction of 1 % in 1995, prompting 30,000 English-speakers to leave between 1996 and 2001.

Scant attention has been paid to the issue by the media. Former CBC television producer Deborah Gyapong of Ottawa says, "It reflects the trouble journalists have in following a trend. It's very hard to put a human face to a trend. It was covered one instance at a time, such as a head office moving from Montreal to Toronto. It's much as Stalin said: `One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic." (*)

The diaspora of Quebec anglophones is only going to get worse, according to lawyer Brent Tyler, president of Alliance Quebec. "It doesn't matter that the Liberals won the provincial election [of April 14]; nothing will change. Liberal leader Jean Charest has said he will not touch Bill 101 [the language law]," he says.

"The English-speaking population outside Montreal is already on the ropes," Mr. Tyler suggests. Enrolment in English schools is down 60% since 1974. There are now more French schools in Ontario than English schools in Quebec. We do not have the same rights as Canadians living in other parts of the country. The effect on our community is Canada's dirty little secret."

The Alliance Quebec leader does not mince words when describing the philosophy behind the language policy. "It's good old-fashioned ethnocentric nationalism. To say that the French language is threatened in Quebec when 82% speak it as their mother tongue is absurd. Rather, unscrupulous, tribalist politicians see it as an `us versus them' situation. But it's important to recognize there are two types of nationalists. There are nationalists in Quebec who say they want their own country.

And, there are nationalists federally, like Jean Chretien, who work to advance the interests of his tribe [elsewhere in Canada]," he says. (n.s.)

Nevertheless, Mr. Tyler does have hope for the anglophone community within his own province. "To me, the vulnerability of ethnocentrism in Quebec is young francophone parents. They have no sense of historical grievance, they use the Internet and they want their children to succeed in business. They are creating a demand for English-language education," he says. His prediction is certainly reinforced by the election promise of Premier Charest to make bilingual education more readily accessible to Quebec's francophones.

No statistics are available on the demand for English education among those francophones. But anecdotal evidence suggests it is significant. For instance, English-language summer camps in Quebec have long waiting lists of francophone kids hoping to attend. Another straw in the wind: the francophone former captain of the Montreal-Canadiens, Guy Carbonneau, quit his job as assistant coach of the hockey team last May over English. When the provincial government denied his 14-yearold daughter Kristina access to English schooling, he left for Dallas. Mr. Carbonneau commented at the time, "There's no question that getting my daughter back into an English program influenced at least part of my decision."

Quebec's immigrant community feels exceptionally harassed by French-language education laws. Ike and Ifeoma Okwuobi and their eight-year-old son John emigrated in 2000 from Nigeria, where they spoke their tribal language, Ibo, along with English. They now live in Verdun, where Quebec's education ministry informed them that John must be educated in French. Mrs. Okwuobi says the decision forcing her son to learn a third language "made me very angry and upset. I didn't think it should be necessary to learn another language." The Okwuobis took the matter to an administrative tribunal in 2001, and managed to win. However, Quebec law typically denies English schooling to any residents whose parents did not receive an English education.

Canada-wide, the French continue to push forward their language agenda in the public sector. The latest federal budget will pour money into providing French services within areas of provincial jurisdiction. The language-expansion plan targets provincial courts, hospitals and schools. Bilingualism already absorbs $570 million in annual federal spending, and Ottawa claims it will now up the ante by a further $750 million. "Over the life of the program, that amounts to about $3.6 billion, roughly the same as new spending for the military," calculates Bony Cooper, a political scientist at the University of Calgary.

Canadian Alliance MP Scott Reid is the author of Lament for a Notion: The Life and Death of Canada's Bilingual Dream, published in 1993. He sees a misguided attempt at preserving national unity as the common thread to all of Ottawa's activities. Within Quebec, national unity implies the avoidance of inflaming French feeling by pushing English-language rights. Outside Quebec, Ottawa's concept of national unity means expanding the use of French. Unfortunately, Mr. Reid says, this contradictory program "has created larger and larger problems."

He points specifically to the federal government's hiring policy. An ever-increasing number of posts are declared "bilingual imperative," he says. "In other words, you have to speak both languages to be hired." Of the 56,000 jobs (out of 148,000 in the federal civil service) declared bilingual imperative, Mr. Reid says, "A substantial proportion have no job-related requirement to speak another language." The big problem with demanding unnecessary language skills, in his opinion, is the inevitable denial of employment opportunities to unilingual people, both French and English.

"If one must speak both languages to even apply, 24 million Canadians would be excluded from applying for federal jobs," Mr. Reid says. Fifty-seven percent of francophones and 91% of anglophones are not bilingual. Outside of Quebec, the tiny percentage of French-speaking people makes it extremely difficult for anglophones to acquire true fluency in French without virtually dedicating their lives to the effort. "The majority of people in Ottawa aren't even bilingual," the Alliance MP points out. "It [bilingual-imperative hiring] is the most exclusionary policy imaginable."

Regardless, the official languages commissioner, Dyane Adam, stated at the end of March she believes the government should phase out the hiring of unilingual employees for bilingual positions. Such employees are currently given two years to team the other language. "It seems only natural that non-imperative staffing be gradually eliminated for external recruits," Ms. Adam says. "In this way, another major step would be taken toward making the public service a bilingual institution."

That claim upsets the Alliance Quebec's Brad Tyler, who condemns "the rank hypocrisy of the federal Liberals. Their policies are part of a grand scheme of social engineering designed to advance one ethnic group in Canada. For example, the language czar [i.e., Ms. Adam] has advocated an end to language training for federal bureaucrats, even though she is supposed to be promoting official languages. If we don't wake up to this, we're going to be looking at a federal civil service that's 70% to 80% French as a mother tongue."

Liberal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stephane Dion justifies his government's plan to spend more billions on bilingualism by claiming it is "Canadians who are pushing us. They want more opportunities to learn their country's two official languages." He further asserts that provincial governments will be accepting of the new funds: "There's a new generation of politicians in the English provinces that are either in [French] immersion, or have workers or children in the immersion system and who believe in it."

Annual surveys by the Environics polling company over the last decade do not support the minister's claim that Canadians outside of Quebec want more bilingualism. Its surveys show that opposition to "bilingualism for all of Canada" has consistently been 52% or greater among English-speaking Canadians.

A recent study by Jack Jedwab, a Canadian studies professor at McGill University in Montreal, shows that anglophone Canadians have little need of the second official language. "Knowledge of French amongst Canada's non-francophone population is not considerably greater than the degree of English-Spanish bilingualism amongst the non-Hispanic population in the United States," Prof. Jedwab notes.

Becoming truly fluent in any language involves absorbing a new grammar and pronunciation along with a written vocabulary of at least 20,000 words. It is a daunting task. Ted Morton, a political science professor and constitutional specialist at the University of Calgary, says most Canadians lack any reason to invest that much effort in the French tongue. "In fact, its more advantageous to learn Spanish, Japanese or Chinese," he comments. "French, in terms of the global economy, is not the most important language. It's, at most, sixth on the list."

The federal government made a major mistake in the 1970s, Prof. Morton believes. "Former prime minister [Pierre] Trudeau foisted on us a federal model of bilingualism. But it was not enforced in Quebec, while the preservation of French outside Quebec was pursued aggressively with federal dollars. There was, and is, a double standard," he says.

"The Supreme Court has been a very willing instrument of Liberal party policy, which is `don't rock the boat' in Quebec and enforce bilingualism in the rest of Canada," Prof. Morton argues. "They've taken the same approach to language rights that they've applied to the rest of the Charter rights. They have engaged in judicial activism."

Instead of federalized bilingualism, Prof. Morton thinks the Swiss model of localized language policy makes more sense. (See story, page 4S.) "One can make a much stronger case for bilingualism in specific regions," he argues. "If Quebec is shortsighted and narrow-minded enough to push out anglophones under the regional model, they'll get their reward economically. In fact, they already have been. [Many national corporations have also fled Montreal.] I don't begrudge the province of Quebec wanting to maintain the French language. But they've gone too far in pursuing the francization of the province."

THE FEDS KEEP DEMANDING MORE FRENCH

THE SWISS SOLUTION TO THE CHALLENGE OF ENGLISH