The five-month-old separatist government of Quebec. the Parti Quebecois, has recently released a White Paper outlining precisely how it plans to make Quebec unilingual. The White Paper of April I has caused great concern in Quebec’s overwhelmingly English-speaking Jewish community because it proposes to severely reduce the usage of English in schools and other public institutions.
The Canadian Jewish Congress, Quebec Region (CJC), announced in an April 6 telegram to Premier Rene Levesque, that the Jewish community “views with dismay” the White Paper with respect to its “diminution of English and the severe encroachment on the rights of all non-Francophones.” The telegram charged that the proposals are “discriminatory in intent and coercive in nature.”
At the same time, the CJF reaffirmed its support for the “widest use of French” in the province. It emphasized, however, that the “inequities of the past” (visited upon Francophone Canadians) cannot be corrected by the introduction of discriminatory legislation which will jeopardize the rights of minorities and “create two classes of citizens–Francophones, and those who will have an increasingly diminished status within the province.”
The telegram, which declared that the Jewish community views the proposals as unacceptable, indicated that the CJC will be making representations to the government of Quebec with regard to the White Paper.
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