'Accommodating' reaction from nationalists

Anglophone lobby says 'it all seems very down to Earth and hard to disagree with'

Commission BT - le rapport «Fonder l’avenir - Le temps de la conciliation»


Both the Quebec nationalist Societé Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal and the province's leading anglo lobby group, the Quebec Community Groups Network, were generally pleased with the Bouchard-Taylor report.
"It all sounds very reasonable to us," said QCGN president Robert Donnelly. "It seems very down to Earth and hard to disagree with."
"I'm very accommodating," said SSJBM president Jean Dorion, who did find some fault with the report, but added: "For the most part we're content."

Donnelly said he was particularly pleased to see the report supports the QCGN contention that the province's English communities are not a threat to francophone society and encourages openness to English and other minority groups.
"We're happy to see that multiculturalism and multilingualism are encouraged and that it's recognized that the English community has a constructive role to play in Quebec. They realize that French people more and more want to improve their English skills and other languages as well. A lot of it is plain common sense."
Dorion, however, was disappointed that the report did not propose stronger measures to promote French in the province and disagreed with the suggestion that francophone Quebecers should call themselves French-Canadians.
"They don't recommend much to reinforce the position of French in Quebec, something that has to be done to ensure that someone who lives in Quebec finds speaking French absolutely necessary. As for resurrecting the expression French-Canadian, I don't think that has any future.
"Apart from those two subjects, we're generally in agreement."
Dorion said the report's encouragement of accommodation that favours integration is in line with SSJBM's views.
"The report is very much in the liberal sense of our own brief we presented to the commission."
Dorion said the SSJBM favours a secular Quebec and agrees that prayers have no place in civic forums. As for crucifixes, he would keep those like the one in the National Assembly that are historic artifacts as much as religious symbols, but is opposed to adding new ones to civic spaces.
Mario Beaulieu, head of the Mouvement Montréal Français, said the report misses the most important point of the accommodation debate - the need to establish French as Quebec's sole common language.
"It says on the whole that everyone agrees French should be the common language, but it proposes inaction as the solution."
hbauch@thegazette.canwest.com


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