The Office quebecois de la langue francaise has reached new depths with its demand that English-language school boards get rid of English computer keyboards in their administrative offices. Every single dollar needed for compliance with this requirement is a dollar less available to improve students' educational experience.
It's not as if school boards are looking for ways to dispose of excess cash. Although the amount of money involved is small, this looks to us like sheer bullying.
The Quebec English School Boards Association has chosen to minimize this irritant, in part we suspect because the nine English boards have found the Office to show some welcome flexibility in other matters from time to time. It is, we suppose, tempting to just laugh off this case of the "Tongue Troopers" re-making themselves into "Keyboard Kops." But this is more than a laughing matter.
While the QESBA has downplayed this fuss, Marcus Tabachnick, tellingly, has not. The longtimechairmanof theLesterB. Pearson board, a senior statesman of English education, has become increasingly vocal recently about the problems of English education. And he bluntly calls the keyboard policy "a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money." Exactly.
English school boards are expected to obtain "francization" certificates, and that is not unreasonable. School boards deal with the government, and also with unions, suppliers, and others who work in French. For those communications the English boards obviously should, in common sense as well as in law, use French. But who says they don't now?
And Bill 101 specifically permits English school boards to "use the language of instruction in their communications connected with teaching without having to use the official language at the same time." In practice, school boards generally buy bilingual keyboards; this should, in fairness, satisfy the most zealous bureaucrat.
Anglophones in Quebec generally accept the precepts of the French Language Charter. But poorly thought-out enforcement actions can leave many anglos much less willing to co-operate. In other words, they do more harm than good to the cause of making Quebec more French.