Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Collective Rights: Anglophone

          Canada, a multicultural country. Many different races, cultures and languages can be found here, but have you ever thought about the anglophones? The three main groups in Canada that receive collective rights are; Aboriginal people, francophone, and anglophone. to be able to qualify for collective rights the group must be the minority of the area and NOT the majority.
         Today anglophones make up 72.2% of Canada's population. So you might ask why and how they have collective rights when they make up more than half of the population. Well, the province Quebec has francophone's as the majority, so any anglophone living in Quebec has collective rights. Before the Charter of Rights and Freedoms the laws in Quebec that affected English speakers were; all signs must be in French and all francophone's and immigrants in Quebec must attend francophone schools. Bill 101(Charte de la langue Françoise) was what enforced the laws above. Section 23 of the Charter states that a French-speaking or English-speaking minority population of sufficient size in any province has the right to publicly funded schools that serve their language community. So now everyone (anglophone/francophone) can learn in their official language. Also now commercial signs in Quebec must be in both English and French.