{"id":23365,"date":"2013-12-17T09:29:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-17T14:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23365"},"modified":"2013-12-17T09:29:52","modified_gmt":"2013-12-17T14:29:52","slug":"the-purity-of-quebecs-linguistic-environment-must-be-protected-at-all-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/12\/17\/the-purity-of-quebecs-linguistic-environment-must-be-protected-at-all-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"The purity of Quebec’s linguistic environment must be protected at all costs!"},"content":{"rendered":"

How dare these linguistic wreckers think they can subvert the official language laws by speaking another language<\/em> to each other?<\/a><\/p>\n

Two Montreal hospital workers of Haitian origin who sometimes speak to each other in Creole \u2014 and not exclusively in French \u2014 have raised the ire of the Office qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois de la langue fran\u00e7aise<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On Dec. 3, the OQLF warned the H\u00f4pital Rivi\u00e8re-des-Prairies, an 88-bed psychiatric facility, to take action after an employee of the hospital complained to the French-language watchdog about the two workers.<\/p>\n

The hospital was given until Dec. 20 to respond or face an investigation by an OQLF inspector and a fine of as much as $20,000. The two employees in question do speak French, and there appears to be no evidence that they refused to speak to patients or co-workers in French. But on occasion, they engaged in private conversations in Creole while on lunch or during some shifts in the presence of colleagues and patients.<\/p>\n

On Dec. 10, the east-end hospital held a meeting of all the employees in the department where the two Creole-speaking workers are assigned, and reminded everyone that French is the official language of the workplace in Quebec, not Creole.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The Charter of the French Language, adopted in 1977, states that French is the sole official language of Quebec. What\u2019s more, the charter enshrines the right of every Quebecer to be served in French, and that \u201cworkers have a right to carry on their activities in French.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the law does not prohibit workers in the public sector from engaging in a private conversation other than French while on the job.<\/p>\n

Even if a conversation between two public-sector employees \u201cis related to work,\u201d they can still speak in another language as long as their exchange does not involve colleagues who don\u2019t understand what they\u2019re saying, Le Blanc explained.<\/p>\n

Gagnon, who is also the hospital\u2019s liaison with the OQLF, said the government agency did not provide her with the precise circumstances of the complaint.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a very difficult position,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s a very particular situation, because we don\u2019t know the name of the person who made the complaint, we don\u2019t know the circumstances, we don\u2019t know the moment that the employees spoke to each other in Creole, but we have an obligation to act because we received a (letter) from the Office.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How dare these linguistic wreckers think they can subvert the official language laws by speaking another language to each other? Two Montreal hospital workers of Haitian origin who sometimes speak to each other in Creole \u2014 and not exclusively in French \u2014 have raised the ire of the Office qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois de la langue fran\u00e7aise. On […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9],"tags":[466,400,113],"class_list":["post-23365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-law","tag-haiti","tag-language","tag-quebec"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-64R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23366,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23365\/revisions\/23366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}