Here’s a letter to the editor that was published in the Telegraph-Journal last weekend:
N.B. is becoming a francophone state
The “Patent Acadien” is working: divide and conquer. Slowly but surely, New Brunswick is being subverted into a francophone state. Enforced bilingualism has English-speaking New Brunswickers learning French, in vain hope of sharing in “equal opportunity.”
The result was inevitable: French is the dominant language of government in Fredericton, and French is the dominant language of business in Moncton.
Any person who attempts to preserve English heritage is branded a bigot. Any person who promotes French heritage is hailed as a “patriote.” Anyone who does not believe this had better wake up and smell the ‘poutines.’
Some guy from Sackville.
Now, I have a couple of points to make here:
1. Some unilingual English speaking people in Moncton have trouble finding a job – particularly in industries where it is beneficial to speak French too (i.e. customer service). This is not vitriol, it is not bigotry, it is simply a fact.
2. The writer of this editorial (and the 10-12 the TJ publishes a year – just because..) should not confuse the labour market requirement for 35% of Monctonians to speak French with attempts to turn NB into a Francophone state. If that is the wish of Acadians, they had better get crackin’. From 1991 to 2001, the population of mother tongue French in New Brunswick dropped by 2%. Just to reiterate – that’s dropped by 2% while the mother tongue English population increased by 1%.
The reality is that the Acadian population is suffering from the same economic malaise as the Anglo population – and Acadians, though reluctant to leave, are leaving the province to find better opportunity elsewhere.
So the comment I have for the TJ and everyone else that thinks ‘NB is becoming a Francophone state’ is that New Brunswick is becoming a ‘no-aphone’ state. When the Census comes out next year, you can bet your last poutine that the population of both anglos and francos will have declined again.
Oh, and one more thing about this dastardly attempt to Francocize New Brunswick. From 1991 to 2001, there were 24,475 Anglophones living in New Brunswick that moved in from other parts of Canada and there were only 7,060 Francophones.
So to sum up. The Francohpone population is declining. The Anglophone population is slightly increasing. Almost 25,000 Anglophones moved to New Brunswick from 1991 to 2001 (presumably some for a job) while only 7,000 Francophones moved to New Brunswick.
So to the guy from the wonderful town of Sackville, don’t fret. No one’s going to force you to eat poutine any time soon.