I see that all the politicians federal and provincial were lauding New Brunswick’s bilingualism yesterday in Moncton.
Harper said that it was fitting that the announcement of Lord’s new position was made in Moncton and New Brunswick, a bilingual city in the country’s only officially bilingual province.
I wonder if it was also ‘fitting’ to shut down any effort to put more federal government translation jobs in Moncton or New Brunswick? If they like our bilingualism so much, how come 91% of the total translation industry resides in Quebec?
And Lord also said the dreaded “New Brunswick is a microcosm of Canada.” in his remarks yesterday.
A microcosm is defined as a miniature model of something.
So Canada is losing population and not able to generate enough tax revenue to pay the bills? Is Canada not able to attract immigrants? Is Chinese the fastest growing language in New Brunswick?
Oh, they mean a microcosm of bilingualism (French and English).
Okay, so New Brunswick has has a porportionately strong level of language-based industries?
No, that’s not true either.
Maybe they mean that some people speak French down here. Maybe that’s the meaning of microcosm.
Maybe Bernard Lord will come up with some wild proposal like helping New Brunswick leverage its ‘microcosm’ status for economic development?
Unlikely.