Right now French and English are the official languages of Canada. There are the English parts (the majority of the country) and the French parts (the biggest being Quebec). But it seems to me that the French-speaking parts punch well above their weight culturally. Because their language insulates them from the strong US cultural influence, giving them space to develop their own unique cultural identity and not have to compete with US media. So it would be a big cultural upgrade if all of Canada spoke French. Plus the French language is cool. Wouldn’t it just be cooler if we all spoke French more?
Q: But how would that work?
A: Good question. Well French immersion is already really common (when English-speaking families sent their kids to French-speaking school). What we need to do is make all schools French immersion, and once we have a generation fluent in French we can begin the process of slowly purging the English language from any sort of government institution. Overtime people will be speaking French so much that it will seep into their private lives and they’ll just speak French at home.
Q: But wouldn’t a policy like this be massively unpopular and cause widespread backlash?
A: Absolutely it would that’s why it’s an unpopular opinion. But in an ideal world, we would do it. 🇨🇦🇫🇷
If anyone wanted to phase out English in favour of some indigenous languages I would be in favour if that too.
Edit for spelling
Another edit: why are you guys downvoting this for disagreeing, you’re supposed to disagree thats the point of this sub
Poutine is from Quebec. The best hockey team in the NHL is from Quebec. Also in Quebec they consume far more media produced locally. Manitoba is the only province in Canada that was founded in an act of rebellion, in large part because Louis Riel didn’t want the British to take away the French language rights (and that’s a big part of the history of that province, and French is still widely spoken in Manitoba such as in St Boniface and some town whose name I can’t remember). Etc.
Of course they do. French speaking media is less available.
Your reasoning isn’t Quebec influences culture, but Quebec influences culture in Quebec.
Their local culture is home-grown, not imported. That’s what I’m aiming for. I don’t care about soft power projections, I would just think it would be better if Canada had a more homegrown, sovereign culture, rather than importing a lot of our culture from the US.
Quebec has the highest tax rate in Canada, and is the only province to spend as much as 2% of tax revenue on subsidies for culture and media. Without this, there would be very little homegrown media, as the foreign sale market is so much smaller.
So good news, you don’t have to speak French, just pay more tax and spend it on culture.
Yeah but then we also have to compete with American media, which is a massive market, literally the biggest media market in human history. I don’t have high hopes
The American media empire has been completely in the shitter for over a decade, it’s ripe for takeover from anyone who has even the slightest amount of respect for their own art.
A surprising amount of “US Culture” is at least partly created in Canada and has more global influence. Y’all need to be more subversive: build up the Vancouver film industry to take over from within. I’m sure my countrymen would be on their knees begging for it, if you toss a few coins their way
I wouldn’t say the NHL is a major soft-power thing globally. It’s not bad, I guess. But it’s not like only Canada is of note in that area.
True, but the media produced locally is not really consumed internationally. My point was about soft power here.
Soft power is nice, but in this post I am more concerned with squishy power, i.e. the power to have sovereignty over your own culture, even if your culture isn’t exported outward