NDP can’t call themselves a national party because the leader can’t speak French yet we have a Quebec nationalist party in our national legislature.
Not only do Quebecers not care about this as much as people think they do, but also whoever wins will presumably learn French, like Carney did. This is such a nothingburger and a lame thing to focus on when there’s more important issues.
Yeah the thing is, we hear a lot about those people who will learn French… and then a lot of them don’t. Also, I’d like to see how would anglophones react if the NDP only had unilingual francophones. This isn’t a nothingburger. And that comes from someone who has never voted for souverainists parties, neither at federal nor provincial elections.
Just hire a damn translator, I don’t care. I’d only care if they refused to offer any attempt at translation.
Sure French is one of our national languages but I’d wager there is a large portion, if not the majority of citizens that don’t speak it more than whatever they can remember from school. (Edit: the Mauril app I’m using to slowly learn says it’s only 18% of the country that are bilingual.)
I don’t speak it, I’m attempting to learn, but honestly if the policies are good and they have a translator I don’t give a shit if they speak both languages or not.
Like who?
Doug Ford (in Ontario but people from Gatineau and franco-ontariens surely care about it, more people also if he tries to become the next conservative leader
All those English speaking hockey players for the Habs who swear to do so but only say “Bonjour, comment ça va, merci” after years.
I don’t read French unfortunately and I refuse to use AI.
doug Ford is a universal ass
And a private company CEO?
I was looking for federal politicians that’s promised to learn French, since that’s what the NDP are.
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I can’t remember any on the national stage. But I’d be the last to remember, hence me asking.
I don’t know Quebec enough but I feel that a leader with a genuine improve-the-lives message along with an apology for bad French might not do too badly. People like being honest and they tend to take note when your policy is about to make their lives better.
Look, if Canadians were willing to vote in the Liberals then I think we can get over some of this stuff, and that’s coming from someone who’s learning French in Montréal despite it being a place one can be very anglpphone in.
I’ll give a shit when the standards are consistent and when Canadians can finally accept that the Liberals are a conservative party and them being between the far-right and our main progressive party does make their shitty behaviour any more “balanced”.
This is one area of many where I think Manitoba’s Kinew led provincial NDP shines, his inclusion of the rights of French language Manitobans along with the rights of Indigenous.
The language itself I think is not a big deal, Carney fumbled through French 101 again in a matter of months to become Prime Minister. But I do think if the NDP wants to make inroads with Québec’s Bloc and Liberal voters they need to be more in touch with Québec culture.
I think the federal NDP still has more work to do in self-reflection. I hope they make use of this opportunity. Even if you don’t like BC’s NDP, hopefully you can appreciate that Eby is listening to genuine internal criticism from unions and labour activists, BCFN and environmental supporters within his party during the review.
While that’s definitely a weakness, I think the NDP can be an effrctive delivery vehicle for material improvements for Canadians even with that weakness. If the NDP gets a significant part of the working class vote from the cons, they’ll be a major power holder in any configuration. That’s because the con vote would diminish, therefore eliminating the “NDP-LPC vote split gets the cons in” problem.
Honnêtement je m’en câlice. Tant que les intérêts des travailleurs sont mieux représentés au gouvernement. On a élu Mark Carney qui ne parlait pas très bien le français non plus, donc…
If the US had a law that all presidents must speak french, Trump never would have gotten in.
If there was such a law in Canada it wouldn’t change anything because Pierre Pollieve has shown you don’t have to be Trump to be a lot like him. And he speaks French just fine.
The population of French only speakers is tiny.
