Exclusive to this site, August 25, 2001. Published as a supplement to Pierre Lemieux's Gazette op-ed of this date.
Written by a few French intellectuals and bureaucrats used to reading Le Monde diplomatique, and by a few lost and quiet – very quiet – English souls, the Larose Report is a bit short on practical details regarding the application of its recommendations. Moreover, some recommendations are in dire need of consistency. In some cases, we need to put in a nutshell the crucial ideas spread over 288 pages.
As a demonstration of social solidarity and shared vision, we have supplemented the report with the following recommendations, very much in the spirit, if not the language, of the other 149.
150) There is something rotten in the official, common language of the State of Québec, but we have a global policy to meet the challenge.
151) In the context of “deployment of global policy” (see Chapter 8 recommendations), the president of the new, pivotal, seven-branch, language agency will called “ Language Tsar.”
152) In furtherance of the recommendations of Chapter 4 on promoting a Québec-specific language, certain French words that valorize the individual, have ambiguous historical content, or revolutionary overtones (“droits de l’homme,” for example) should be excluded from Québec standard French.
153) The State of Québec, which has invented the Internet, will not sit idle on his collective bottom while Québec businesses set up websites in English and compromise our shared civic identity.
154) Québec Bureaucrats caught using English software will have to purchase a French version at their own expense, write 500 times “I will never again betray Father Larose and the common Québec culture,” and leave their offices no sooner than 5:30 pm every Friday during nine weeks.
155) Acceding to Québec citizenship is a great dignity for which people must be willing to pay dearly. Consequently, anybody accepting Québec citizenship will be obliged to pay the actual [outrageous] taxes levied by the State of Québec. Others will be left to live their lives peacefully in our welcoming, open, French-speaking nation, while keeping their money in their own shameful pockets.
156) In our glossary (see Annex 7), we defined Francophone as a “Person whose mother tongue is French or who generally speaks this language in his private life and in his public communications” (p. 225); and an Anglophone as “A person whose mother tongue is English or who generally speaks this language in his private life” (p. 223). Now, some “noisy and invasive anglo-american” (p. 193) jerk has pointed out that an Anglophone-born man who speaks French to her Francophone wife and works in French, or a Italian-born woman who sleeps with both an English-speaking husband and a French-speaking lover (the ideal combination), doesn’t fit anywhere in these civic, shared categories. In order not to leave these poor things identityless, we hereby define a middle category: the Metis (an “M” will appear on their citizenship card).
157) The Sûreté du Québec, our praetorian guard, is the ultimate enforcer of our common language, civic culture, and shared citizenship. The Metis don’t have the right of rebellion.
158) Every citizen living on our shared Québec territory loves Québec culture. Or else.
159) The Québec nation agrees with our social and collective project and with the civic consensus that we share in common. The State is man’s best friend. Be seeing you!