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  #41  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 1:28 AM
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BTW, the BMO in Lévis did exactly this to us - after two years there was some $5,000 sitting in the separate account that was supposed to get forwarded to the City (BMO took it from us on time, never transferred it to the City). I was pissed, and BMO did end up absorbing the 12% interest that was charged to us. Total incompetents.

(BMO in Lévis is a disaster, that's not the only time I had major problems with them; they always served me well in Sherbrooke though. That's why we stuck with them there.)

Seriously, I'd expect that any time funds are just stupidly piling up in any municipal tax "in trust" account, it should immediately raise a flag in the bank's system.

Your story was ~20 years ago, mine was only a few years ago, in the era of totally automated systems. Even more unacceptable.
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  #42  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 1:51 AM
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I never understood on why banks in Ontario allow mortgages to include payments of municipal taxes through them. My first mortgage with TD, I was obligated to. I prefer to pay my own bills thank you.
Because if you didn't pay your property taxes the city would have a charge over your property that would affect the bank's interest as mortgagee. So presumably they want to reduce that risk by making it harder for you to fail to pay your taxes.
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  #43  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 3:53 AM
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I totally believe it, but that's still mindblowing incompetence.

1) They know your name. (It's on those letters in Klingon that you received. They can see you're a customer.)
2) They know you have a mortgage with them. (On a building in Poland, for the example.)
3) They can see you have an in trust account linked to that mortgage. They can see there's $2,738 sitting in it. They know this means they are in charge of paying your taxes for you on the mortgaged Polish property.
4) They open a weird letter from the City of Warsaw, "blah blah Municipalski Taxski blah blah $2,738" and they throw that into the recycling bin with a clear conscience (it's unreadable garbage, can't blame them).
5) They let that $2,738 which sits in your in trust account - an account that was created for the sole purposes of them handling the payment of your municipal taxes for you - continue to sit there.

Yeah, I think I'd change banks, honestly.
Recalling this a bit more, when I complained the bank told me I should ask the city to change my personal file and billing language and general correspondance language with the city to English! Not even sure if Gatineau offers that...

And yes I did change banks.
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  #44  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 2:11 PM
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I am curious to know how well it usually goes when you try that?
I have had no issues so far.
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  #45  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 5:44 PM
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Recalling this a bit more, when I complained the bank told me I should ask the city to change my personal file and billing language and general correspondance language with the city to English! Not even sure if Gatineau offers that...

And yes I did change banks.
If they don't they should. Major city right across the river from the largest English speaking province in the country. They should have the capacity to offer their citizens the option of English as the language of communication.
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  #46  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 6:14 PM
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If they don't they should. Major city right across the river from the largest English speaking province in the country. They should have the capacity to offer their citizens the option of English as the language of communication.
Language of communication for most things - yes they definitely can.

But having the computer system that prints out your property tax bill being able to print it out in both French and English, based on your choice? Not sure.

For example, these are Quebec provincial services but for your health card and driver's licence, you can fill out all of the forms in English (and also pass your driver's exam in English), but once you get the actual card, I am pretty sure any writing that's on it is only in French.
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  #47  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 6:16 PM
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Sorry but I'm not back pedalling 3 pages to catch up...

My opinion on why Quebec is the "only" (<3 you NB) French province is that after Canada united as a country, the government never pushed French Immersion schools as much as they should have. In truth the government should have made French Immersion schools establishments that are both cheaper for the people to attend and also cheaper for the provincial governments to build (or easier to get funding for).

I think that the lack of French in the west is the government's fault for not creating programs that unite all of Canada. Instead we are in this sticky political situation where it is indeed the West vs. the East, and a big part of that is Quebec. By being able to communicate with each other fluently in both English and French we would at least be able to avoid any misunderstandings.
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  #48  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 7:05 PM
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Originally Posted by scryer View Post
Sorry but I'm not back pedalling 3 pages to catch up...

My opinion on why Quebec is the "only" (<3 you NB) French province is that after Canada united as a country, the government never pushed French Immersion schools as much as they should have. In truth the government should have made French Immersion schools establishments that are both cheaper for the people to attend and also cheaper for the provincial governments to build (or easier to get funding for).

I think that the lack of French in the west is the government's fault for not creating programs that unite all of Canada. Instead we are in this sticky political situation where it is indeed the West vs. the East, and a big part of that is Quebec. By being able to communicate with each other fluently in both English and French we would at least be able to avoid any misunderstandings.
Why would “government” (I.e. GofC? Other?) have pushed for French immersion education? Are you sitting on a stash of John A’s diary entries about the need to promote French in Canada to which the rest of us have not been privy?
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  #49  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 7:11 PM
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Why would “government” (I.e. GofC? Other?) have pushed for French immersion education? Are you sitting on a stash of John A’s diary entries about the need to promote French in Canada to which the rest of us have not been privy?
Given that French immersion was only dreamt up in the mid to late 1960s, John A. would likely have reacted with a "French im- what????"

Though I definitely get the point about Confederation-era Canada embracing its English-French duality a lot more, that wasn't really part of the spirit of the times.

I suspect that back in the day the French fact was seen as an annoyance that nonetheless could not be ignored due tot demographics. Hence the efforts to restrict it to Quebec, and even weaken it within its home base. In the hopes that it might slowly fade away at some point.
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  #50  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 7:33 PM
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Given that French immersion was only dreamt up in the mid to late 1960s, John A. would likely have reacted with a "French im- what????"

Though I definitely get the point about Confederation-era Canada embracing its English-French duality a lot more, that wasn't really part of the spirit of the times.

I suspect that back in the day the French fact was seen as an annoyance that nonetheless could not be ignored due tot demographics. Hence the efforts to restrict it to Quebec, and even weaken it within its home base. In the hopes that it might slowly fade away at some point.
I’ve always assumed that the colonial British imperialists saw the French minority as useful to their national project, which was British and colonial in nature. My sense is that the French Canadian elite may have thought something else was in the cards, although they may have been cagey about their role in the project. However, it seems to be a forbidden topic in the modern national narrative, for obvious reasons. Most controversial, of course, would be whether the national project has undergone some fundamental change since Confederation, or whether it remains a work in progress.
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  #51  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 7:48 PM
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I have had no issues so far.
I’m curious which part of Manitoba you’re in...
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  #52  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 8:19 PM
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My father used to be a notary in Quebec City. For most of his career, mortgage brokers would always be local offices of either Desjardins or one of the Big 6. He would thus be in contact with someone directly in the city and having all documents in french was a no brainer. Eventually, some of his clients would begin to have mortgages from online brokers like ING and MBNA. It instantly became a source of intense frustration and even humilitation.

Some background: when he was young, my father was sent to the Jésuites to do his Collège Classique and to this day, he still speaks some Latin and Greek. English, however, wasn't taught at the time. He is able to understand and be somewhat understood in english but his grasp of the language was certainly not good enough to sign 10 pages contracts with hundred thousands of dollars at stake.

Anyway, when he began to be in contact with these brokers, most of the documentation he would receive was in English. He would then call the offices and ask to speak to someone in french, which at the time was almost impossible. He would then try to explain the problem in english. Some of the employees turned out to be helpful and accomodating but he was also told, on numerous occasions:

- to find someone who spoke proper english to make the call.
- to call back when his english would have improved.
- to hire a translator from his own pocket to translate the documents.
- was asked why he couldn't speak english since "this is Canada".
- was laughed at.
- was once literally told to ... speak white.

Bear in mind that my father, a francophone, was doing business in Quebec City with francophone buyers and vendors.
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Last edited by davidivivid; Feb 13, 2020 at 8:40 PM.
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  #53  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 8:36 PM
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Maybe they do, but that's no excuse. Operating in Poland with a ".pl" address goes hand in hand with the obligation to accept, whenever you ask that one of your Polish customers provide you with an official government-issued document, to satisfy yourself with said document being in Polish, even if you are going to be treating it in California (which is your right...)

And yeah, of course, I've slightly paraphrased, but that was what they meant!
If we're being brutally honest, if this part of the world had a radically different geopolitical organization and in that alternative universe you were dealing with GoDomain.qc my guess is that even those Silicon Valley dudes wouldn't ever dream of not having the suitable capacity in French, just as I am sure they do in Croatian (if they have an .hr site) or Finnish (if they have an .fi site).

But as I always say, there is a price to be paid for being part of one of the world's most successful countries!
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  #54  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 9:17 PM
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If we're being brutally honest, if this part of the world had a radically different geopolitical organization and in that alternative universe you were dealing with GoDomain.qc my guess is that even those Silicon Valley dudes wouldn't ever dream of not having the suitable capacity in French, just as I am sure they do in Croatian (if they have an .hr site) or Finnish (if they have an .fi site).

But as I always say, there is a price to be paid for being part of one of the world's most successful countries!
You once made a similar observation about Iceland and Catalonia: one is an independent country of 350000 people, the other is part of another country with a population of 7.5 million, one has keyboards in their own language, the other doesn't.
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  #55  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 10:06 PM
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I could have done that, but I wanted to read what people here had to say about it.

I will say that I tried researching the reason why French isn’t as prominent as it once was in Louisiana and parts of the US that the French were present in ( like Missouri, Detroit, etc). Based on the responses so far, it seems that there has been a historical suppression of French everywhere on the continent.
Perhaps a way to frame it is that British settlers in the British Empire (and their later descendants, Anglo-Americans and Anglo-Canadians) tried their damn hardest to assimilate/overpower away any pre-existing predominantly non-English speaking regions that they acquired. This included both indigenous languages as well as the languages of previous settlers (French, Dutch, Spanish)

In most cases, they succeeded (e.g. Dutch is no longer the lingua franca of New York state or the former areas of New Amsterdam, French no longer holds strong in Louisiana, Missouri, Detroit, and Texas, California etc. were turned into Anglophone places after the US acquired them from Mexico etc.).

However, the holdouts are the places where for one reason or another (political power, inconvenience, resistance), the English-speakers did not succeed in their project of new nation-building via language change, such as Quebec (obtained from New France but still French speaking) or Puerto Rico (obtained from Spanish Empire but still remained Spanish speaking).

So, it's notable that for instance Quebec but not Louisiana retained French or that Puerto Rico* but not Texas retained Spanish despite the power of Anglophone assimilation, because it provides an exception to the idea that English-speakers always won and could impose their will on others.

* I must admit I am more hazy about the details of the Puerto Rican case, but probably something also along the lines of critical mass or the difficulty of forcing everyone to learn to use English first over Spanish (as well as not being a state, it was less connected to and easily influenced by the mainland) made Puerto Rico hold out its unique identity whereas states like Louisiana, California, Texas could not keep themselves a state of non-English speakers in a sea of English speakers.
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  #56  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2020, 10:08 PM
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Originally Posted by jd3189 View Post
I could have done that, but I wanted to read what people here had to say about it.

I will say that I tried researching the reason why French isn’t as prominent as it once was in Louisiana and parts of the US that the French were present in ( like Missouri, Detroit, etc). Based on the responses so far, it seems that there has been a historical suppression of French everywhere on the continent.
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You once made a similar observation about Iceland and Catalonia: one is an independent country of 350000 people, the other is part of another country with a population of 7.5 million, one has keyboards in their own language, the other doesn't.
Cue the line about a language being a dialect with an army and a navy. National sovereignity seems to impart a "legitimacy" in many peoples' eyes (and in legal systems) that sheer population does not (alone, or by itself).

For instance, China or India probably has lots of local languages of millions or dozens of millions of people that outnumber the population of many sovereign states, but "official" and "national" means something to most people, not just numbers.
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  #57  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2020, 4:04 AM
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I’m curious which part of Manitoba you’re in...
Winnipeg.
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  #58  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2020, 4:27 AM
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My unpopular opinion is largely because Quebecois politicians gave up on the rest of Canada. They went for a partition scenario instead of using their political capital to make French more widely spoken.

Of course the British preferred their own language when ruling the country but this is no different than using english in india. Being an "anglo" don't mean you identify as English. It means you don't have another language to speak. Anglo's(some) are just as much the victims of the "Empire" has Francophones.


So the table was always slanted for english, but I think there is a much bigger factor.

The simplest answer is that France had very low birth rates for much of the last 200 years.

The english had much higher birthrates.

In addition most immigrants learned english instead of French, in part because it meant they could do business with ever dominate America.

I know I'm vastly over simplifying things but I feel it is far closer to the truth.

Even if Canada was never under British rule you'd still seem english as the dominate language.

French was until recently spoken in proportion to the ancestry of people in given regions.

Quebec has the most French ancestry because it was highly populated when French immigration was at its highest per capita.
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  #59  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2020, 3:21 PM
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French was until recently spoken in proportion to the ancestry of people in given regions.

.
Yes, and that has changed recently so that you have outside Quebec fewer people who speak French than those who are of French ancestry, but in Quebec you have more people who speak French than those who are of French ancestry.
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  #60  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2020, 3:29 PM
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The simplest answer is that France had very low birth rates for much of the last 200 years.

The english had much higher birthrates.
.
Throughout the great migratory period from 1600 to 1900, France also had a lot more room geographically for a population that was roughly equivalent to that of England.

There was much less of a need for a colonial demographic release valve to address overpopulation in France.
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