The Troll Roll

I get a lot of my online news from CBC News Online. While the point is to keep up with current affairs, there’s the added bonus of watching comments come in, mostly from the same people each time. And whenever there is a news items regarding bilingualism, the usual gang of anti-bilingualism trolls can be counted on to show up.
Back on January 31, there was a report with the title N.B. lacks leadership on language laws: prof. The article referred to a person who was charged with a breathalyser offence and was acquitted because the police officer didn’t ask the person in which official language he wished to be served. The problem wasn’t one of being understood. Both the accused and the officer spoke French fluently. But the judge ruled that the officer should still have asked the accused if he preferred being served in the other official language. A constitutional expert, Michel Doucet, was quoted throughout the article about what was expected from police in such situations.

Well, that’s all it took for the trolls to vent their frustration for nth time in the Comments section. One commenter, whose username was “ivatumca,” concluded his post with, “You DO NOT want to know what bilingualism is costing this province...”

Thinking he or she might actually know what they were talking about, I replied with:

“Actually, yes, I do. Please provide full description and detail the cost of each item.

“Thank you. Yours truly,

“etc. etc.”

Life being what it is, I went on to other pursuits and only recently checked to see what might have become of the issue. Predictably enough, there was no reply.

Now, I’ll admit I was being tongue-in-cheek with my posting, but it was to make the following point: For years, we have been told about how expensive bilingualism is and how it is somehow responsible for New Brunswick being a have-not province. If they are so sure of their facts, why don’t they publish them? It would be the greatest coup in history if it did happen. “Bilingualism Today, French Tomorrow” was the first truly public manifestation of anti-bilingualism, written from supposedly an insider’s point of view. Even he couldn’t offer anything more than extremely vague accusations.

And they always talk about how the French don’t want to compromise. They talk about how they have witnessed French-Canadian people insisting on being served in French. They don’t like this because it used to be that French-Canadian people had no choice. English was the only officially recognised language in New Brunswick and that was that! Ah, to return to golden years of yore...

At least, they would. And it would be interesting to see what would happen. Right now, they blame bilingualism for not being able to find jobs or advance in their field. If bilingualism were to be eliminated, what would their excuse be then?