Many successful countries in the world have worked with minority governments for decades. Every political party wants a majority government as long as they have the majority. The voting public will decide.

COVID-19 is an invisible foe with no borders that the world has never encountered before. How did Canada do compared to other countries? Climate change — although denied by many has been recognized by world scientists as real and one of, if not the largest, threats to the survival of our planet. Recovery of our economy, taking in to account dealing with COVID-19, climate change and control over language. Let us pay very close attention to how all our wanna-be leaders address these problems.

The majority of disputes and wars in the world have been fought over language and religion. Check your history books and remember the religious strife in Ireland which lasted for centuries.

When our county was pioneered, surveyed, lots allotted, and settled the majority of this early work was assigned to soldiers who had fought in these disputes and wars. A valiant attempt was made by these semi-retired or retired soldiers to allot parcels of land in different townships to settlers of like religion and who spoke the same language to avoid some of these disputes.

As the years passed, the French and English, the Catholics and Protestants all worked together, played together and although for some years frowned upon by some old-timers, fell in love with, married and raised families with each other. Not much wonder that basic values like freedom of religion and speech is written into our constitution. The troubles in Ireland and the recent discovery of the atrocities carried out by our horrible experiment with the residential schools, surely has shown us that trying to force a religion, language, or culture upon others is expensive, dangerous and futile.

A half century ago, when our province of Quebec imposed the use of the French language in head offices of corporations, we witnessed many companies move their head offices, along with the high paying jobs, which were paying the largest taxes to other provinces with less restrictions. The same companies left their shops and manufacturing facilities that took advantage of the lower wages and contributed less tax dollars in Quebec.

During the time since that first exodus of head offices, we have watched a gradual increase in wages in other provinces which were increasingly higher than those in Quebec. This resulted in bilingual teachers, nurses and doctors shifting to higher paying positions in other provinces or countries.

We have also watched our university educated bilingual youth exit Quebec for higher paying positions. This has caused a real brain-drain of our smartest young people. The recent proposed “Bill 96” from our Quebec government further restricts the number of French young people from entering English CÉGEPS which prepared young people, raised in a French home setting, from becoming more bilingual and being more visible to employers and less likely to advance their career into other international positions.

We have also noticed economic frustration in the retail community when potential buyers from outside Quebec have trouble with the French only signs on both roads and businesses discourage them from traveling or shopping in Quebec.

Another concerning control given to both the police and the language police by the new bill 96 will be their right to cease and examine computers and cell phones for too much communication in English of many Quebec residents.

Many Quebec businesses with more than 25 employees will be forced to speak only French even between employees within their jobs or premises.

In Canada and every province in Canada, there are two official languages — French and English.

Please read the Bill-96 as proposed by Quebec. Think how is might affect you and please attend every all candidates’ debates that you can and don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions and demand answers!

Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations. gladcrest@gmail.com

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