Have you ever tried to put on a pair of jeans that are two sizes too small? They just don’t fit, no matter how much you squirm, squeeze, dance around or curse.

Examples continue to pile up with the Quebec government, aided and abetted by the City of Montreal administration, trying its best to force the linguistically and culturally diverse population of the city into something it isn’t.

The latest instance is exposed by The Gazette’s four-part series this week examining the city’s new internal rulebook on dealing with English-speaking citizens, titled Exemplary Conduct in the French Language: Mechanisms for Informing the Public.

This is part of the city’s effort to apply Bill 96, the Coalition Avenir Québec’s overhaul of the French Language Charter, which imposes strict new rules with the stated objective of better protecting French. Unfortunately, many of the bill’s provisions go well beyond practical or meaningful protection or promotion of the language; instead, they trample on minority language rights, relying on the cowardly use of........

© Montreal Gazette