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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

> As an example I cannot send my kids to english school (because I went to french school) but my neighbor that is as french as me can.

What is this rule?

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The English Montreal School Board's web site has some information about this:

https://www.emsb.qc.ca/emsb/admissions/eligibility/standard-...

It's remarkably convoluted.

My US based sense of "freedoms" gets really itchy when I read that ... like let me decide that, not sure I get why my kids have to be involved in someone's cultural type initiatives.

Granted if it was just say a class about ... something, whatever, but picking the full time language for the school is a lot for someone else to decide for me.

I suppose the argument is that if the parents picked they'd just pick one and there's no choice but I'm kinda ok with that.

The problem is that french canadians see themselves as oppressed by the english part of Canada. They try with laws to force french in Québec as much as possible. Now with more and more immigration (rapidly aging population) and more english around with the internet they try harder and harder to stop the inevitable decline in french.

We often think of moving out of Québec/Canada to escape government encroachment in our lives.

If I understand the law correctly, you can only send your kid to English-speaking public school if you yourself went to an English-speaking school in Canada.

Yes. There is also some complicated points system so that if one parent did goes for just a few years it’s not enough to get that right.

That's crazy

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