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Dear French Canadians.......
Do you think this is fair?
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Toron...933499-sun.html
GO's signs go French
LANGUAGE LAWS WILL COST SYSTEM $8.5M
By JASON BOTCHFORD, TORONTO SUN
GO TRANSIT is being forced to spend millions of dollars to put up French-language signs in places like Toronto, Brampton and Mississauga. Board chairman Gordon Chong said yesterday GO had little choice when it budgeted more than $8.5 million for the next three years to comply with the French-Language Services Act. After 2007, GO is budgeting an additional $2 million a year dedicated to upkeep on those French-language signs in English-speaking Ontario municipalities.
"It's definitely not a practical use of our money," Chong said. "We're not sure precisely why we have to comply because the fact is I doubt there are many people in the GTA who don't speak English."
The office of Francophone affairs has given GO Transit three years to comply with requirements in the act. Chong said GO fell under the act in 2001 after the provincial government took control.
A clause in the act requires a number of the province's cities, including Toronto, Mississauga and Brampton, to display traffic signs in both English and French. Chong said GO will have to change signs in those municipalities and likely many more to have a uniform system that complies with the act. "There are pockets in the province where it would make sense but it doesn't make sense to do it in the GTA," Chong said.
GO budgeted as much as $6.5 million for the capital costs needed to change the signs during 2005-2007. Another $2 million has been set aside for the operating budget during the same time frame. The ministry of transportation and the Francophone affairs office must still sign off on the GO compliance plan before it can be implemented.
NO WAY AROUND LAW
Gabriel Manseau, a spokesman for the Francophone affairs office, said there was no chance GO would be able to get around the current law.
"(For GO to be exempt) you would have to revisit the law,"Manseau said. "The way it is now is the way it was passed and it was passed unanimously in 1996."
Chong said there was a sliver of hope GO would not have to change its signs. He said the board is now appointed by the province but if that structure was somehow changed there is a chance the transit system would no longer fall under the languages act.
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