Quote:
Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
That must have been a quite a while ago, because Harper's French is impeccable these days. In fact, back around 04/05, I worked with a guy from France who lived in Quebec for several years before moving to BC... who was a staunch NDP supporter. Needless to say, he had no love for Harper... but when I asked him if he thought Harpers French language skills were an issue, he thought Harper spoke French really well and it was a plus for him if anything.
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Harper's French skills are definitely adequate but far from impeccable.
CTV really should be ashamed of themselves. All in all, this situation reflects far worse on the station than it did on Dion. It was a case of petty and cheap political games being played and allowed the Conservatives to further hit Dion on his apparent lack of leadership. It looks particularly bad considering Mike Duffy who was the face of their political team was appointed a Conservative senator just a few months ago.
The question was worded very strangely (particularly to an ESL person...even a fluently bilingual ESL person). Dion had figured out the basic concept of the question but the reporter did absolutely nothing to aid him in terms of clarifying the question to ensure that Dion actually answered the question at hand. Of course understanding the language is very important as a politician but the election had far, far more important issues to discuss than one stupid question from a no-name journalist seeking his day in the sun. Quebecers have had to suffer through some politicians who spoke extremely poor French (ie Preston Manning, Stock Day, Diefenbaker, Broadbent, etc.) and they have accepted that English speaking politicians are going to make some fairly serious and probably sometimes laughable grammatical errors. It is part of living in a multilingual country.