Introduction

Abstract

Being a long-term resident of the North of Ireland (NoI), I have acquired a particular interest in how conflict, conflict resolution (CR) and language policy and planning (LPP) are interlinked. My professional work¹ in LPP has provided me with direct experience of the results of CR on a minoritised language community, and an interest in how competing demands from different sections of society interact with historical colonial interests, hegemonic power and particularist regimes, with minority and human rights concerns, with international law and best international practice. As for many concerned with LPP, the combination of personal and professional experience has drawn my attention to Canada, to the historic and contemporary tensions around the competing linguistic and political groupings in Quebec and the rest of Canada (ROC). In Chapter 1, there is a discussion of the similarities as well as the differences in the situations of NoI and Quebec / Canada (Q / C). The two situations provide a useful contextual framework to examine how conflict, CR and LPP intermesh. In the last chapter of the book, I shall examine both Canadian federal and Quebec LPP from the most recent Quebec referendum on secession in 1995 to the present.