Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada
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The Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada (APEC) was a political lobby group in Canada, which campaigned against the Canadian government's policy of official bilingualism.
The group was formed in 1977 by Irene Hilchie, a government employee who felt that she was being discriminated against in her job because she did not speak French. The group's most famous member, however, was Jock V. Andrew, whose book Bilingual Today, French Tomorrow alleged that bilingualism was part of a government plot to make Canada a unilingually French country.
The group was most influential in the late 1980s, as it engaged in activities which contributed to the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord. In 1989, a small group of APEC members in Brockville trampled the Quebec flag at a protest. As well, the group was involved in a campaign to have Ontario municipalities declare themselves English-only, in response to the Ontario government's French Language Services Act. (The act quite explicitly did not apply to municipal government services, but APEC deliberately misrepresented this reality in order to convince municipalities to pass English-only resolutions.)
Most famously, the city of Sault Ste. Marie passed such a resolution on January 29, 1990. Quebec voters perceived the Sault Ste. Marie resolution and the Brockville flag incident as symbols of English Canada's feelings toward Quebec, and the incidents contributed directly to the resurgence of the Quebec sovereignty movement in the 1990s and thus to the 1995 Quebec referendum.
APEC also worked closely with the Confederation of Regions Party and the Reform Party, two political parties which held similar views about bilingualism and the role of Quebec in Confederation.
In addition to their anti-bilingualism efforts, APEC has also been involved in the promotion of social conservative causes such as opposition to abortion, immigration and homosexuality. The group was also actively endorsed by the Heritage Front, a Canadian neo-Nazi group.
Although the group is nominally still active, they have attracted little media attention since their role in the Meech Lake debate ended. Only a few references to the group after 1997 can be found on the Internet.
