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According to an old Irish proverb, “hindsight is the best insight to foresight.”

It is a folksy reminder that one should learn from past mistakes. There is indeed wisdom in learning from our own failures, and greater wisdom still in taking the lesson from other people’s blunders.

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By eliminating essential Francophone services, including a nascent French-language university and the Office of the French Language Services Commissioner, the Ontario government has failed its minority official language population by failing to learn from its past mistakes. In one stroke of a pen, Doug Ford’s government announced the dismantling of institutions that have taken generations to build. It is a monumental failure of policy and math, because unless it is reversed, the move will do nothing to remedy the province’s deficit.

Photo by Chris Young / Canadian Press

It has, however, ignited Ontario’s Francophone population – many of whom protested across the province on Saturday – and attracted stern national and international condemnation from every level of government, from community organizations and from thousands of concerned citizens from coast to coast who stand in solidarity with Ontario’s 620,000 Francophones.