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The Ontario government’s decision to abolish the Office of the French Language Services Commissioner and cancel plans to create a French-language university is a bitter setback to Franco-Ontarians, whose long and valiant struggle for services in their language has inspired official-language minorities across the country.

And it comes at a time when francophones in New Brunswick and anglophones in Quebec are apprehensive about what might be in store from their own newly elected provincial governments.

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Announced in the context of the Ontario government’s economic update Thursday, the moves were among many others meant to get that province’s worrisome budget deficit under better control. Certainly, that is a worthy objective, and belt-tightening exercises inevitably involve difficult choices. However, it seems unfair to choose measures that have a disproportionate impact on minorities.