Official bilingualism in Canada
Section 23 also provides, "where numbers warrant", a right to French-language schooling for the children of all francophones living outside Quebec, including immigrants who become Canadian citizens.
More recent cases, which have significantly extended these rights, include Arsenault-Cameron v. Prince Edward Island (2000) and Doucet-Boudreau v. Nova Scotia (Minister of Education) (2003).
In particular, the Constitution Act, 1867 (which created Canada as a legal entity and still contains the most important provisions of governmental powers) has no official French-language version because it was enacted by the United Kingdom Parliament, which functions in the English language exclusively.
The purpose of this provision is to clear up any ambiguity that might have existed about the equal status of the two versions as a result of the novel way in which this part of Canada's supreme law came into force.
Moreover, the resolution stated, French Canadians were, "for the most part, appointed to the inferior and less lucrative offices, and most frequently only obtaining even them, by becoming the dependent of those [British immigrants] who hold the higher and the more lucrative offices...."[26] With the advent of responsible government in the 1840s, the power to make civil service appointments was transferred to elected politicians, who had a strong incentive to ensure that French Canadian voters did not feel that they were being frozen out of hiring and promotions.
[31] In 1985 the Supreme Court ruled that the act had been violated and that all provincial legislation must be published in both French and English, restoring the legal equality of the languages that had existed when the province was created.
[32] While this restoration of legal equality faced overwhelming public opposition at the time,[31] polls taken in 2003 showed a majority of Manitobans supported provincial bilingualism.
On March 31, 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously that the interpretation made by the provincial administration of the "major part" criterion in Quebec's language-of-instruction provisions violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
[104] In 2003, the federal government announced a ten-year plan of subsidies to provincial education ministries with the goal of boosting bilingualism among all Canadian graduates from its then-current level of 24% to 50% by 2013.
A scholar who interviewed a former New Brunswick premier, as well as the province's deputy ministers of education and health and the chairman of its Board of Management and Official Languages Branch reports: "[A]ll expressed reservations about the effectiveness of the Core program in promoting individual bilingualism and believed the program must be improved if anglophone students are to obtain a level of proficiency in the French language.
The rest of the core curriculum (Social Studies, Science, and Language Arts in English) is condensed for the second half of the year, comprising 80% of the time, with one hour for French.
[117] Federal party leaders often master the official languages poorly themselves[118] and even Senate translators might fail to master their languages of work well enough to provide trustworthy translations[119] According to an article in the Globe and Mail published on 13 February 2019: ‘Growing demand from parents for French immersion has created a shortage of teachers in many parts of the country, with some school boards settling for educators who can speak French only slightly better than their students, according to a new report.’[120] Jean Delisle stated in an article tilted Fifty Years of Parliamentary Interpretation: ‘Interpretation is a good barometer of government activity.
He took great care to ensure that the booths met national standards.’[121] The article goes on to state: ‘The House cannot sit without interpreters and it has adjourned when the interpretation system experienced technical difficulties.’ A report of the Advisory Working Group on the Parliamentary Translation Services of the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration revealed on 15 March 2018: ‘Many of the respondents cited inconsistency and quality control as major issues when it came to translation.
Once transfers are netted out, we have $1.5 billion at the federal level and $868 million at the local and provincial level for a total rounded of $2.4 billion or $85 per capita for 2006/07.’[122] In Making the Most of the Action Plan for Official Languages 2018-2023: Investing in Our Future, the Standing Committee on Official languages states: ‘CPF British Columbia and Yukon has already identified three strategies: recruiting from other provinces and territories and from abroad; supporting post-secondary institutions so they can train more teachers; and supporting teachers.’[123] The linguistic provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Official Languages Act, the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act,[124] the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and other laws obligate a greater demand for English and French speakers (even foreign ones if necessary) than a freer linguistic market would require.
The mandate of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism was to inquire into and report upon the existing state of bilingualism and biculturalism in Canada and to recommend what steps should be taken to develop the Canadian Confederation on the basis of an equal partnership between the two founding races, taking into account the contribution made by the other ethnic groups to the cultural enrichment of Canada and the measures that should be taken to safeguard that contribution.
[128]The same report clarifies the status of Canada’s indigenous peoples relative to "the two founding races" in its Book I, General Introduction, Paragraph 21: We should point out here that the Commission will not examine the question of the Indians and the Eskimos.
Yet it is clear that the term "other ethnic groups" means those peoples of diverse origins who came to Canada during or after the founding of the Canadian state and that it does not include the first inhabitants of this country.
[25]Book II, Chapter V.E.1, Paragraph 325 indicates that the government's policy with reference to indigenous Canadians was ‘to integrate these students as completely as possible into the existing provincial school systems.’[129] Commissioner J.
"[133] In the fall of 2022, further Franco-indigenous tensions erupted after the Treasury Board rejected an idea pitched by some Indigenous public servants to offer "blanket exemptions" so they don't have to learn both of Canada's official languages.
She writes: ‘The head of the Assembly of First Nations is calling for the nearly 60 indigenous languages spoken in Canada to be declared official along with English and French, an expensive proposition but one that he says is becoming more urgent as the mother tongues of aboriginal peoples disappear.
‘Perry Bellegarde, who was elected National Chief of the AFN last fall, agrees it would not be easy to require translations of all indigenous languages to be printed on the sides of cereal boxes and milk cartons.
[150] The ebb in support for bilingualism among anglophones can likely be attributed to political developments in the late 1980s and 1990s, including the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, and the 1995 referendum on Quebec independence.
For example, in a poll conducted in 2000, only 22% of Quebecers agreed with the statement, “We have gone too far in pushing bilingualism,” while positive response rates in English Canada ranged from a low of 50% in the Atlantic to a high of 65% in the Prairies.
Some of these hearings have dealt largely, or even primarily, with official languages policy, and the responses that they have collected provide snapshots into the state of public opinion at particular points in time.
The Advisory Committee on the Official Languages of New Brunswick was commissioned by the provincial legislature as a way of determining the response of the population to the 1982 Poirier-Bastarache Report, which had recommended a considerable expansion of French-language services.
In spite of real and needed progress in linguistic fair play in federal institutions, a sometimes mechanical, overzealous, and unreasonably costly approach to the policy has led to decisions to that have helped bring it into disrepute.
If adopted, this bill will have the effect of blocking any candidate who is not already sufficiently bilingual to understand oral arguments in both official languages from being appointed to the Supreme Court.
"[168] By 2002, the policy declaration of the Reform Party's political successor, the Canadian Alliance, had been moderated further, and stated that it was "the federal government's responsibility to uphold minority rights" by providing services in both languages in any "rural township or city neighbourhood where at least ten percent of the local population uses either English or French in its daily life".
Early in 2008, the party’s languages critic, Yvon Godin, stated that its MPs would vote in favour of a bill, sponsored by the Bloc Québécois, which would cause federal institutions to operate on a French-preferred or French-only basis in Quebec.
premier W. A. C. Bennett mused that Pierre Trudeau implemented bilingualism because he was a Quebec‐oriented politician who was mainly interested in promoting and protecting French Canada.
