Official bilingualism in the public service of Canada
Because Canada has, for over two centuries, contained both English- and French-speakers, the question of the language used in the administration of public affairs has always been a sensitive issue.
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...."[4] 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.
However, French-speaking civil servants accounted for only 20% of the total payroll, suggesting that they were mainly confined to the lower ranks of the colonial administration.
[6] In general, it seems to have been the case that throughout the entire period between Confederation and the introduction of merit-based hiring and promotion in 1919, the percentage of French-speakers in the civil service relatively closely matched their percentage of the Canadian population because French-Canadians occupied a more-or-less proportionate share of cabinet posts, and they appointed public servants who were personally loyal to them.
[8] As well, the Unionist government then in power had almost no representation in Quebec, which meant that for several years there were no French-Canadian ministers appointing and promoting their fellow French-speakers.
[12] By the early 1960s, the issue of Canada's seemingly perpetual inability to create an equitable distribution of jobs in the country's rapidly expanding public service was becoming a key grievance underlying Quebec nationalism.
[13] In part on the basis of this recommendation, the government of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson established a Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, which made language reform within the public service one of its highest priorities.
Book III of the Royal Commission's multi-volume report, published in 1969, recommended a radical redesign of the Public Service of Canada, in order to establish full equality between the two official languages in the federal administration, and a permanently equitable distribution of jobs, at all levels of seniority, between French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians.
[18] Bilingualism is desirable for politicians; John Turner's fluency in both English and French, for example, helped him become leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister in 1984.
Similarly, Francophones fearing that their professional contribution will not be fully recognized tend to work in English when their superiors do not use French daily and do not stress the importance of using it.
