Official Languages Act
- Official Languages Act
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In 1969, following the recommendations in the report published by the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, the Parliament of Canada adopted the first Official Languages Act. This act recognized English and French as the official languages of all federal institutions in Canada.
The Official Languages Act
was considerably modified in 1988. It sets out the three main objectives of the Government of Canada:
- to ensure respect for English and French as the official languages of Canada and ensure equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all federal institutions;
- to support the development of English and French linguistic minority communities and generally advance the equality of status and use of the English and French languages within Canadian society;
- to set out the powers, duties and functions of federal institutions with respect to the official languages of Canada.
In 2005, the Official Languages Act was amended once again to remind federal institutions of their responsibility to take positive measures to support the development of official language communities and to foster the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society. Furthermore, Part VII of the Act is included in the list of sections under which an application for remedy can be made in cases of inaction or failure to comply with the obligations set forth.
