Ottawa, October 14, 2009
Notes for an address to alumni of the École nationale d’administration
Graham Fraser – Commissioner of Official Languages
Check against delivery
Good evening everyone,
I would like to start by thanking Mr. Drago for inviting me to this evening’s discussion.
As ÉNA alumni, a good many of you are surely government employees—either at the federal, provincial or municipal level—here in Ottawa, in the region or elsewhere. And those of you who work in other sectors probably do business with the government.
That leads me to believe that most of you have been affected in some way by these governments’ official languages policies.
For this discussion, I was asked to touch on the themes I dealt with in my most recent book, Sorry, I Don’t Speak French.
The year 2005 marked the 40th anniversary of the preliminary report by the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, which informed Canadians that the country was experiencing the greatest crisis in its history. I wanted to see where we stood 40 years later. Some key dates come to mind:
- 1962–1963, the critical year;
- 1966, a commitment is made by Pearson;
- 1967, a definition is developed by Trudeau.
All of this took place before the 1969 Act. At the time, the legislation produced a paradox: official bilingualism existed to protect communities and serve unilingual Canadians. The goal was to make institutions bilingual, not individuals.
On this 40th anniversary of the Official Languages Act and less than four months away from the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, a number of other issues come to mind as well. In September, we celebrated the anniversary of the Act with a number of events, including the launch of an exhibition at Library and Archives Canada.
The exhibition, entitled Déjà Vu: 40 Years of Language and Laughter in Political Cartoons, portrays with humour and biting irony key events and passionate political debates that have shaped our relationship with official languages since the adoption of the Act. The exhibition will be on display until the end of December and I encourage you to go and take a look. It will undoubtedly bring back memories—some better than others—of the progress we have made together.
In 1968, while parliamentarians were debating Bill C-120, which would become the Official Languages Act, a number of issues were being raised across the country. In the absence of any official communications, speculation fed on rumour, and misunderstanding fed on speculation.1 Canadians, as well as the media that fanned the flames, seemed to believe that the new act would require all Canadians, and all public servants, to be bilingual. Even worse, people thought that Anglophones would face grave discrimination when seeking employment with the federal government.
Forty years later, these myths continue to appear in the media whenever issues are raised concerning the importance of having two official languages. And we are still working hard to debunk those myths.
As you may already know, the Act has never been about making all Canadians bilingual. That would be great, but it’s not a requirement. Rather, the goal was to ensure that all unilingual Francophones were entitled to the same quality services as unilingual Anglophones were.
To achieve that goal, the public service had to take action to ensure that its employees, who are called upon to serve the Canadian public, are able to do so in the official language of each person’s choice. Of course, this is not the case everywhere. These services are provided in designated bilingual regions, based on existing demand. They are also provided to all Canadians in places such as major airports serving the travelling public.
Here, in Ottawa, 65% of positions are designated bilingual. In Western Canada, however, only 5% of positions are bilingual. Overall, the majority of positions in the public service continue to be unilingual English positions—and so Anglophones are not, in fact, subject to discrimination.
Francophones in the public service, particularly in this region, are very well represented, especially in designated bilingual positions. The large number of bilingual Francophones is not only evidence of their strong ability to become bilingual (which comes as no surprise, especially in Ottawa–Gatineau), but also of the lack of bilingual Anglophones in this group.
So what’s the reason for this? Well, for close to 30 years now, young Anglophones have had access, virtually everywhere across the country, to immersion and French second-language programs. One would think that they would be just as qualified as their Francophone counterparts to join the public service and work in both official languages.
However, we know for a fact that there is a break in the learning path for a large number of these young people when they move on to post-secondary education. Universities are, for the most part, still oblivious to the need to provide their students with all of the tools that are necessary for their careers. And those tools must include language skills, especially in public administration programs, where a large number of graduates aspire to join the public service.
I will be publishing a study on this issue at the end of the month, but the findings are less than reassuring. It is my hope that our Canadian universities will follow the example of institutions such as Glendon College, the University of Ottawa, McGill University and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and provide all of our students, both Anglophone and Francophone, with the programs and courses they need to pursue their studies in their second language.
In British Columbia, young graduates from programs such as Simon Fraser’s will support the efforts now underway for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games that will take place in just a few short months.
According to a study that I published last year, and a follow-up report published in September, the Organizing Committee and the federal institutions involved still have difficulty ensuring equal service to athletes, participants and visitors to the Games. I find this surprising. Nearly 300,000 people in that province have some knowledge of French. That’s a large pool of potential employees and volunteers.
Since I started working on this issue, I have found that there are some misconceptions about the Games, particularly in Western Canada. The Games are Canada’s Games, not just British Columbia’s. And for that reason, they must represent all Canadians, both Anglophone and Francophone. What’s more, French and English are the official languages of the International Olympic Committee.
By recognizing the status of our official languages at all levels, Canada can uphold its reputation around the world for respecting its two major linguistic communities. Other countries, such as Belgium and Switzerland, have populations representing their country’s official languages, but their system of rigid territorial separation could not be applied in Canada, where official language minority communities continue to thrive across the country. Finland is probably the example that most closely resembles Canada. Like Finland's model, the Canadian model is one of balance, flexibility and linguistic tolerance.
Nevertheless, I do believe that we still have certain challenges to overcome before this model can be truly embraced. In particular, and I discuss this theme in Chapter 7 of my book, I believe there is a lot of work to be done in Ottawa, Canada’s national capital.
In 1970, the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism published its fifth report on the federal capital. The report clearly stated that the capital should be a symbol of the country. According to the commissioners, it should illustrate, in the best way possible, the values of a country as a whole—its way of life, its cultural richness and diversity, its social outlook and its aspirations for the future. A capital must serve as a meeting place where persons who speak different languages and who come from different parts of Canada could, very broadly speaking, live and work together.2
Ottawa has changed a lot since then. But the change has occurred mostly behind the closed doors of government buildings and, to a certain extent, in the services to the public that are provided from these buildings. At the provincial level, it is possible to obtain services in French. At the municipal level, the availability of services in both languages varies.
Beyond service, an imbalance continues to exist in Ottawa. As soon as we leave government offices and enter daily life, it becomes readily apparent that French rarely has its place.
For Canadians visiting their capital, their impression is that it is still an English-speaking city. Signage is by and far unilingual, menus are rarely translated and it is difficult to obtain service in French. Those who try are often left feeling uncomfortable.
For French-speaking tourists from Quebec and the international Francophone community, they are shocked when they arrive in Ottawa. Given that Canada is a bilingual country and that they are travelling to its capital, it is difficult to understand why just about everything is in English. Quoting another passage from the report of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission, which still applies nearly 40 years later, neither Francophone residents nor visitors feel “at home” in the capital; “the federal capital is like a foreign territory to a substantial sector of the Canadian population.”3
Although bilingualism in Ottawa does not fall directly under the jurisdiction of the Official Languages Act, it is a topic that I hold dear to my heart and that I will continue to study closely as Commissioner of Official Languages.
Conclusion
After three years as Commissioner, I can make the following observations:
- Community vitality is stronger than I could have ever imagined.
- There are more allies within the public service than I thought.
- A gap nonetheless exists between the reality and the ideal.
- Unlike the flag, the health system, the metric system and other innovations in recent decades, official bilingualism is not yet part of our perception of Canadian identity.
I would like to conclude by pointing out that, as alumni of a public administration program, you are our leaders of today, at all levels of government—federal, provincial and municipal. It is therefore up to you to serve as models and to set an example for your employees, so that they recognize the importance of linguistic duality in Canada and, more specifically, in our region.
I would now like to answer any questions you may have.
1. This point was raised by Robert Stanfield during the House of Commons debates on October 17, 1969, 1485.
2. See the Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Book V: The Federal Capital, Queen’s Printer for Canada, Ottawa, 1970, p. 3.
3. Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Book V: The Federal Capital, Queen’s Printer for Canada, Ottawa, 1970, p. 5–6.
