Introduction
Page 3 of 36
This study attempts to shed some light on how communities, researchers and governments conceive the "vitality" of Canada's official language minority communities (OLMCs). It does not claim to identify ways of increasing vitality; our goal is the more humble one of reporting on existing knowledge about vitality and how it can be evaluated.
The vitality of OLMCs is one of the main concerns associated with the implementation of the Official Languages Act passed in 1969 ("the Act"). For more than 35 years, the Act has upheld the strengthening of Canada's linguistic duality. The results of this experience illustrate the importance attached to linguistic minorities (Commissioner of Official Languages, 2005). The Parliament of Canada has recognized that linguistic duality and the equality of the two official languages, which are fundamental aspects of Canadian identity, are possible only with strong minority and majority communities of both official languages.
The Canadian legal framework has become progressively more specific in setting out the government's obligations towards OLMCs, particularly through the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ("the Charter"), enacted in 1982, and Part VII of the Act as amended in 1988. In 2005, Canada's Parliament again amended the Act with Bill S-3, which gave effect to Part VII of the Act and reinforced the obligations of the federal government with regard to the development of OLMCs. The courts have intervened repeatedly to clarify the rights of linguistic minorities, which actions have, for example, paved the way for school governance in the language of the minority everywhere in Canada and for advances in health, justice and other areas. Federal institutions have supported the organizations created by these minority communities and, more recently, they have begun to be receptive to shared governance in concert with the communities. 1
The OLMCs have gradually organized themselves and asserted their legitimacy within the framework of linguistic duality. For more than 30 years, the communities in every geographical region have been represented in every sphere of activity by associations that stand guard over their rights and attempt to find ways and means of enhancing their vitality. Community governance now is an established fact, and renewal is ongoing.
While considerable progress has been made since 1969, the fact remains that identifying and evaluating the vitality of OLMCs is difficult. 2 What exactly is meant by the concepts of vitality and development? How can one better grasp and understand the issues addressed by OLMCs' development initiatives? To what extent do federal government support and the efforts of OLMCs produce the best results? How can one measure a reality as complex as the vitality of communities?
This study, written at the request of the Commissioner of Official Languages, attempts to answer these questions. It comes at a time when the government is taking a number of initiatives that bear on the issue of vitality. The Privy Council Office has developed both a management framework and a performance measurement framework for the Official Languages Program (Privy Council Office, 2005a, 2005b). The Department of Canadian Heritage is augmenting its research effort in the area of OLMC vitality (Canadian Heritage, 2005; Floch and Frenette, 2005). Statistics Canada is undertaking a post-censal survey on the vitality of the official language minorities (Marmen, 2005). The Ministerial Conference on Francophone Affairs has commissioned a study of the initiatives taken by provinces and territories to provide services in French (Bourgeois et al., forthcoming).
The OLMCs are taking an interest in measuring vitality and developing their research capabilities. Researchers too are looking at OLMC vitality, specifically with respect to the conceptual and methodological tools for measuring it (see issue number 20 of Francophonie d'Amérique).
This current study is based on a review of the literature on vitality and community development as these pertain to OLMCs and as they are viewed outside OLMCs in the rest of Canada and abroad. There were also consultations with a score of researchers in the community sector and in government through interviews conducted in the summer of 2005. The preliminary results can be found in a discussion paper (Johnson and Doucet, 2005), which provided input for the event titled "Strengthening the Foundations: Discussion Forum on the Vitality of Official Language Minority Communities," which was held in September 2005 at the initiative of the Commissioner of Official Languages.
The discussion paper and the forum provide a basis for an analysis of the current capacity to recognize the factors that make up vitality, evaluate changes in vitality and find ways to strengthen this ability within OLMCs, with the support of community leaders, researchers and government institutions. The concept of evaluation is used here in a broad sense, which includes the concept of measuring, judging and formulating recommendations for change.
After the exhaustive review undertaken by the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in the 1960s, research devoted to OLMCs by and large has been limited (see Bibliography). This finding prompted the federal government in 2002 to support the creation of the Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities. Although many researchers are working on the issue, few studies deal specifically with the vitality of OLMCs and, as yet, no recognized body of knowledge has been established.
