4. OBSERVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
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4.2.2 LINGUISTIC FACTORS
We do not believe that language alone can explain the relatively low presence of French-speaking athletes at the highest levels of Canadian sport. However, we have identified several linguistic aspects of the sport system that must be improved. Removing linguistic barriers to sport participation would be a significant first step toward creating high performance athletic teams which accurately reflect the country that produced them.
The first barrier to Francophone participation in sport organizations is the fact that most of them function in English only. Of the 10 NSOs we met, only two provide simultaneous interpretation during their annual general meetings. Meetings of the boards of directors are usually held in English only, and it is common practice among sport organizations to circulate minutes of board meetings in English, with a French version to follow. This effectively means that any French speaker who wishes to participate in decision making in a sport organization must be bilingual, and at a fairly advanced level. Fewer than half of French-speaking Canadians have the language skills needed to participate in organizations at this level.12
Few NSOs have fully bilingual staff, and a minority have no bilingual staff members at all. Staff at the NSOs responsible for speed skating, figure skating, hockey, and synchronized swimming can respond to questions and write to members in both languages, but most NSOs have only a bilingual receptionist, if that.
The lack of French-language skills among volunteer directors of NSOs and their professional staff leads to a situation where documents are frequently sent to French-speaking members in English only. We collected examples, including an annual training plan and Olympic team selection criteria, which were sent to provincial sport organizations in Quebec in English, with incomplete French versions or none at all. NSO staff point to budget cuts and the loss of centralized administrative services and speak of “trade-offs” between functioning in both official languages and providing a high level of service to athletes. Representatives of provincial sport organizations in Quebec point out that service to Quebec athletes in English only is no service at all. In our view, an “athlete-centred” sport system is one that communicates with athletes in their preferred official language.
Finally, athletes and coaches, particularly those at the highest levels of their sport, must learn English to function, no matter where they train. We learned of one national team with a majority of French-speaking members, which trains in Montreal with a French-speaking coach and practices in English because one team member does not speak French. The inverse situation does not hold true: a unilingual French-speaking athlete training in an English environment is expected to learn English. The predominance of English, even in Montreal, has negative effects throughout the sport system in Canada. If there is no place in the country that functions fully in French, the resources available to the language are reduced. Not only do French-speaking athletes not have an environment that fully meets their needs, there is no place where English-speaking athletes can learn French, and the system remains unilingual.
