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<h1 class="gmail-page-title">Ontario’s French language commissioner wants government policy filtered through a ‘francophone lens’</h1>
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François Boileau says the province must take the needs of
French-speaking Ontarians into account when it develops new policies and
services
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Published on Jun 01, 2017 </div>
<div class="gmail-article-author">by <a href="http://tvo.org/authors/current-affairs/daniel-kitts">Daniel Kitts</a></div> <div class="gmail-twitter-widget">
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<div class="gmail-field gmail-field-name-field-featured-image gmail-field-type-image gmail-field-label-hidden"><div class="gmail-field-items"><div class="gmail-field-item even"><img src="http://tvo.org/sites/default/files/curated-article-images/F_Boileau_May29_2017_TVO.jpg" alt="François Boileau" width="1080" height="608"></div></div></div> <div class="gmail-image-caption">French
Language Services Commissioner François Boileau presents his 10th
annual report at Queen's Park on May 30, 2017. (Daniel Kitts/TVO)</div> </div>
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<p>After 10 years as Ontario’s first French language services
commissioner, François Boileau says the government has made strides
communicating policies and delivering services in French. But he
stresses that too often the government acts as if fulfilling its
commitments to <a href="http://csfontario.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/2014.09.18-Francophones-in-Ontario_infographic_J.pdf" target="_blank">the province’s 600,000 francophones</a> is merely an act of translation rather than of meaningful accommodation. </p>
<p>“No longer will you see unilingual leaflets distributed to every home
in the province; no longer will you see English-only documents on
ministry websites,” Boileau said, <a href="http://csfontario.ca/en/rapports/ra1617" target="_blank">introducing his 10th annual report </a>Tuesday
at Queen’s Park. “Is there still work to be done in the area of social
media? Absolutely. But the foundation we have beneath us is much more
solid than it was 10 years ago.”</p>
<p>Still, the report lists more than a dozen areas — including health
care, justice, education, and children and youth services — where the
province could do more to accommodate French-speaking Ontarians. (In 25
regions that contain a significant number of francophones, residents are
entitled to receive provincial services in French. About 80 per cent of
Franco-Ontarians live in these places; a 26th region, Markham, will be
added in 2018.)</p>
<p>A key reason problems persist, he said, is the government tends to
develop initiatives without taking francophones’ needs into account. As a
result, the <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90f32" target="_blank">French Language Services Act</a> (FLSA) is often misinterpreted or ignored by staff and agencies delivering services to the public.</p>
<p>Some may question the importance of these issues: after all,
francophones are much less vulnerable than, for example, Indigenous
communities, and there are dozens of other unprotected minority
languages spoken in Ontario. Still, francophones have been here more
than 400 years — long enough to develop a unique culture and identity
within the province’s own — and as with other minority groups, have been
subject to government efforts at assimilation (<a href="http://tvo.org/article/current-affairs/shared-values/why-ontario-once-tried-to-ban-french-in-schools">including through Regulation 17</a>, which limited the use of French in elementary schools from 1912 to 1927).</p></div></div></div></div><div class="gmail-img-magnify-wrapper"><div class="gmail-lightbox-wrapper"><img alt="Bilingual signage in a court house." class="gmail-left" src="http://tvo.org/sites/default/files/media-library/Current%20Affairs/Shared%20Values/Article%20images/June%202017/court_signage_bilingual.jpg" style="width: 524px; height: 349px;" title="Bilingual signage at a courthouse in Sarnia. (news.ontario.ca)"><em class="gmail-media-caption">Bilingual signage at a courthouse in Sarnia. (<a href="http://news.ontario.ca">news.ontario.ca</a>)</em></div></div>
<p>While many Franco-Ontarians today also speak English, it remains
their second language. That can make it tough to express themselves
clearly in times of stress — for example, at a hospital or the local
police station. As well, Ontario’s French population increasingly
contains vulnerable groups: Boileau noted that among GTA francophones,
roughly half were born outside Canada, and many are racialized
immigrants from former French colonies in Africa.</p>
<p>“My own staff, we’re 14,” Boileau said. “Eight out of 14 were not born in this country.”</p>
<p>To ensure francophones are considered from the beginning of the
policy formulation process, Boileau recommended Ontario ministries use
the so-called Francophone Lens, a tool developed by the Office of
Francophone Affairs. It offers a user guide, an online course, and other
materials intended to help bureaucrats better understand when and how
they need to offer French language services.</p>
<p>French language services come up particularly short in health care, Boileau said. Although Ontario recently passed its <a href="http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/bills/bills_detail.do?locale=en&BillID=4215" target="_blank">Patients First Act</a>,
the commissioner said the legislation fails to resolve a problem he has
repeatedly complained about. Namely, that while the Ministry of Health
and Long-Term Care is subject to the FLSA, Local Health Integration
Networks and the third-party service providers they hire to interact
with the public are not — at least according to ministry lawyers.</p>
<p>“The ministry found a legal interpretation useful to the ministry and
the networks rather than the public,” Boileau, himself a lawyer, said.</p>
<p>Bill 89, which lays out reforms to the Ontario children’s aid
societies, is another area of concern for Boileau. The bill, he said,
fails to define clearly when a CAS is required to offer French language
services.</p>
<p>Following Boileau’s presser, Marie-France Lalonde, the minister
responsible for francophone affairs, did what ministers always do when a
new report is released: she said she would take its suggestions
seriously.</p>
<p>“There’s 10 strong recommendations that we are agreeing with,”
Lalonde said. “We will be moving forward with an official response as a
government very shortly, so I look forward to working and continuing to
work with the commissioner.”</p>
<p>But the NDP’s Francophone Affairs critic France Gélinas said that,
despite Boileau’s many reports, the Liberal government has repeatedly
failed to ensure francophones have access to the language services they
need: “You look at health, you look at education, you look at justice,
it’s the theory of little steps. But there are little steps that leave
us standing in place.”</p>
<p>Gélinas says Boileau and various francophone groups have been pushing
for updates to the decades-old FLSA, yet the government has failed to
do much about it. “When Commissioner Boileau puts in black and white
what needs to be done,” she said, “it doesn’t always mean action
follows.”</p>
<p>Boileau said that, while he’d rather the government act upon his
recommendations immediately, patience and persistence are important
parts of his job.</p>
<p>“As a minority we will always have to claim our place,” he said.
“It’s normal for a minority that you’ll have to repeat yourself.”</p><p><a href="http://tvo.org/article/current-affairs/shared-values/ontarios-french-language-commissioner-wants-government-policy-filtered-through-a-francophone-lens">http://tvo.org/article/current-affairs/shared-values/ontarios-french-language-commissioner-wants-government-policy-filtered-through-a-francophone-lens</a><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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