Canadians do not care about language policy

[Harold Schiffman]

Canadians do not care about language policy

Canada and its bilingual pretense
 By OnTheWeb: Gerry Nicholls  Thursday, January 10, 2008


It seems Canada's "linguist duality" needs a tune-up. Or so thinks
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who recently dispatched former New
Brunswick premier Bernard Lord on a cross-country tour to "review the
state of bilingualism" in Canada.  Lord, of course, is perfect for
this role. He is fluently bilingual, he's known as a "consensus
builder" and he's a failed Conservative politician who could use the
work. Armed with these credentials, Lord will consult with minority
language groups and produce a report which will likely recommend
doling out money to minority language groups. It's all pretty
predictable.

A more interesting idea would have been to send Lord out on a
cross-country tour to ask this question: Does anyone even care about
Trudeau-style official bilingualism anymore? Quebeckers, at least,
would probably answer no. After all, Quebec is actively promoting
state-sanctioned unilingualism. In fact, thanks to its draconian
language laws, enforced by draconian language police, English has the
same status in Quebec as teddy bears named Muhammad have in the Sudan.
But what about the rest of Canada? Do Canadians outside of Quebec care
about embracing the spirit of official bilingualism?

The statistics say no. According to 2006 census information, about
nine per cent of Canadian anglophones reported they could converse in
both languages. Plus, if you consider only bilingual anglophones
outside Quebec,that number falls to a little more than seven per cent.
And even that low figure probably overstates the case because the
census question only asked respondents if they could speak French
"well enough to conduct a conversation."  In other words, a lot of
these "bilingual" anglophones would probably be hard pressed to
continue a French conversation much beyond, "Bonjour, comment ca va?"
or "Je fait du ski."

If anglo-Canadians cared about bilingualism, wouldn't it follow that
more of them would make an effort to learn French, beyond what they
were forced to learn in high school? What's more, fewer young
anglophones are learning to speak French. According to the report, the
bilingualism rate for Canadians in the 15 to 19 age range has dropped
from 16 to 13 per cent in the past 10 years.

And those young people who are bilingual seem to be losing the ability
to speak French over time. In 2001, 14.7 per cent of anglophones aged
15 to 19 were bilingual. In 2006, however, only 12.2 per cent of that
same cohort reported being bilingual.

Use it or lose it, indeed.

OK, I know it's sacrilege to suggest official bilingualism isn't
working. But facts are facts.

The reality is that, outside of New Brunswick and parts of eastern
Ontario, Canada is an overwhelmingly unilingual English-speaking
country that includes a large French-speaking region, i.e. Quebec.

And here's another reality: a growing number of Canadians who are
bilingual don't speak English and French, they speak English and
Mandarin, or English and Portuguese, or English and Arabic, as a trip
in any taxi cab will quickly prove.

Even the Liberal party seems to be paying only lip service to the
bilingual ideal.

How else do you explain their picking Stephane Dion as leader, a man
who speaks French and a language that only bears a slight resemblance
to English?

So isn't it time we all stopped pretending Canada is a bilingual
country? And more to the point, isn't it time government officials
realized they are out of sync with Canadians?

Canadians care about fixing our health care system, the environment
and national security. What they don't care about is a language policy
developed in the 1960s. But try telling that to the Ottawa political
establishment.

C'est impossible.

Gerry Nicholls is a senior fellow with the Democracy Institute.
E-mail: gerry_nicholls at hotmail.com.

Posted 01/10 at 10:48 AM   Email  (Permalink)
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Printed from: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/1307


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