[lg policy] Canada: The Sacred Cow of Bilingualism

[Harold Schiffman]

 The Sacred Cow of Bilingualism

In its 40 years of existence, official bilingualism in Canada has been
conferred a sort of religious mystique — heralded as a unifying force,
accepted as an untouchable sacred cow, and decried a decade ago by the
current prime minister as the “god that failed.”

And yet, for a policy that riles nationalist sentiment — and for a
policy that costs the federal government upward of $1.8-billion
annually, according to a Fraser Institute report — official
bilingualism is the elephant in Parliamentary closet: Few federal
politicians have dared to tread these dangerous waters, which over the
decades have sunk or silenced those who challenge Canada’s linguistic
duality or the way it is implemented.

Nevertheless, there are those who now ask: Is it time for a frank
conversation on bilingualism in Canada, where 40% of federal
public-service positions require knowledge of both official languages?
Is it time for Canadians, whose rate of bilingualism has hovered at
roughly 17% for years, to take a hard look at the way the government
administers language policy from sea to sea to sea? Is it time to
examine the $1.8-billion annual bill to see what, exactly, those
taxpayer dollars glean — especially at a time when one in five
Canadians are foreign-born, and are likely to speak a number of other
international languages?

More importantly, is this kind of national discussion welcomed, or
even possible?

“If we’re spending as much as we seem to be spending, and if we’re
getting as poor a result as we appear to be getting, then maybe we
should reconsider the whole thing,” said Link Byfield, former
publisher of the now-defunct Alberta Report and a Wildrose Alliance
party founder and candidate.

“It may be that the time has come to review the application of the
Official Languages Act to see if there can be some savings,” echoed
Donald Savoie, a Moncton, N.B., scholar who says he firmly supports
linguistic duality. “It’s a sacred cow, but that doesn’t mean that it
should be a sacred budget.”

In the past eight days alone, Canadians have on four occasions been
reminded of the cost and contentious nature of Canada’s linguistic
duality: First, the B.C. RCMP announced that the publication of online
news releases would be delayed by a day to allow for French
translation — in a province where 1.5% of the population declares
French as their mother tongue, and where Chinese and Punjabi are heard
far more often.

Second, it was revealed that language-training expenses at the
Treasury Board Secretariat have jumped five-fold in the past five
years, from $428,490 to $2.1-million in the latest fiscal year. Next,
news broke that Quebec’s workplace health and safety board had deleted
its “Press 9 for English” option on its automated telephone answering
service.

Finally, the Senate (for the 15th time) hotly debated a bill that
would require Supreme Court judges to be fluently bilingual. The
controversial bill has already passed third reading in the House of
Commons — proof, some have argued, that official bilingualism is
almighty, trumping even legal competency.

Official language rights are entrenched in Canadian legislation that
dates as far back as the Constitution Act of 1867, but which are most
famously outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Prime
Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s 1969 Official Languages Act.

“In all parts of the country, within both language groups, there are
those who call for uniformity,” Mr. Trudeau told the House of Commons
in 1968, before the act was enshrined. “It will be simpler and
cheaper, they argue. In the case of the French minority, isolation is
prescribed as necessary for survival.”

Today, naysayers still question whether the cost of official
bilingualism fits the benefits.

“The federal government’s approach to official bilingualism is kind of
like this: They want to paint one object, but they line up 10 and they
throw a bucket of paint at them all,” said Kevin Gaudet, federal
director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “Of course they end up
painting the one bucket, but you also end up painting the other nine.
It’s overkill.”

Mr. Gaudet questions whether federal offices should be forced to offer
both French and English in areas where the linguistic minority
comprises as little as 5% of the population as mandated by the
Official Languages Act.

The government is also obliged to offer services in both official
languages at all departmental headquarters as well as to the traveling
public, for example at border crossings or at airports that serve more
than 1 million passengers annually.

“Something like 15% of the population [is bilingual], and some small
subset of that number doesn’t even speak any English,” Mr. Gaudet
said. “And yet the thought is, ‘Let’s spend billions and billions
every year for fear that one of those people could trip into an office
in Meadow Lake, SK, and be upset because they couldn’t get a
government service [in their mother tongue].”

Also among the most hot-button issues is the make-up of the federal
public service, where 40% of positions require knowledge of both
official languages. About a third of all federal offices are required
to offer services in both official languages.

“Services to the public are the face of Canada saying to Canadians,
‘This is your country,” said Graham Fraser, the Official Languages
Commissioner of Canada, who was reached this week in Spain after
attending a UNESCO conference in Egypt.

Over the past decade, Ottawa has imposed stricter bilingualism
requirements on senior public servants: Incumbent executives in
designated bilingual regions had to improve their language skills to
reach an advanced level of bilingualism, and deputy ministers were
required to reach proficiency in French and English.

Some argue that those sorts of language requirements unfairly squeeze
out anglophone Canadians, particularly in the West, who seek to rise
in the federal public service. They argue that this in turn
perpetuates resentment of Ottawa by the West, which decreasingly sees
itself reflected in the federal government.

And then there is the cost of language training: Across the country,
unilingual employees striving for a promotion can seek approval from
their manager to leave their post for months on end to learn French or
English at the expense of Canadian taxpayers.

Recently though, individual departments took over responsibility for
language training, and their budgets dictate a tighter leash on those
taxpayer dollars, Mr. Fraser said. When asked whether any federal
dollars have been wasted or misspent on official bilingualism, Mr.
Fraser said “yes,” and said he believes the training program “got
misused.”

It is all but impossible to know exactly how much the federal and
provincial governments spend ensuring official bilingualism in Canada.
But one of the firmest federal numbers yet emerged last year, when a
Fraser Institute study found that the federal government and its Crown
corporations spend somewhere in the order of $1.8-billion annually
providing French-language services. That amounts to $55 per Canadian.

Mr. Fraser said he does not “challenge nor vouch for” those numbers,
and added that it is “not an unreasonable price to pay for what is
basically the cost of equality.”

The $1.8-billion price-tag includes the cost of an $800 bilingualism
bonus paid to federal employees who occupy a bilingual position and
meet the language requirements. That amounts to $51-million in bonuses
per year — an amount Mr. Fraser called “an inappropriate use of public
funds.”

In fact, as was pointed out by Mr. Trudeau in the House of Commons, a
salary differential has been paid since 1966 to those holding
secretarial, stenographic and typist positions in which both languages
are used.

“My predecessor — and my predecessor’s predecessor — stopped beating
this horse because it’s part of the collective bargaining process,”
Mr. Fraser said of the bilingualism bonus. “Anytime I have raised it,
people have said ‘Don’t go near that.’”

Mr. Byfield said it is precisely this “don’t go near that” mentality
that has stalled official languages policy in Canada.

“When you see the number that says about 20% of Canadians are now
foreign-born, the old sort of 1960s bicultural, binational delusion is
seen for what it is,” he said. ‘‘There has to be something of a
national discussion on this ... But it’s hard to do this if you can’t
talk about it in Parliament, and you can’t.”

Indeed, even musing on official bilingualism — and even doing so
outside of Parliament — draws fire upon politicians.

Conservative MP Scott Reid, author of Lament for a Notion: The Life
and Death of Canada’s Bilingual Dream, suggested in 2004 that it might
be time to reconsider offering bilingual services coast to coast, in
turn forcing Conservative leader Stephen Harper to launch into damage
control.

“People have different views on different criteria for service or
language of work, but the fundamentals are things we support,” Mr.
Harper told reporters in Winnipeg at the time. Just three years prior,
Mr. Harper wrote in a Calgary newspaper column that, “as a religion,
bilingualism is the god that failed. It has led to no fairness,
produced no unity, and cost Canadian taxpayers untold millions.”

Mr. Savoie, of the Université de Moncton, said that is not the case in
New Brunswick, and said Ottawa could learn from the experiences of
Canada’s only officially bilingual province.

“First, one has to be patient — you do not create a bilingual nation
overnight,” he said from Moncton, the country’s first officially
bilingual city. “Second, it takes a fair bit of good will, especially
as we see governments struggling with some pretty stubborn deficits.
There will be pressure to cut or tone down bilingualism, but I would
urge caution.”

New Brunswick’s Official Languages Act is up for review in 2012, after
it was declared in 2002 that the act would be revisited each decade.
Mr. Savoie said the federal government should take up this 10-year
review model, although he conceded that it will take a “fair bit of
courage to launch a review.”

Mr. Byfield, of the Wildrose Alliance, said “the government cannot
touch this under the current Parliamentary system,” because national
parties depend too heavily on support from both French- and
English-speaking Canada. The only thing that would open the door for a
political discussion, he said, would be via a provincially elected
Senate.

“Until you can talk about official bilingualism in Parliament, I don’t
think much can happen,” he said.



Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/sacred+bilingualism/3960246/story.html#ixzz17vE21ALn

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