[lg policy] Canada: Celine Cooper: Bilingualism and the Conservative leadership race

Mon Dec 19 16:32:02 UTC 2016

 Celine Cooper: Bilingualism and the Conservative leadership race
[image: Celine Cooper] Celine Cooper, Special to Montreal Gazette
More from Celine Cooper, Special to Montreal Gazette
<http://montrealgazette.com/author/celine-cooper-special-to-the-gazette>
Published on: December 18, 2016 | Last Updated: December 18, 2016 2:00 PM
EST
[image: Andrew Scheer, Kellie Leitch and Brad Trost, left to right,
participate in the Conservative leadership candidates' bilingual debate in
Moncton, N.B. on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016. Conservatives vote for a new party
leader on May 27, 2017.]

Andrew Scheer, Kellie Leitch and Brad Trost, left to right, participate in
the Conservative leadership candidates' bilingual debate in Moncton, N.B.
on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016. Conservatives vote for a new party leader on May
27, 2017. Andrew Vaughan / THE CANADIAN PRESS
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Do Canada’s federal party leaders still need to speak both official
languages?

Of the 14 candidates currently vying to replace Stephen Harper as leader of
the Conservative Party, only a handful — Maxime Bernier, Chris Alexander,
Rick Peterson and Steven Blaney — would generally be considered fluently
bilingual. The others  (Michael Chong, Andrew Scheer, Erin O’Toole, Andrew
Saxton, Pierre Lemieux, Kellie Leitch, Lisa Raitt, Brad Trost, Dan Lindsay
and Deepak Obhrai) speak French with varying degrees of aptitude and
wobbliness. All of this was on display at the bilingual leadership debate
in Moncton earlier this month.

The reappearance of Kevin O’Leary on the scene as a potential candidate is
likely to shine a spotlight on the issue once again. O’Leary — an investor
and businessman best known for his turn as a Dragon on CBC’s The Dragon’s
Den — was once dismissed as an unserious and unlikely candidate. In this
post-Trump era, that may no longer be the case. A Montreal-born anglophone,
he once said
<http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/kevin-oleary-doesnt-speak-french-but-says-he-could-still-be-prime-minister/>
he
saw no need to speak French, saying his DNA was in Quebec, that he speaks
the language of jobs, and that young Quebecers are all bilingual anyway.
(On this last point: Quebec is indeed home to the most bilingual
<http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-006-x/2013001/article/11795-eng.htm> residents
in Canada, at about 43 per cent, but O’Leary shouldn’t assume Quebec
francophones are all bilingual. If you break the numbers down, you’ll see
<http://canada.pch.gc.ca/eng/1464889083186/1464889278540> that while 69 per
cent of Quebec’s English-speakers are bilingual, only 38.6 per cent of
Quebec francophones are.)

Last week, in something of an about-face, O’Leary said that if he does make
the leap into the race — he’s waiting for the crowded field of contenders
to thin out first before deciding — he will “attempt
<http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/kevin-o-leary-surprises-with-potential-campaign-team-assembled-1.3200056>”
to
learn French. Bernier, who is from Quebec and considered a frontrunner, has
likened O’Leary to a “tourist” in the province.

It’s true that the Conservatives need a leader who is electable in the
province, particularly given the losses the party suffered
in Atlantic Canada and Ontario during the 2015 federal election. But we
need not make this all about Quebec. There are more than a million
francophones who live outside Quebec: 54 per cent of them live in Ontario;
23 per cent of them reside in New Brunswick. Approximately 7.7 million
Canadians have French as their first official language spoken.

Is it important for Canada’s federal party leaders to be at least competent
in both official languages? I think so.

But Canadians should show each other a little more courtesy on this score.
Just as I cringed every time former Liberal leaders Stéphane Dion or Jean
Chrétien were ridiculed for their imperfect English, I have a problem with
the way many Conservative leadership candidates have been publicly mocked
for their struggles with French. It’s difficult to learn a new language,
never mind master it, particularly as an adult. For what it’s worth,
Canada’s language policy was never intended to ensure all Canadians would
achieve high levels of bilingualism; it was designed to ensure that English
and French speakers would be able to operate in the official language of
their choice. This not-so-small detail needs to be taken into
consideration.

In 2011, Statistics Canada shows that only 17.5 per cent of Canadians
identified as bilingual in English and French. The biggest problem — if you
want to think of it that way (and not everyone does) — is that education
falls under the purview of the provinces who tailor curriculums and
requirements to their own priorities. Achieving a pan-Canadian
English-French bilingualism would necessarily require an ambitious national
languages strategy. That, in turn, would require a synchronicity between
federal and provincial governments on matters of shared goals.

At any rate, the question of whether federal party leaders in Canada must
speak French remains a relevant — though ever changing — debate.

And while we’re on the subject of debates, the next Conservative leadership
debate will take place in Quebec City on Jan. 17. It will be in French.

http://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/celine-cooper-bilingualism-and-the-conservative-leadership-race

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