[lg policy] Trudeau Government Spending Another Half Billion To Prop-Up Official Bilingualism

[Harold Schiffman]

Trudeau Government Spending Another Half Billion To Prop-Up Official
Bilingualism
[image: Photo of David Krayden]
David Krayden
<http://dailycaller.com/author/dkrayden/>
Ottawa Bureau Chief
<http://dailycaller.com/author/dkrayden/>
10:16 AM 03/29/2018
351
27


OTTAWA — Canada’s Liberal government plans to spend another $500 million
over five years to reinforce an official bilingualism policy first unveiled
by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau.

The funding, announced Wednesday by Heritage Minister Melanie Joly, is in
addition to $2.2 billion
<https://ipolitics.ca/2018/03/28/liberals-promise-historic-investment-as-official-languages-action-plan-unveiled/>
that the government has previously allocated toward enforcing the equality
of English and French in all federal institutions.

Despite the billions that have already been spent to encourage Canadians to
speak both official languages, the policy has largely failed. In its last
comprehensive examination of the success of official bilingualism, federal
agency Statistics Canada found
<https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-006-x/2013001/article/11795-eng.htm> that
the percentage of Canadians who were fluently bilingual was actually
declining: dropping from 17.7 percent in 2001 to 17.5 percent in 2011. In
1961, without any government money contributing to the bilingualism
objective, 12.2 percent of Canadians were classified as bilingual.

Most of the new money to promote official bilingualism across Canada will
go directly to groups that promote minority language rights. The new
funding will also allow the federal government to conduct more
investigations into alleged violations of the Official Languages Act, when
government agencies or departments are suspected of not utilizing English
and French equally.

The Trudeau government is also furnishing money to assist Canada’s capital
of Ottawa to become an officially bilingual city. This new status will
force the municipal government to make all documents and services available
in French and English and would require most employees to be bilingual. The
Ontario provincial government is also under increasing pressure to become
officially bilingual.

“It’s not a secret that the French language outside Quebec has regressed
over the past few years,” Trudeau said as he stood with Joly during the
announcement. Trudeau later reiterated that statement in the House of
Commons — suggesting that the previous Conservative government of Prime
Minister Stephen Harper had not spent enough money on official bilingualism
and that the program had suffered as a result.

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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