Bilingualism in the National Capital Region.
By Canadian Parliamentary Review
- Release Date: 2000-03-22
- Genre: Law
Description
After thirty years the Official Languages Act has enabled bilingualism to hold its ground in Canada, and even extended it somewhat in Parliament, the public service, culture and everyday life. Despite these benefits hostility has not diminished over time. Furthermore, the government has been recently accused of complacency because in transferring services to the provincial governments or private enterprise, it has not always demanded the appropriate maximum safeguards to protect the language rights of the minorities being served. Recent debates over the survival of the Montfort Hospital in Ottawa and the decision of the Ontario government to turn down political and popular pressures to give the new megacity of Ottawa an initial bilingual statute as recommended by a federal parliamentary committee have added more proof of the fragility of the language issue for Francophones outside Quebec. In this article, Senator Grimard offers a realistic, amusing and occasionally provocative look at bilingualism in the National Capital Region. I have been a Member of the Senate of Canada for ten years now, and I have noted a number of things about bilingualism in the National Capital. First, there is an unofficial mathematical formula: if five francophones are talking together in French and one anglophone happens by, the entire group will start speaking English. The majority is no longer in the majority. It bows to the minority. Sometimes, the opposite effect occurs: it is French that prevails. But that is a vastly rarer phenomenon, usually shorter in duration, and usually premised on the anglophone in question having taken language courses and consciously wanting to "practice" his or her French.
