By Stephen Gray
“…Canadians for Language Fairness (CLF) is concerned about the growing trend in meaningful jobs being denied to Canadians simply because they do not speak French.” [1]
The above quote is from CLF website. Are Canadians being discriminated against in the job market if they don’t speak French? A CBC News story of August 7, 2002 stated: “Moncton city council unanimously passed a motion in both languages on Tuesday night to make the city officially bilingual, the first city to do so in Canada. …[it] is expected to cost $200,000 to $300,000 annually. Councillors say no unilingual city employees will lose their jobs, but some may be shifted to new areas so workers who deal with the public are bilingual.” [2] Imagine if this policy were to be enacted in other cities in other provinces. What would the costs be to accommodate a French minority?
Yet it appears those who do not speak French in Moncton, New Brunswick, are being moved to other jobs to accommodate a minority. If the minority are catered to in New Brunswick, why is Quebec allowed to impose its language law on an English minority in its province? In fact, Quebec’s language law even imposed itself upon people using the internet. A CBC news story said, “A couple selling maple syrup over the Internet has been fined for operating an English-only Web site in Quebec. Muriel and Stanley Reid were cited for violating Quebec's language law, Bill 101.… The Reids and at least 10 people in the province have been fined under the French Language Charter while doing business in cyberspace. The law allows retailers to display English words. But there must be a French translation, seen as markedly predominant.” [3]
Wow, the language police are everywhere, yet we have a province like New Brunswick bending over backwards to accommodate French, yet English in Quebec is under attack, and some French speaking Canadians do not even have a choice to send their children to English schools. A CTV news story had this to say: “The Supreme Court of Canada has rejected claims by francophone Quebecers to let their children attend English language schools. In a unanimous decision, the country's top court has upheld the language legislation in Quebec known as Bill 101—which obliges French speaking parents to send their kids to a francophone school. A group of eight francophone families have been fighting hard for their children's right to attend English language schools, claiming they're being discriminated against….”[4] Surely there is something very wrong with language laws when even French parents say they are being “discriminated against.”
One has to ask: Is bilingualism a one way street? And does it merit the special status it gets? According to government statistics, the French language is declining.
“The 2001 Census total of francophones, those who report their mother tongue as French, was 6.8 million, or 22.9 percent of the population, down from 23.5 percent in 1996.”[5]
Even the government states that the “French language is declining.” Yet, the government appears hell-bent on continually imposing more bilingualism.
“The Canadian federal government has a new policy statement on bilingualism in Canada, and over the next five years will put more than $750 million into implementing it. The Action Plan for Official Languages released March 12, 2003 is designed to renew and update the commitment to the principle of English and French as the two official languages of Canada.”[6]
One has to wonder at the statement “the commitment to the principle of English and French as the two official languages of Canada.” It would appear on the evidence that French is being imposed in Quebec and those who speak English and French are being discriminated against. Where is the “principle” in that? In fact, the French language in Canada is costing taxpayers a pretty penny. “-- Training public servants to speak French is costing the federal treasury more than $120 million every year. The cost estimate, contained in documents newly released to The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, places a price tag on an endeavour that the federal government has acknowledged is not working…. The training is going almost exclusively to anglophone or allophone public servants learning French.” [7]
It appears bilingual training is a one-way street and that civil servants are being trained to “speak French.” Has anyone seen a report of civil servants being trained to speak English? After all, it is the majority language. Perhaps it is time for a long hard look at the policy of official bilingualism. One province, Quebec, appears to be able to impose its will on the rest of the country. People who speak English in Quebec appear to be discriminated against (Bill 101) yet the rest of the country is paying huge amounts of taxpayers’ dollars to support official bilingualism. “It is estimated the annual cost of official bilingualism for the public and private sectors is $5 billion.” [8] Does this make economic and political sense? And should we be asking questions about this policy of official bilingualism?
Stephen Gray
April 7, 2006.
graysinfo@yahoo.ca Website: http://www.oocities.org/graysinfo
Endnotes:
1 http://www.languagefairness.ca/main/about.htm
2 http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2002/08/07/moncton_biling020807.html
3 http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/05/21/internet010521
4 http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1112280149761_13/?hub=TopStories
5 http://canadaonline.about.com/cs/statistics/a/statslang.htm
6 http://canadaonline.about.com/cs/bilingualism/a/olactionplan.htm
7 http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=d1702205-54c0-4d4d-b611-6f56050227b2
8 http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/2/parlbus/chambus/house/debates/028_2002-11-20/han028_1540-E.htm