Bilingualism is an asset to Canada, but its implementation needs work

OTTAWA—I have three E’s in my basket. J’ai trois “e” dans mon panier. That sentence may be gibberish to most Canadians, but public servants will recognize it as a pun describing an accomplishment: the letter “e” and oeuf (egg) sound alike in French. “E” is also the letter for “exemption,” the highest classification in the public service language tests. In the two decades I worked in the public service I advanced from “B’s” (proficiency) and "C’s" (functional bilingualism) to “E’s.” It wasn’t easy. Like many Montreal anglophones in the 1960s, I was taught French by non-Québécois, as Catholics were discouraged from teaching in the Protestant school board. At graduation, I barely passed the mandatory French courses. Luckily, that summer, I went to my family’s summer home in Kamouraska, east of Quebec City and met the lovely daughter of a neighbour. As Réjeanne spoke no English, I was obliged to scrape up every bit of vocabulary hidden in my brain, with an accent that would have made Stephen Harper blush. For three weeks, this “immersion” in language, culture, and romance went on, and by the time the summer was over, I spoke more, if not better, French. The rise of nationalism in Quebec and the introduction of Bill 101 (the French Language Charter) in the 1970s led to an exodus of about 400,000 unilingual Quebec anglos. I went elsewhere in Canada, but as my heart was in Quebec, I worked on my French wherever I was, listened to the folk-rock band Beau Dommage and watched Radio-Canada. A few years in Geneva and regular stays in Kamouraska helped me to become fluent. I have become a strong advocate for the French language: as a public servant, my rule was to always address a francophone in their mother tongue. Unfortunately, many anglophone public servants work to acquire fluency in French for their position, then never use it in the workplace. In Ottawa, the rule of thumb of 1960s Montreal applies: a bilingual person is a francophone who speaks English, not the reverse. In a country where hundreds of thousands of children studied in French immersion programs, that is ridiculous. This leads to two recurring headlines: the cost of bilingualism and spending on French-language teaching of senior executives. The cost is estimated at around $2-billion of a federal budget of $338-billion, or about 0.6 per cent. To recognize and serve Canadians in both their languages, that’s a bargain. The expenditures for executives are more of a quandary. The Ottawa Citizen recently revealed the National Research Council has spent $90,000 on private French lessons for its vice president, Ian Potter, while paying him his full salary. Many public servants can tell horror stories of colleagues spending months studying French instead of working. In one instance, a colleague at the foreign ministry was held back from an assignment in an English-speaking capital for a year because she did not have her French. Once there, she never spoke French again. These sorts of stories add fuel to the fire for critics of bilingualism. But as long as Quebec is part of Canada and there are French-speaking minorities elsewhere, French will be an official language. In Graham Fraser’s seminal work, Sorry, I Don’t Speak French, he points out most Canadian universities once required functional language skills to graduate in arts and public administration. The rules changed with an influx of third-language speakers to Canada: an Asian or Spanish student could not be expected to master both French and English, so the language requirement was dropped. There is no easy way to learn a language; while some people may have a facility for it, most, like me, struggle. But while it is possible to become fluent as an adult, it doesn’t happen overnight. I laugh when I hear politicians promise to be bilingual in a few months, as if some magic potion will provide the skill. But I cringe when I hear of wasteful spending for competent public servants who do not require the language skills. At some point, the federal government has to examine the official languages program and either insist on only hiring people who are already bilingual or designate more positions unilingual French or English. If not, the bilingualism program will be tarnished, and fewer English Canadians will aspire to be fluent in la langue de Molière. Andrew Caddell retired last year from Global Affairs Canada, where he was a senior policy adviser. He previously worked as an adviser to Liberal governments. He is a fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and a principal of QIT Canada. He can be reached at pipson52@hotmail.com. The Hill Times

Bilingualism is an asset to Canada, but its implementation needs work

I laugh when I hear politicians promise to be bilingual in a few months. But I cringe when I hear of wasteful spending for competent public servants who don’t need the language skills.

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Bilingualism is an asset to Canada, but its implementation needs work

I laugh when I hear politicians promise to be bilingual in a few months. But I cringe when I hear of wasteful spending for competent public servants who don’t need the language skills.

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