As we noted during her recent visit to the Quebec region, three years after her appointment as governor general, Mary Simon still does not speak French.
We could see this fact as just another anecdote confirming that Canada is a falsely bilingual country and that its two official languages, despite the law, absolutely do not benefit from the same status.
However, this would be wrong.
In 2021, the Trudeau government knowingly chose to appoint a person who did not speak French to the position of governor general. You would have to be somewhat naive to believe that this was an involuntary clumsiness on his part. We can easily imagine that the Canadian government does not appoint the representative of the head of state on a whim.
He obviously took advantage of the context of what is called “reconciliation” with the Aboriginal people to pass this violation of the law, by highlighting the partly Inuit origins of Mary Simon. It was clever, because it became difficult for French-speaking Canadians to criticize this choice without coming across as ugly colonizers opposed to this “reconciliation”. The promise that she would learn French came after silencing the latest criticism.
How can we not see in this government appointment an instrumentalization of Indigenous people in order to directly challenge Canadian bilingualism established since 1969 by the Official Languages Act? Canada’s bicultural identity has in fact always been incompatible with the multiculturalism promoted at approximately the same time (from 1970) by Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada.
If it only wanted to appoint a governor general of indigenous origin, Justin Trudeau’s government would have had no difficulty finding a person capable of occupying this position and who would have spoken both French and English, in more of his mother tongue. The choice of Mary Simon was therefore strategic.
To realize this, you only need to read the press release that she published following comments in Quebec newspapers about her poor progress in French.
It should be noted that she makes no apologies for not speaking one of the two official languages of the country of which she is, in a way, head of state. On the contrary, she presents herself as entirely worthy of occupying these positions as a “builder of bridges between different communities and nations” and as a bilingual person, since “fluent in Inuktitut and English”.
“Being Canadian and Quebecois,” she adds, “I understand very well the critical relationship between identity, culture and language. This is why speaking my mother tongue, Inuktitut, is an integral part of my identity. […] I understand the importance of French for French-speaking Canadians: it is an essential element of their culture and their identity. »
There is no need to read between the lines to understand what this means: Canada is a country that includes a multitude of “communities and [de] nations”, all of whom are attached to their languages, which constitute “an essential element of their culture and identity”. Franco-Canadians and Quebecers form only one of these “communities” or “nations” among others, just like the Inuit or Canadians of Chinese origin. As such, they have the right to ensure that their language is protected. They have no right, however, to impose their language on others nor English-French bilingualism on a governor general who is already bilingual.
At no time does the Governor General obviously mention that French is one of Canada’s two official languages.
A trial balloon
In this future of which Mme Simon is the herald, Canadian bilingualism will consist of speaking English plus another language of the great patchwork identity that dominates from coast to coast: Inuktitut or Dene, of course, but also Spanish, Ukrainian, Punjabi or Cantonese, etc. Already, Indigenous people are demanding the right to apply for bilingual jobs in the federal public service if they speak their ancestral language as well as one of the two official languages (we can guess which one).
These demands, which the federal government obviously does not take a dim view of, just like the appointment and retention of Mary Simon, represent a trial balloon. Canada only accepted bilingualism as a temporary stopgap intended to calm Quebec’s desires. In the eyes of many Canadians, it is now time to put an end to this pretense and also bring these French Canadians from Quebec into line, a minority among others who have the nerve to think they are a majority.
As Canadians have this habit of not seeing themselves as a majority that would impose its values, its customs and its language on others, they hide today behind the pretext of “reconciliation” to advance their own demands. national efforts in favor of a unilingual Canada and where the only encompassing culture would be English.
Quebecers obviously have everything to lose with the triumph of this imperialism. But the Aboriginal people, for their part, have little to gain. Just like us, they will have to submit to this Anglo-conformity which does not speak its name and which seems invisible even to those who are, like Mary Simon, its most notable promoters.