Elected officials gathered in Kigali, Rwanda, on the occasion of the Parliamentary Assembly of La Francophonie (APF), this summer, were given an information kit only in English by the Canadian government, which outrages a deputy Conservative, especially since he still has not received a response to a letter of complaint.
It is simply “unacceptable” for a high commission representing a bilingual country like Canada to provide unilingual English documentation, said MP Joël Godin, who attended the meeting as a member of the APF, in an interview. and Chairman of the Group’s Parliamentary Affairs Committee.
“It’s the least that these institutions abroad can respect the spirit of our country, that is to say bilingual French-English, added Mr. Godin. It would not have been very rocket science to provide that information bilingually. »
The kit would have been distributed to all the members of the delegation of the Canadian section during the plenary assembly, that is to say ten parliamentarians.
According to what has been seen The Canadian Press, it consisted of two documents. The first, 39 pages, entitled “Dine & Shop around Kigali” is produced by the “Rwanda Convention Bureau” and the “Rwanda Development Board”. The second, of about fifteen pages, is obviously homemade, in a word processing software.
Taken together, the documents present key information about Rwanda, such as the fact that the country has a population of 11.8 million, the time zone is Central African Time, and the official languages are Kinyarwanda, English, French and Swahili. They also offer listings of restaurants, cafes, bars and activities.
The kit was accompanied by a short cover letter from the High Commissioner for Canada, Christopher Thornley, who is bilingual except for the long signature.
Mr. Thornley welcomes elected officials and invites them to contact Global Affairs Canada, in Ottawa, in the event of an emergency, after explaining that the “small office in Kigali” has a “very limited capacity, because a certain number of ’employees are on leave’.
Joël Godin, who is also Conservative Critic for Official Languages, wrote a letter in early October to Official Languages Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly asking them “that this does not happen again”.
However, a month later, Mr. Godin is “frustrated, disappointed” to have still not received a response to his letter, or even an acknowledgment of receipt.
“Unacceptable”, says Ottawa
The situation is quite simply “unacceptable”, affirmed the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, in response to questions from The Canadian Press.
And Mr. Godin’s office was informed of this point of view “on October 7 last”, we note, three days after the sending of his missive.
“Upon receipt, we transmitted this message to the ministry and made the necessary verifications so that such a situation does not happen again in the future”, indicates Ms. Joly’s office.
He also asserts that the French language is part of Canada’s identity on the international scene, that it constitutes “an important strategic advantage for the Canadian diplomatic network” and that the country takes “with the utmost seriousness” its responsibility to protect and promote the place of French within the department.