English Canadians quickly mounted their high horses to defend the place of English in Quebec, but were much less in a hurry to recognize French as an official language of Canada. Two weights, two measures ?
Posted yesterday at 12:00 p.m.
As soon as the selection process opened to fill the vacancy left on the Supreme Court by the retirement of Justice Michael Moldaver, the bilingualism criterion announced by the Trudeau government raised treacherous criticism in the English-language press: the functional bilingualism requirement would unfairly exclude of the race for highly “competent” judges. We had seen a similar outcry before the appointment of Judge Malcolm Rowe in 2016, Judge Sheilah Martin in 2017 and Judge Mahmud Jamal in 2021, all bilingual. Let’s put an end once and for all to this shameful attempt to deny the equality of French in our highest Court.
False definitions of competence
Do the proponents of this argument refer to knowledge of the law as competence? Would the idea be that a judge could have a particularly in-depth understanding of an area of law, knowledge that a bilingual judge could hardly possess? Would legal texts in English be by definition more valid than those in French? However, candidates for the Supreme Court “must possess a thorough knowledge of the law, and in particular of Canadian law”.
Obviously, a unilingual person could not claim to have a thorough knowledge of Canadian law if he does not know Canadian law written in French.
Would this competency argument then be based on the premise that unilingual judges (English, it should be emphasized) would be intrinsically more competent, that bilingualism would impair the ability to understand and reason? After all, Supreme Court justices are required to have “superior analytical skills.” We are on a still slippery slope, but even more dangerous. Would we go so far as to argue that Marie Curie would have made even more beautiful discoveries if she had worked in English? Scientific research shows that using multiple languages increases brain function. Recent studies show that bilingualism could even delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease by several years. In addition, learning another language increases the appreciation of linguistic intricacies, which could only help judges of the Supreme Court (and other courts) to better understand testimony and legal arguments, and thus serve to reinforce , rather than diminishing their competence.
The career aspirations of unilingual English judges
We are approaching the heart of the debate: why should we be concerned about the career plans of unilingual Anglophone judges? You don’t get appointed to our highest court right out of law school. According to the Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs, the average age of lawyers when they are first appointed to the bench is 52-53 years old. Minimally, they therefore have 20 if not 30 years to learn French. Judges also have free access to French lessons. What should be inferred from the fact that they persist in not learning French? Cost not being a factor, one has to conclude that they do not take French lessons for the simple reason that they do not want to. In other words, it is not the requirement of bilingualism that excludes these judges from the race to the top: by confining themselves to English unilingualism, they are beating themselves the pawn.
But what does this attempt to insidiously obtain a free pass for bilingualism tell us about these self-excluded candidates? Would they demonstrate the personal qualities required by the Supreme Court: “irreproachable personal and professional integrity”, “respect and consideration for others”, “ability to take into account varied opinions, points of view and life experiences” ?
Can candidates who refuse to learn French really claim to possess a “point of view that is neither too narrow-minded nor too resistant to change”, as the Court requires, or “show empathy for ‘respect for people from backgrounds very different from his own’?
Let’s finally recognize the equality of French
Obviously, this argument against bilingualism, falsely based on the notion of competence, does not hold water. Why does a certain part of the English-speaking Canadian legal community nevertheless continue to advance it, even to the point of opposing bilingualism and diversity (according to the false logic that unilingual English candidates would be the most stemming from diversity)? Why does this part of our English-speaking people of dress not want to recognize the legitimacy of French in Canada and its place in our constitution? Could this be seen as nostalgia for the imperial era when Britain ruled the seas, as the song goes, deftly practicing its sadly winning strategy of “divide and rule”? Yet these days, even Queen Elizabeth speaks French, out of respect for her French-speaking subjects. We are finally there: to the notion of respect, for French and for our laws. Significantly, the competency argument is never put forward by French-speaking candidates for the Supreme Court, who consider that proficiency in both languages is simply a criterion of employment.