According to information obtained by The Canadian Press, senior federal officials are studying the possibility of granting an exemption from the bilingualism requirement to their employees who speak an Aboriginal language, but who are not fluent in English or French. No decision has been made, but the Trudeau government had better think twice before going down this road.
A memo obtained by The Canadian Press reports “growing tensions” among Indigenous federal public servants who are not fluent in Canada’s two official languages. Approximately 400 of them expressed their wish to obtain a general exemption from the bilingualism requirements in the federal public service. The Governor General, Mary Simon, was cited as an example by a deputy minister at Canadian Heritage. Mme Simon speaks Inuktitut and English, but not French, a language she promised to learn when she was appointed. About her, the time for assessments is premature although it is doubtful that she can make significant progress, at the dawn of her 75th birthday.
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller played it safe when commenting on the sensitive subject of the bilingualism exemption for Indigenous public servants. “When you make that kind of decision, it’s almost always to the detriment of French,” he said. This is not something that a majority of people will find acceptable. »
Minister Miller said everything necessary to make an informed decision. In terms of linguistic duality, the relaxations are inevitably made to the detriment of French. We tolerate unilingual Anglophone judges on the Supreme Court, but would we accept a unilingual Francophone judge? The history of this beautiful bilingual country, in which one language is more official than the other, is full of examples where French is discredited in the provision of services and work by federal institutions.
In the name of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, the Trudeau government no doubt had good reason to make Mary Simon the first Inuit Governor General in Canadian history. What about his subsequent decision to appoint a unilingual anglophone lieutenant-governor, Brenda Murphy, to the only officially bilingual province in the country, New Brunswick? Again, the reverse would have been unthinkable. To top it all off, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals do not accept the judgment of a New Brunswick court that declared the process for appointing Ms.me Murphy, precisely because she didn’t speak French. Ottawa has chosen to appeal the case, so much so that we have to wonder about the symbolic value of such gestures.
By so casually appointing unilingual Anglophones to key positions in the state apparatus, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is freeing up dissenting voices who mock the Official Languages Act. At the slightest difficulty, “it’s French that takes over,” noted the Bloc Québécois spokesperson for official languages, Mario Beaulieu.
Despite the noble intentions and the usual patter about bilingualism in Canada, Francophones are not fooled by the unequal power relations in the federal public service. According to a recent compilation by Radio-Canada, the positions of deputy ministers and associate deputy ministers are held by anglophones four times out of five. The weight of Francophone senior civil servants (19%) is lower than their real weight in the population (23%). The pool of French-speaking civil servants (31%) makes their low representation in positions of influence even more incomprehensible.
The consequences will come as no surprise. “Linguistic insecurity” plagues the use of French in federal offices in Ottawa, Gatineau and Montreal. No less than 44% of French-speaking civil servants are uncomfortable using their first language in the workplace, for fear of being judged, of being misunderstood by their superiors or of requiring additional comprehension efforts of their English-speaking colleagues. The finding comes from a reliable source: the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada. This is the state of this irreformable bilingual house.
Critics will point out that Aboriginal people are even more under-represented than Francophones in the public service and that granting them an exemption is a lesser evil in the perspective of reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples. Reconciliation, we are. It will be much more fruitful and lasting if it includes the two “founding peoples” of yesteryear, alongside the Aboriginal peoples. They are well placed to understand the risks and perils that threaten languages in a minority situation. It takes nothing away from them to maintain bilingualism requirements in the public service, even if it means giving them time and support so that they can have the opportunity to open up to French with the same generosity as ‘English.