There is always a slight warming smell that emanates annual reports of the federal commissioner of official languages.
So much so that it’s hard not to become cynical reading them.
Of course, nothing is perfect in the mysteries of public administration. There is always room for improvement.
A watchdog is there to find out what is wrong.
But in the case of the Commissioner of Official Languages, the battles are often the same.
They can be summarized as follows: Air Canada and the public service.
The annual dance of the French dunces.
We must also add airports in the broad sense.
Bad student
What concerns the public service is particularly irritating to me because the federal government is incapable of setting an example.
Unilingual bosses who should also speak French, civil servants who dare not speak their language, or use it on a daily basis: how can the Trudeau government lecture or be credible on the issue of French when it is a so bad student?
Three years ago, Commissioner Raymond Théberge split a long report on the “systemic problem” of the place of French in the public service.
A public service that appoints thousands of unilingual civil servants to bilingual positions with impunity. Or who determines that a position does not have to be bilingual when it objectively should be.
Ottawa’s reaction? The creation of a work table two years later!
We understand that this is not a priority.
To look at oneself in the mirror
The federal government’s nonchalance is all the more pernicious in that it maintains the tenacious myth that French and diversity do not go hand in hand.
For many outside Quebec, promoting bilingualism means favoring French Canayans with arrowed sashes, as if Francophones formed a monolithic block.
“My perspective is that speaking two official languages means valuing difference and cultivating living together, values that make possible greater openness to cultural diversity,” writes the commissioner in his report.
The Trudeau government is very fond of talking about diversity and inclusion.
He could start by looking in the mirror.