Law on the official languages (Canada)

See also: Law on the official languages

The Loi on the official languages is a law adopted by the Parlement of Canada in 1969. The law proclaims the English and the French as official languages of the Canadian Federal state .

The law provides moreover that the citizens have the right to receive services of the federal administrations or companies of the Crown and to be heard in front of a federal court in the official language of their choice. It obliges the federal Parliament to adopt its laws and the government to publish the statutory texts in versions English and Frenchwoman which have both an official range. It also allows the use of English and French as working languages within the federal public office in certain Canadian areas known as bilingual (of which the area of Ottawa-Gatineau and Montreal) like in other Canadian areas and certain offices abroad, provided that the request for services in one or the other of the official languages is sufficient.

Lastly, it creates the Commissariat with the official languages, charged by the Parliament receiving the complaints of the public, making investigation and with proposing recommendations.

The payments and policies of application of the law set up linguistic profiles (anglophone, French-speaking, bilingual) for certain functions in the federal administration. The ministries, agencies and organizations must have with their employment a certain number of people which can serve the public in one or the other of the official languages. The unilingual civils servant receive the inciting ones to learn the other language, the government providing of the linguistic formations or granting a premium to bilingualism .

Criticisms of the law

Criticisms of the law, to which joint episodically the Police chief with the official languages , deplore however that certain organizations fixed with the Law are made draw the ear. In a report published at the time of the 35e birthday of the law, the police chief Dyane Adam note that in 2004,86% of the indicated stations bilingual in the federal administration was occupied by people controlling indeed English and French. It is all the same about a clear improvement compared to 1978, where only 70% of the designated people bilingual were it in the facts.

However, the situation remains more difficult for certain companies, which were of federal property and which were privatisées while continuing to be subjugated with the provisions of the law. The police chief with the official languages points in particular finger Air Canada, which she shows of “inertia”: “For more than 30 years, the successive police chiefs with the official languages have reported the failures of the company to its obligations and its lack of collaboration to the instruction of the complaints at its place”.

Promotion of the linguistic minorities

The Loi on the official languages was amended in 1988, in order to register there the principle of the promotion , by the government of Canada, the minorities of English language to the Quebec, and those of French language in the remainder of Canada. The various programs of promotion encourage in particular the government provincial to offer certain services at their minority communities by financing part of the programs.

Political context and reactions

The Loi on the official languages was one of the angular stones of the policy of the liberal government directed by Pierre-Elliott Trudeau. It falls under logic and takes as a starting point the preliminary conclusions of the royal Commission of investigation on bilingualism and the bicultural tradition, chaired by André Laurendeau and Davidson Dunton, which was created in 1963 in reaction to the rise of the Québécois Nationalisme. At that time, only 9% of the uses of the federal public office were occupied by French-speaking people., although it formed a quarter of the population. This proportion of bilingual indicated stations passed to 14% of all the stations in 1978 and to 25% in 2004.

Even if it were adopted by all the political parties represented then with the House of Commons, the law receives a reception mitigated in the various provincial capital. If the New Brunswick follows the example of Ottawa by adopting its clean Loi on the official languages , the Ontario refuses to follow the federal government, choosing rather to only offer French services in certain areas. On its side, the Manitoba, which banished French of its legislative assembly and her courts in 1890, will go into reverse only following one stop of the Supreme court of Canada, in 1979.

The support of the population to bilingualism in Canada strongly progressed between 1963 and the end of the year 1970. In a survey carried out in 1965, only 17% of the Canadians of the outside of Quebec supported the financing of French schools. This proportion passed to 77% in 1977, in answer admittedly to a slightly different question (“offering Support with the provinces of the services of teaching in French when that is possible ”).

If they were numerous to accept the principle of the law with enthusiasm, registering their children in schools of French immersion, who multiplied in the anglophone provinces, a minority of english-speaking were and remain savagely opposite with the principle of bilingualism. The opponents assert reasons as various as the costs of bilingualism, the undue influence of the French-speaking people (the French Power ) within the federal government since the Trudeau era or the French defeat with the Plaines of Abraham in 1759.

In Quebec, the provisions on the language of the public office and the federal services were accommodated with a joy interfered a point of skepticism. Nevertheless, the adoption of official bilingualism at the federal level did not slow down the progression of the movement souverainist, the Parti Québécois obtaining 23% the votes at the time of the Québécois general election of the April 29th 1970.

Perceptions of the public 35 years later

Today still, the support with bilingualism is not acquired in Canada. According to a survey carried out by the Environics firm near 1.402 Canadians in February 2002, 98% of the Inhabitants of Quebec consider that the maintenance of bilingualism is very important or rather important . This proportion falls to 76% in the provinces from the Atlantic, 72% in Ontario, 67% in the Meadows and to 63% in Colombia-British.

Another study, carried out in 2000, indicates that more half of the Canadians outside Quebec considers that too many efforts were devoted to bilingualism. Only 26% of the Inhabitants of Quebec are of this opinion.

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