From the CBC:
"For Conservative candidates who
aren't fully bilingual, running to be prime minister won't be easy”
It's 2020, and it seems we're in
a place in Canadian politics again where the question of leadership is also a
question of language. Should the leader of a federal party in Canada be
required to speak both of Canada's official languages? Just how bilingual is
bilingual enough? How does a candidate's facility in both languages affect the
ability to win? Maybe we should be asking a different question: Why would
anyone who doesn't speak both languages well even bother applying for the job? We're
talking about this now, of course, because the Conservative Party of Canada is
choosing a new leader in June. The three declared candidates running to be
chosen leader (and eventually, they hope, prime minister) — Peter MacKay, Erin
O'Toole and Marilyn Gladu — are all able to speak French with varying degrees
of success. But we'd be hard-pressed to call any of them fluent. When MacKay
launched his campaign this past weekend in Nova Scotia, he read his French
lines off a Teleprompter. In spite of the visual aid, he still made grammatical
errors and struggled with pronunciation. Good luck, Mr. MacKay His efforts were
rewarded with a snarky front page in Le Journal de Quebec (the headline:
"Good Luck Mister!"). MacKay took no questions in either official
language, so it's hard to know how he'd handle answering them in a campaign
setting. It's fair to say, though, that French does not come easily to this son
of the Maritimes. When asked directly about his ability to speak French, MacKay
told columnist John Ivison in the National Post that he knows he needs to
improve, but his life since leaving federal politics in 2015 hasn't afforded
him as many opportunities to speak French. O'Toole, meanwhile, launched his
campaign on Monday with two videos. In the French version, O'Toole clearly is
struggling with a strong accent and poor pronunciation.
Now, some of you are asking,
"So what? Where does anyone get off criticizing a politician's language
skills?" Like a lot of Canadians, I grew up in a unilingual home — but
I've spent my entire life pursuing fluency in French. My home province of
Manitoba gave me a few advantages the candidates may not share: a broad push
toward French immersion, a strong Francophone community. But learning to be
comfortable in a second language isn't something you do in childhood and then
set aside. Every opportunity I had to immerse myself in the language, I took. Bilingualism
has served me well. I still make mistakes, of course. (Listen in to
Radio-Canada's Midi-Info with Michel C. Auger, who has to listen to my
occasional flubs every second Friday of the month when I do a political panel.)
But this isn't about me. It isn't even about the candidates themselves — who
may indeed speak French competently enough to communicate directly with
Canadian francophones across the country. It's not about the politicians. It's
about the people they want to represent. In 2011, according to Statistics
Canada, some 7.3 million Canadians cited French as their mother tongue; even
more said they speak French at home. And in 2016, the agency reported that bilingualism
had increased in most provinces and territories and had reached its highest
proportion ever nationally: 17.9 per cent. The vast majority of French-speaking
Canadians are, of course, living in Quebec, but there are strong pockets of
francophones across the country. Canada declared French and English its
official languages in 1969 — which means that every federal institution is
required to offer services in both languages, if asked. A 2016 poll
commissioned by the Official Languages Commission found that a vast majority of
Canadians support official bilingualism — and a full 86 per cent of Canadians
think the prime minister should be bilingual.
Language and elections
So that's the statistical
argument: French is a fact of life in Canada, not just in Quebec, and Canadians
expect their leaders to be fluent. But there are crass political factors at
play as well. Quebec holds 78 federal seats. That's more than Manitoba,
Saskatchewan and Alberta combined. It's not impossible to form a majority
government without Quebec: Stephen Harper managed it in 2011 with only five MPs
from the province. But doing well in Quebec makes it a lot easier. Maybe that's
not the point. Maybe we should expect our leaders to communicate well in both
official languages because it's part of the job — not because it makes it
easier to win and hold power. Choosing to represent people in public life
should include working hard to understand them on their own terms, to recognize
their importance as individuals and as members of a living culture. That's
leadership.
Final point: there are roughly 90
different living Indigenous languages in Canada — three out of four of them are
considered endangered. Last year, in an attempt to save at least some of them,
the government passed the Indigenous Languages Act. The legislation doesn't
give any Indigenous language official status, but it does allow for federal
documents to be translated into Indigenous tongues and also launched a
commissioner's office tasked with trying to protect some of these endangered
languages. Think about that — ninety different languages, most of them fading
away. Under the circumstances, asking our leaders to talk to us in just two
languages doesn't seem unreasonable.
^ I have written about bilingualism
(or the lack or it) in Canada many times before. I am a Canadian citizen. I can
fluently speak and write in English and in French. I am just an ordinary
citizen (not a politician or a Government worker) who believes that
bilingualism in Canada will only work if every man, woman and child throughout
the country learns and uses both official languages. Those whose first language
is English should also be able to speak and write in French the same way that
those whose first language is French should also be able to speak and write in
English. It doesn’t matter if you live in Newfoundland, Alberta, British Columbia
or Nunavut (from the East Coast to the West Coast and from the North to the
South.) Canada has been officially bilingual for 51 years and yet while most
Canadians support the idea of Bilingualism the majority of Canadians are not bilingual.
It seems to be more of a question of liking something on paper, but not in
practice. ^
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