"It Doesn't Make Sense...in Any Language"

April 16, 2003

As Jean Chrétien continues his long good-bye before retiring early next year, so does his last-ditch attempt to buy himself a legacy.  The latest legacy builder, by his own admission, is a Federal Bilingualism “Action Plan”. 

Unlike issues such as healthcare, agricultural or our troubled international trading relationships, the Liberals’ cannot be accused of neglecting their prized bilingualism scheme.  

Personally, I feel there is a significant advantage in having the ability to communicate in more than one language.  Certainly, it’s a skill that should be encouraged, supported and even rewarded.  However, it cannot be a mandatory skill forced upon Canadians by the discriminatory use of tax dollars and punitive enforcement. 

Yet the Liberals announced last month that they’re prepared to spend an additional $751-million on bilingualism.  Their goal is to make half of all young Canadians bilingual in French and English within a decade.  They will push this agenda through careful manipulation of the country’s education system, community programs and the federal public service. 

Education is under provincial jurisdiction and the provinces aren’t likely to accept orders from the federal government through its use of more “strings-attached” funding.  Through selective application of tax dollars, the federal government is dictating that an individual learn French as their second language as opposed to, for example, Cantonese, which might better serve the employment prospects of young Canadians residing in Vancouver or Toronto.

As for community programs, volunteers can be difficult to find – even more so if you insist they must communicate in both official languages.  Struggling community programs are concerned they’ll be denied federal funding if their volunteers can’t speak both French and English. 

The Liberals’ are also taking aggressive action within the public service.  Scott Reid, the Canadian Alliance Official Languages Critic, sums up the hiring practices in the federal government this way: “First, select some skill that most Canadians don’t have, and declare it essential for many jobs where it serves no work-related function.  Second, keep tight limits on job training in this skill.  And third, demote or transfer any public servant who doesn’t meet your arbitrary and ever-changing goals.” 

 Government officials are now suggesting that future hiring in the public service be restricted to candidates already fluently bilingual.  The Liberals’ exclusionary hiring formula means that 24 million Canadians will be frozen out from all of the best Public Service jobs, including 57 percent of Francophones who don’t speak English, 91 percent of Anglophones who don’t speak French, 80 percent of immigrants and 95 percent of aboriginal Canadians. 

The Canadian Alliance believes that as many Canadians as possible should be able to work in the language environment of their choice.  It simply doesn’t make economic or practical sense for taxpayers or for an individual to invest in training in a language that will be rarely used in the workplace, if ever, simply because it’s one of Canada’s official languages.  As the most linguistically-gifted people will tell you, “if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.”

This is another example of Liberal-style social engineering.  Canadians guide their own culture, values and beliefs.  These cannot be "manufactured" by the state.