A few weeks ago, the Bloc Québécois announced plans to introduce a bill that would require people applying for citizenship within the province of Quebec to demonstrate French language proficiency.
There is a lot to be said for the potential impact of the bill, but it is without a doubt a sign of a much larger problem: Canada’s political mission to build a so-called “cultural mosaic” is at odds with its language hierarchy. The only way this conflict can be remedied is by eliminating the latter.
Language carries culture, and Canadians know this firsthand. Whether a language’s origins can be traced to Europe, Asia, Africa or an Indigenous community in what is now called North America, it tells us much about who our ancestors are and carries expressions that tell unique stories about them.
We know language is important to culture, but we often miss the political implications of this fact—and how performative bilingualism in Canada really is. One of the places this is most obvious is Ottawa.
Politicians and administrators in the city trip over themselves in trying to be conspicuously bilingual. The city is plastered in bilingual advertisements, federal employees are pushed to learn French, and most offices in the city have a voicemail that ends with “pour le service en français, appuyez sur le deux.” Unfortunately, as far as many francophones are concerned, these gestures are not necessarily the result of a bilingual country committed to true cultural diversity. This is made clear in the fact that from 2001 to 2011, Quebec was the only province to see a steady increase in bilingualism, as every majority-anglophone province saw little growth due to less investment in French-as-a-second-language programs.
The reality is that francophones can’t get by on French alone, and anglophones don’t really need to learn to speak French—as they make up a clear majority of the Canadian population. This pattern repeats itself in nearly every linguistic enclave in the country, the unspoken message being that English is the priority and anything else is a bonus. This situation can only be described as a cultural melting pot, where all sorts of cultures and languages go in, but most are drowned out by the most overpowering flavour: anglophone.
Policies like the Bloc Québécois’ newest bill show that people want their languages to live on at home and in public spaces. However, it also highlights the fact that doing so by dividing linguistic groups is much less productive than by building bridges between them.
Let’s start by talking about the “exclusion” approach as embodied by the proposed legislation. The exclusion approach aims to protect linguistic groups by dis-incentivizing the entrance of non-speakers. This approach may actually work for francophones in the short term, but it would create a lot of problems.
The key issue is that defensive policies only maintain linguistic hierarchy, which is bad for Canada in its entirety. Francophones are the only linguistic minority that can control large legislative bodies. These institutions may help defend French, but it does nothing for other linguistic minorities who don’t have the same leverage in government.
The other major issue with exclusivism is that it will exacerbate regionalism in the country. Quebec has already tried to leave the country more than once, and attempting to sort people into regions of the country based on their language of preference does not exactly scream unity.
Canada has a long history of linguistic erasure, most notably in residential schools, but it lives on in modern complacency. Anglophones enjoy a great deal of privilege in this country—as they can expect to be catered to everywhere from a federal office to a McDonald’s drive-thru—so let’s not act surprised when linguistic minorities react defensively.
This is only likely to sow mistrust among people caught on the “wrong side” of this linguistic boundary. Quebec is full of anglophones, and francophones live all over Canada, yet anglophones in Quebec could definitely be forgiven for interpreting this bill as an attack on their place in the province. Having language tests for citizenship limits the people invited to contribute to the cultural mosaic that is supposed to be Canada to Europeans, or individuals from French-speaking African countries.
So how do we build a mosaic that not only allows, but encourages a diversity of languages? Here enters the inclusive approach.
The inclusive approach to language doesn’t stop people from entering parts of the country, but encourages people to learn languages relevant to the people around them. The inclusive approach means taking multilingualism out of the hands of career politicians, and putting it in the hands of actual Canadians.
The first step of the inclusive approach is to end linguistic hierarchy. This means doing away with language tests for citizenship, and officially recognizing that Canada is not just bilingual, but multilingual.
The second step of the inclusive approach is building language infrastructure for all languages spoken from coast to coast to coast. This means incentivizing students, government employees, and citizens at large to learn not only French, but the languages of all their neighbours around them—whether that be French, Mandarin, Punjabi, Cree or Anishinaabemowin.
This means putting money behind exchange and language-learning programs, and finding a home for all language proficiencies in the public and private sectors.
These ideas aren’t new. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations call for this type of infrastructure, and Canadian students routinely travel to Quebec to learn French. This cultural interchange is key because it means not just communicating with each other, but understanding each other, because that’s what it means to build a cultural mosaic.
Featured image via Unsplash.
