The University of Ottawa will be the managing institution for the Harper administration’s Language Rights Support Program (LRSP), according to an announcement by the Minister of Canadian Heritage, James Moore, on Sept. 9.
The appointment of a managing institution represents the need for a third party. The LRSP uses its budget to support court cases in which an individual, group, or organization may challenge someone’s language rights.
The university will provide “logistic support to the program,” said Dr. Richard Clément of the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute (OLBI). “[It will] hire employees to set up the program properly from a financial point of view and a political point of view.”
This includes managing the budget the LRSP receives from the government and presenting Canadian Heritage with reports of the program’s activities.
Still, the LRSP will work mostly independently.
"The program operates at arm’s length,” Clément said. “It hires its own team of experts [and is] relatively independent of both the university and Heritage Canada.”
“In some cases they may involve the government itself, so the government cannot be involved,” said Clément.
For what responsibilities it does have, the U of O is the logical choice for the LRSP’s managing institution because it offers many of the resources required for the job. For example, it has a faculty of law that teaches common and civil law in both French and English.
“The institution is big enough to deal with a complex program,” said Clément. “[The managing institution has to] have experience in programs that distribute and fund projects . . . [regarding] minority rights.”
The university’s responsibilities may affect the LRSP, but Clément said he predicts the LRSP may have an effect on the students and faculty of the university.
“To have the program on campus is a bit like being an observer in the first role,” Clément said.
Heritage Canada said it expects the university to manage the $1.5 million budget that will deal with a number of disputes and court cases that concern the infringement of language rights.
The government announced the creation of the LRSP in June 2008 to stress “better understanding of linguistic rights and [focus] on mediation and consensus-based decisions to facilitate amicable agreements,” according to Heritage Canada. All decisions are made with the interest of protecting languages as outlined by Canada’s constitution.