Bilingualism: Overview

Introduction

The question of how Canada can remain a unified country with an English-speaking majority and a significant French-speaking minority has been debated since Confederation, the union of colonies in 1867 that resulted in Canada becoming one independent country, rather than separate British and French territories. While bridging cultural differences is a difficult task, most governments in Canada’s history have sought to find a balance by enshrining language rights into law.

Bilingualism is legally codified in Canadian law by three pieces of legislation: the Canadian Constitution, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Official Languages Act. The primary provisions set out in these documents recognize French and English as the official languages of Canada, grant the French-speaking population rights to education in their native tongue, and mandate that government services must be delivered in both official languages.

A large majority of the Canadian population is English speaking, comprising ten out of the total thirteen Canadian provinces and territories. The exceptions to the anglophone majority are Quebec, Manitoba, and New Brunswick. Quebec makes up the bulk of the francophone population, and has historically served as an advocate for French-language rights across the country. New Brunswick is the only province in the Confederation that is constitutionally bilingual. Another significant French culture is found in Manitoba, but francophone citizens in that province make up less than 5 per cent of the population. While Manitoba is not officially bilingual, its provincial courts and legislature are, as provided for in the Manitoba Act of 1870. Almost all of the English-speaking provinces have some French populations either within urban centres or in small towns and villages in the rural areas.

The debate over bilingualism has been a difficult one for both francophones and anglophones. Those opposed to bilingualism argue that there is no point in forcing an overwhelming majority of Canadians to speak French. Critics also point to the double standard that allows Quebec to restrict English on public signs in the province and to take other defensive measures to protect its culture. Advocates for bilingualism contend that their desire is to allow both languages to flourish with equal access to the law, not to force any citizen to speak another language.

History

When France officially ceded its North American interests to England in 1763, roughly 30 per cent of the Canadian population was composed of French speakers. This population was allowed to retain its cultures and traditions, and in 1774, these rights were guaranteed under the Quebec Act. However, the rights guaranteed by the English powers did not deal with language, but allowed the French to maintain their Roman Catholic traditions and French civil law.

It was not until 1867 that language became a legislative issue when the Fathers of Confederation set about producing what would become the British North America Act. In Section 133 of the Act, both English and French were recognized languages in Parliament and the federal courts. The provision also said that government documents were to be recorded and produced in both languages. In addition, Section 93 of the Act provided for minority education rights so that children could be taught according to their culture and traditions. In Canada, this laid the foundation for Roman Catholic schools amid a large Protestant population.

Almost a decade later, bilingualism became an issue again when the province of Manitoba was created. The Manitoba Act of 1870 officially provided for French language rights by granting the newly-formed province the same constitution as Quebec. This meant that the French minority’s rights to education in their native tongue were guaranteed. Eventually, the English majority reacted against this legislation and cut funding to Manitoba’s Roman Catholic schools in 1890. As French Canadians were the dominant group in the Catholic schools, this was considered to be a direct assault against their rights.

Francophone groups were already agitated by other perceived attacks against their culture. In 1873, a similar crisis erupted among the Acadian population of New Brunswick, when the provincial government disallowed Roman Catholicism to be practiced within the school system, effectively removing a French-language presence from New Brunswick schools. In 1885, Louis Riel led a rebellion in large part to gain rights for the part-Aboriginal, part-French Métis people. He was defeated and hanged in Regina, Saskatchewan, that same year.

In 1905, the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta were founded, and both provinces made moves to eliminate French-language education, as Manitoba and New Brunswick had done before them. Alberta went a step further and outlawed French from the court system and the legislature. Saskatchewan would eventually reinstate French-language education ten years later. Alberta did not follow suit. Another fight over education occurred in 1912, when the government of Ontario enacted Regulation 17. This was an attempt to remove French from the classroom in a predominantly English-speaking province. Regulation 17 was eventually repealed.

By 1916, World War I was underway and the tensions between French and English Canada were high. Prime Minister Robert Borden enacted conscription legislation requiring able-bodied men between the ages of twenty and forty-five to report for service. Riots and protests broke out in Quebec over conscription; the province had little incentive to fight in a foreign war due to lost cultural ties to Europe and an emerging French Canadian identity. The backlash eventually cost the government of Prime Minister Robert Borden Quebec’s support in the next federal election.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Quebec slipped further behind the rest of Canada economically, compounding the difficulties felt by many French Canadians. By the 1960s, class structures and societal norms in Quebec started to change radically. The francophone population began to reassert its rights within Confederation. It was during this time that the modern separatist movement was born, and Quebec’s National Assembly began passing legislation designed to protect the French culture from assimilation.

In 1969, the Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, passed the Official Languages Act, based largely on the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. The act had three main objectives:

1. To foster equal use of English and French in Parliament, the Government of Canada, the federal administration, and the institutions subject to the act.
2. To preserve and develop societies of both languages within the Confederation.
3. To make both languages equal in Canadian society.

That same year, New Brunswick enacted its own Official Languages Act to protect the Acadian community. Other bilingual developments included the creation of the commissioner of official languages. The person holding this position was charged with the responsibility of monitoring the effectiveness of the Official Languages Act; monitoring funding for minority-language and second-language schools across the country, provided by the federal government; and to ensure the government mandate that all goods for sale be labeled in both English and French was implemented.

In 1982, with the patriation of the Canadian Constitution from the United Kingdom and the passing of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, bilingualism was further enshrined into law. New Brunswick was officially designated a bilingual province, minority-language rights were supported across the country, and the federal government guaranteed services to communities in both languages.

In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled that all Saskatchewan provincial legislation that had been passed in English (which accounted for almost all laws) was invalid. The laws were said not to adhere to Section 110 of the North-West Territories Act, which required the passage of laws in both English and French. That same year, the Saskatchewan government took quick action to override the Supreme Court decision by enacting its own language laws, which asserted the validity of previous law enacted in English, but were also more supportive of French language rights in general.

Alberta, however, took an alternative position by introducing the Alberta Language Policy, which encouraged schools to recognize language rights as described in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Alberta also declared that schools were not required to teach French. The first revision of the Official Languages Act in 1988 was essentially a reaffirmation of the previous declarations and objectives.

The latter part of the twentieth century saw many attempts to revise Confederation in part due to the French/English cultural divide. These included two referendums on Quebec separation, and two major proposals to amend the constitution.

Bilingualism Today

The early twenty-first century has seen some minor adjustments to Canada’s official bilingualism. In 2002, the New Brunswick legislature revised the province’s Official Languages Act, which included reaffirmations of the 1969 act, the creation of a provincial commissioner on official languages, provisions to receive health care in both languages, and a commitment to review the regional act every ten years. The following year, the federal government announced its Action Plan for Official Languages, which lays out plans for investment in education, community development, and public service relating to bilingualism.

The bilingual question has not been laid to rest, though little debate has occurred since the turn of the millennium. The effectiveness of previous legislation is being analyzed in academic circles. The 2011 census revealed that, for the first time in four decades, the number of Canadians reporting as bilingual had decreased. According to the Canadian Bureau of Statistics, the bilingualism rate was 12.2 per cent in 1961 and rose every subsequent decade before hitting a peak of 17.7 per cent in 2001. The decrease to 17.5 per cent is the result of total population growth exceeding the speed of bilingual population growth. So while the 2011 census found 5.8 million Canadians to be bilingual in comparison to 2001’s 5.2 million, the bilinguals’ percentage share of the total population decreased by 0.2 per cent.

First Nations (Aboriginal) groups are becoming increasingly vocal about their desire to have their native languages recognized as official, in addition to French and English, claiming that First Nations peoples, their culture and their languages were usurped by the Europeans. Critics argue that while the dream of a bilingual nation may be noble, the practical aspects of a government attempting to change cultural norms through legislation may have been misguided or naïve. Advocates are still hopeful that bilingualism can be improved in Canada despite the lack of widespread institutional acceptance of French outside of Quebec and English inside the French province.