2.7 Legally enshrined harms

In previous sections we saw how people police each other’s language as a means of asserting power. But language policing happens not just at the hands of random individuals in society, but also by governments in power. Governments and institutions use language policy to create unity in some cases and division in others. One way that governments wield their power is through language policies, which can be used to erase or reinforce social identities. Language policies can be used to encourage or force people to use certain languages or not to use certain languages, to prove competency in a language, or affect the physical landscape of our communities by regulating a language that’s allowed to appear in public. Language policies can be implemented for positive or negative motivations, and sometimes they’re well-intentioned, but short-sighted.

The country now known as Canada has two official languages, French and English. But many, many other languages are used on these lands. What makes some languages official while others aren’t? Legal recognition.

The Official Languages Act was instituted in 1969 by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in response to increasing Francophone nationalism in the province of Quebec. At the time, the Anglophone minority in Quebec dominated the industrial, commercial, and financial sectors, and the Act made space for Francophones to be able to use their language in more venues.

The Official Languages Act improved education and employment opportunities for Francophones who lived outside of Quebec. New Brunswick, which had a large Francophone population, became officially bilingual. The province of Manitoba also had about equal numbers of Francophones and Anglophones, but it had a law making English the only official language of the province. The Supreme Court of Canada overturned that law once the Official Languages Act was passed.

But the Official Languages Act has a major shortcoming. It does not offer protection or even recognition of the Indigenous languages that have been used on these lands for many centuries before Canada even existed.

The Canadian government has made use of language policies to oppress Indigenous peoples. Earlier sections of this book introduced some of the residential school policy in Canada, where Indigenous children were punished for using their home languages. The official policy dictated that English and French were the only languages of instruction in these schools, and the goal was to assimilate the Indigenous children to the colonial English- or French-speaking society. The effect was that the children who were forced to attend these schools stopped using the language of their home communities and then did not pass it on to their children.

We could call these policies linguicide, or killing of language, and the harms that these policies have caused are still ongoing. Nevertheless, the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada called for policies and funding that would support Indigenous languages, and the Indigenous Languages Act was passed in 2019, providing such protections and including funding for Indigenous people to reclaim and revitalize their languages. You’ll want to look ahead to later chapters in this book to learn about some of the ways this work is unfolding and how linguistics plays a role in that work.

The consequences of Canada’s official focus on English-French bilingualism are still evident today. When Mary Simon was appointed Governor-General in 2021, she was criticized for her lack of French proficiency, even though she’s bilingual in English and Inuktitut. Simon attributed her experience to education policy in Canada. She told CTV News, “Based on my experience growing up in Quebec, I was denied the chance to learn French during my time in the federal government day schools” (2021). She did promise to learn French when she took up her role.

The language laws in Quebec have the goal of protecting French from assimilation into the anglophone majority in the rest of Canada. These provide public services almost entirely in French. They limit who’s allowed to attend an English-language school and they require the French on signs to come first and to be twice as large as other languages. The goal of reinforcing French helps resist against English assimilation, but it also has the effect of suppressing other languages. For example, the majority of Cree and Mohawk speakers in Quebec use English as their second language rather than. French, and so these lawsmake it harder for those people to access education and other provincial services.

References

Behiels, Michael D. and R. Hudon. 2013. Bill 101 (Charte de la langue française). The Canadian Encyclopedia. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/bill-101

Bell, Susan and Christopher Herodier. Sep 24, 2019. Quebec Cree pass language act as its 1st-ever legislation. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/cree-language-act-bill-1-abel-bosum-self-government-1.5295010

Fontaine, Lorena Sekwan. 2017. Redress for linguicide: Residential schools and assimilation in Canada / Réparations pour linguisicide: Les pensionnats et l’assimilation au Canada. British Journal of Canadian Studies 30(2), 183-204. https://doi.org/10.3828/bjcs.2017.11

Griffith, Jane. 2017. Of linguicide and resistance: children and English instruction in nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools in Canada. Paedagogica Historica, 53:6, 763-782. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2017.1293700

Haque, Eve  and Donna Patrick. 2015. Indigenous languages and the racial hierarchisation of language policy in Canada. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 36(1), 27-41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2014.892499

‘Honoured, humbled and ready’: Mary Simon’s first speech as incoming Governor General. 2021, July 6. CTV News. Retrieved May 30, 2022 from https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/honoured-humbled-and-ready-mary-simon-s-first-speech-as-incoming-governor-general-1.5498581

Laing, G. and Celine Cooper. 2019. Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. THe Canadian Encyclopedia. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/royal-commission-on-bilingualism-and-biculturalism

Powless, Ben. Jun 5, 2021. Critics say Quebec legislation to defend French could harm Indigenous languages. Nation News. http://nationnews.ca/politics/critics-say-quebec-legislation-to-defend-french-could-harm-indigenous-languages/

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: the Legacy : The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 5, Ch. 3, “I lost my talk”: The erosion of language and culture. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action. Winnipeg:

Verrette, Michel. 2006. Manitoba Schools Question. The Canadian Encyclopedia. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/manitoba-schools-question

Wood, Nancy. 2021. Next governor general’s inability to speak French leaves francophone communities conflicted. CBC News. Retrieved May 30, 2022, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mary-simon-governor-general-french-1.6101190