Minority language groups find “surprising level of consensus” in call for Official Languages Act renewal

Carrying on a process that has been happening in the background of federal and provincial political discussions for the last three years or so, the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN), the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'ontario (AFO), and the Société de l'acadie du Nouveau-brunswick (SANB) have been on tour since the summer trying to get the modernization of Canada’s Official Languages Act to be a priority for the country’s next government.

“The Official Languages Act really needs to be brought up to date,” said Geoffrey Chambers, President of the QCGN, in a group interview with The Record last week. Joined by Carol Jolin, President of the AFO, and Ali Chaisson, Executive Director of the SANB, the QCGN president echoed words previously related by Raymond Théberge, Canada’s Commissioner of Official Langauges, in saying that the 50 year old piece of legislation is long overdue for an overhaul.

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“The last time the law was changed was the 1980s,” Chaisson said, arguing that although the Official Languages Act has been brought to have bearing on a large number of government agencies, organizations, and businesses, the law lacks the “teeth” to actually ensure that anyone follows it at this point.

“The picture here is a law that is aspirational, but is not really enforceable,” Chambers said explaining that a large part of the allied groups’ interest in revising the act is in seeing its protections become more concrete.

The act is, among other things, the law which gives Canadians in official language minority communities (English speakers in Quebec and French speakers in the rest of Canada) the right to education in their mother tongue, but Jolin pointed out that the vast majority of Canadians don’t know the full extent of their rights.

“People tend to think that the only thing about official languages is whatever dealings they have to do with the Federal Government, but there’s more than that,” he said. “People don’t realize that it’s when you’re dealing with air Canada, or Canada post. People don’t realize they’re allowed to have services in both official languages.”

The AFO president offered the example that, from a legal point of view, every service available in an airport, from the bookstores and restaurants to security, is required by law to be bilingual, but the reality is far from that.

“Right now people can make a complaint and the commissioner will look into it and come up with recommendations, but the government or the agencies can fully apply them, partially apply them, or not at all, and we have absolutely no thing that we can do about it,” Jolin said.

It is as a result of this legal impotence that the allied minority language groups have united in a call for what the changes to the act should be. Specifically they want a central agency, The Treasury Board, to oversee the implementation and coordination of the act in association with a Minister and an official languages secretariat. They also want official language communities to be able to participate directly in the implementation of the act through the creation of an advisory board that could help outline obligations and point out priorities. They also want to expand the scope of the act with an eye to changes that have taken place in the country over the last 50 years and integrate new accountability and oversight tools into the act such as the creation of a tribunal with the power to impose sanctions on institutions that do not respect the law.

According to Jolin, another key element the groups want to see written into the law is a mandate to revise every ten years.

“We shouldn’t have to wait so long for there to be revisions,” he said.

Looking at the groups’ mission to bring the importance of revising the act to the attention of the federal parties in the lead-up to the election, Chaisson said that there is one key challenge.

“Official languages in 2019 is not sexy story,” the SANB Executive Director said, arguing that although the right to education and the work the act does in fostering the development and protection of culture in communities across the country is very important, it’s not one of the “bread and butter” issues that people have on the front of their minds.

Chambers noted that the groups have had good meetings so far with each of the Liberal Party, the Conservatives, and the NDP, but that the candidates have had “good words” without firm commitments.

“They all said they will (revise the act), what we don’t know is how far they will go,” he said, adding, “We expect people to say that this is not a bad idea, but actually getting on the legislative agenda is not so easy.”

Chaisson, meanwhile, pointed out that once the party in power commits to actually revising the act, the work of actually implementing it is going to be a whole other undertaking.

“What we’re trying to accomplish here is an important step, but once that step is accomplished there is a series of other things that must happen,” he said.

More information on the push to modernize the official languages act is available online at https://qcgn.ca/modernization-of-official-languages-act/