Universität Duisburg / Essen, Campus Essen
Seminar: Multilingual Matters - Language in a Global Society
Sommersemester 2005, Fachsemester: 5

The History of Canadian Language Politics

by: Lars Klimek

Table of contents

1. Introduction 3

2. First Steps towards bilingualism 4

2.1.Constitutional Act 4
2.2.Québec’s Quiet Revolution 4
2.3.The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism 5

3. Further actions in bilingual language politics 6

3.1.First Official Languages Act 6
3.2.Bill 101 and Québec’s move to independence 7
3.3.Constitution Act 7
3.4.The Second Official Languages Act 8

4. What did the Canadians achieve by official bilingualism 8

4.1.Civil Service 8
4.2.Education 9
4.3.Value of bilingualism over the years 11

5. Conclusion 13

6. Literature 14

1. Introduction

This paper will deal with the language politics in Canada, which was aimed to make the country and its inhabitants bilingual and bicultural (multicultural). I want to talk about the profound legal actions Canadian governments took to implement Canada’s two official languages. At first I will to focus on the first steps towards bilingualism starting with the Constitutional Act of 1867 until the 1960s, when the developments within the Canadian and especially Quebecois population of the country, forced the federal government to think about their language policies.

Furthermore I’d like to give an overview about the progress which was made concerning bilingualism after the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism published the results of their investigation into the real linguistics situation in all provinces. We will see that Québec has never given up the movement towards independence which initially was created in the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Moreover it will become clear that the provincial government of Québec has since then tried to undermine language politics of the federal government by provincial law. Nevertheless Québec remains the province with the most bilingual people in the whole Confederation.

In chapter four I will describe the impact official bilingualism has had on Canada and how the linguistic situation is today. One of the most important aspects for me was the development of the educational programmes that are aimed to bring bilingualism to the children who are evidently the best learners of a second language.

2. First Steps Towards Bilingualism

2.1.Constitutional Act

In 1867 the government of Canada established both English and French as the official languages of Parliament and Courts. The Constitution Act provided the equality of the two languages in legislation and judicature. It was applied by the founding provinces and by the provinces which entered the Confederation at a later stage.

Another step in making bilingualism known all over the country was taken in 1926, when for the first time postage stamps became bilingual and approximately 10 years later also banknotes were printed both in English and French. All these measures did not have the expected effect on the Canadian people, but were “largely invisible to most Canadians and did little to promote the status of the French language across Canada”¹.

2.2.Québec’s Quiet Revolution

Up to the 1960s English was the dominating language of business in Canada and even in Québec which was populated by 80% Francophones. So the Quebeckers whose sole language was French did have a great disadvantage in economy, if they resisted learning English. That changed when Jean Lesage became Premier of Québec. Lesage and his Liberal Party “enacted several policies to help French-speaking Quebeckers become Maîtres Chez Nous, or Masters In Our Own House”¹ instead of a few Anglophones possessing most of the highest economical positions in Québec. The government made several steps towards a more independent province of Québec with for example an own department of Cultural Affairs that only existed in federal politics before. With these changes the government started and fed a separatist movement in Québec.

Many people who were aware of the injustice going on in the province then gained a political voice and many people were of the opinion that the best solution would be to split from the Rest of Canada (RC). This was for economical but also, and that is more important in the context of this paper, for linguistic and cultural reasons. It is also the time in which the visit of French president Charles de Gaulle and his famous outcry “Vive le Québec libre!” falls, with which he, surprisingly for the Quebeckers and the Canadian nation, underlined Québec’s wish for a sovereign francophone country on the North American continent.

2.3.The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism

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1 http://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/cultural/bilingualism/history.html, (accessed 16 march 2006)