Mr. Speaker, since the Official Languages Act was passed in 1969, the armed forces have not met their obligation to properly train bilingual officers and to give French its rightful place.
Now the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages is backtracking on the bilingualism requirements for senior military officers. It is not right that the government, for too long now, has been allowing the armed forces to flout the provisions of the Official Languages Act, and even worse, that the requirements have been lowered for unilingual English officers being appointed to senior positions.
This throws the movement for francophone rights in the Canadian armed forces back 40 years.
In reality, only a francophone officer will be required to be bilingual. The armed forces have never been able to respect the Official Languages Act in their hierarchy. The Conservatives are now choosing to endorse a decline of French in the ranks of the military.
If the armed forces refuse to respect the spirit and the letter of the Official Languages Act, they are being unfair towards the francophones who have no choice but to learn English since senior anglophone officers are apparently incapable of learning even a bare minimum of French.
The Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages and the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities misled this House by implying, on February 8 and 9, that Canada's new policy had been drafted after consultations with the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, among others. However, the Commissioner of Official Languages, Graham Fraser, clearly stated on February 12 that this was not true. Mr. Fraser also criticized the time frame for implementing this new approach, saying that 2012 was too late.
With the new defence rules, the army will be even less bilingual than it is now. Yet even the current situation reflects the Canadian Forces' disrespect for francophones. In 2006, the office of the commissioner showed that the army nearly always violated the Official Languages Act when staffing bilingual positions. Between 39% and 44% of positions designated as bilingual were held by unilingual anglophones. This is unacceptable. It is a deficiency that needs to be pointed out again. The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages has repeatedly made efforts to get the Canadian Forces to meet their obligations, yet they are shirking their responsibilities again.
With the new policy, not only will French be used less in the army, to the continuing detriment of francophones, but francophones will be ghettoized, according to retired lieutenant colonel Rémi Landry. Positions that, for demographic reasons, are located in Quebec and the national capital region will be French-language positions, and the rest of Canada will be for anglophones only.
Once again, Canada is snubbing French and giving priority to unilingual anglophones for promotion, at the expense of bilingual francophones. Yet we know that the Dominion of Canada was founded 140 years ago on the principle that English Canadians and French Canadians were always to enjoy equal language and cultural rights.