As I already said, I started out in the infantry, in the Royal 22e Régiment. I did my training in French and continued my career in French.
I then went to work in intelligence, which is a unilingual English‑speaking field. Since we work within the Five Eyes, meaning with England, the United States, New Zealand and Australia, I understand the need to work in English. I never questioned this. As an intelligence officer, I wanted the allies to be able to read my report.
So I can't say that I personally faced discrimination.
That said, I spoke in my opening remarks about how, before I came here, I asked people to share their stories with me. We would need more than two hours to hear them. Sometimes, especially in the navy and air force—as discussed— but also in other places, people are asked to work only in English as if this were normal. Yet I'm not aware of the opposite situation where an anglophone has been asked to work in French and to get by.
One person wrote me a long email to say that, every evening, on top of her training, she had to understand what she had learned in English during the day.
When I started working in English, like just about everyone else here, I used to get a headache after spending a day working in English. The same thing happened when I learned Spanish.
At some point, it's easy to turn the switch off and say that we've had enough. You can imagine the potential impact on someone who is taking a course, who must learn, who will be tested on their training and who also has trouble understanding the language and who needs to spend more time on it in the evenings and on weekends.
We've spoken a great deal about training, and it's important. However, as I said, the test is after the training and not before.