That is a phrase I stole from a French ambassador who told me that was one of the things about Canada that had impressed him. My decision to reiterate several times that French is the language of ambition in Canada comes from the following thought. In 1969, when the Official Languages Act was debated in the House, MPs claimed it would be the end of all employment for anyone from western Canada, that it would be impossible in the future for Westerners, of whom the vast majority are unilinguals, to obtain good jobs within the federal government.
Our current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who is from Alberta, a clerk, from Saskatchewan, and the person who was Chief of the Canadian Forces until quite recently and is from Manitoba, are all bilingual anglophones. I think it is because they wanted to understand the country in its entirety and further their careers. They understood that speaking both official languages was a leadership skill.
Canada's senior public service is filled with people who speak both official languages, who have advanced their career because they understood this was a leadership skill and an essential tool for understanding the whole country.