I feel very strongly that leadership is the critical element in ensuring that both languages, our linguistic duality, be seen as a value and not a burden. I think we are in a situation now in which the leaders of all political parties use both languages, and do so effectively across the country. I recently was interviewed by a journalist based in Washington for La Vanguardia, a Catalan newspaper in Barcelona. He had come to Canada during the last election campaign and had heard the Prime Minister in Vancouver and the then-leader of the opposition in Toronto, and he said they both spoke French during their speeches, even though it was clearly an English-speaking audience. He wondered why that would be. I explained to him that political leaders in this country take linguistic duality seriously, and also that they want to get on television in the other language.
With regard to indicators of public acceptance, since I am fairly old, I clearly remember a time when people booed when the national anthem was sung in both English and French. That does not happen anymore. I have also attended events where there was just as much laughter and response to jokes told in French as to those told in English, in audiences that might have been thought to have been made up of mostly anglophones, even unilingual anglophones and a certain number of francophones. But the crowd's reaction showed that Canada has become more passively bilingual than ever. Instead of feeling that French is a foreign language, Canadians are more and more proud of this language.
Obviously, that is not always the case. Unfortunate incidents and events still often occur with regard to the minority official language everywhere in Canada, which I disapprove of. However, in my opinion, most of the population has progressed to the point where people no longer hesitate to use the other official language for fear of offending their audience. That is my opinion. It is not necessarily based on statistical data, but it is my impression.