At the first forum in Moncton on March 12, Michel Bastarache made another important point. He bemoaned the fact that official language minority communities are now perhaps the only ones who care about official languages. If that’s true, linguistic duality and official languages may be playing a smaller and smaller role in defining who we are as Canadians. That is cause for concern. Diversity, or some other notion, set of values or vision of the country may take precedence in defining our identity.
In that event, promoting linguistic duality, as required under part VII of the Official Languages Act, would become quite the challenge indeed. Collectively, as a society, we would have to take a hard look at the cultural characteristics that define Canadian identity if we want to reach a point where respect for the Official Languages Act is a no-brainer, mainly for those who must implement the act and those who must comply with it. The work, therefore, has to focus on our values as Canadians.