Good afternoon.
Thank you for having me here today to talk to you about the Official Languages Act and the vitality of the minorities.
I intend to provide you with a survey of the views I have developed in a forthcoming publication. My presentation will be divided into three parts.
First, let's talk about the impact of the Official Languages Act on the vitality of the linguistic minorities. Our research shows that contact with government cannot be distinguished from other types of linguistic contact in the public sphere. Linguistic contacts are statistically unrelated to individual linguistic identity. Instead they are related to subjective linguistic vitality, by which I mean individuals' perception of the status and vitality of a language in society. This subjective vitality is only faintly related to the desire to belong to the minority community.
The public services that the federal government provides represent only a very small portion of linguistic experiences in the public sphere. Consequently, the Official Languages Act has little impact on individuals' language development.
We therefore come to the first sociolinguistic principle respecting the potential impact of a language law on the vitality of a minority: no language policy or law has an impact on the vitality of a minority unless it promotes the linguistic and the cultural socialization of its members. In our view, only part VII of the Official Languages Act appears, at least implicitly, to offer that potential. We will return to this point.
Now let's consider the actors who are essential to the vitality of a language. Our theoretical models reveal three essential and relatively independent actors whose roles influence the vitality of a linguistic minority: the community, the civil society of the minority and the state or government.
The first and most important essential actor is the community itself, not in its broader and impersonal sense, but as the sum of the individuals and families who constitute what researchers call the "intimate community," of which the family is the basic unit. It guarantees the intergenerational transmission of language and the foundations of individual identity.
The second essential actor is the civil society of the minority, which manages the minority's social organization. It exercises invaluable leadership in creating and maintaining the group's institutions, its "institutional completeness." The civil society also acts as an intermediary between members of the minority and the state.
The third essential actor is the state, which supports the linguistic minority's vitality by legitimizing its existence in society through policies that recognize individual and collective rights. The state delivers programs and services in the language of the minority and may fund vital institutions.
Our second principle is therefore as follows: a language policy or act has an optimal effect on the vitality of the linguistic minority when it promotes the growth of the group's collective identity and coordinates a synergistic set of concerted measures taken by the three actors essential to its vitality.
Responsibility for the coordination of and synergy among the three actors that enhance the minority's vitality falls to the state. The state is the legitimate political decision-maker and holder of power and resources. The state is in the best position to implement an effective language planning program.
Now I would like to discuss part VII of the Official Languages Act. Part VII is collective and remedial in scope and concerns the genuine equality of the two official language communities. This part of the act addresses the objective of enhancing the vitality of the minorities that the government has set, more particularly in section 41. Note that the English version of section 41 refers to "enhancing the vitality," whereas the French version contains the words "favoriser l'épanouissement."
From what I understand of the analyses conducted by the legal experts who interpret part VII of the Official Languages Act, considerable work remains to be done to clarify its object and scope. What does it mean to take "positive measures" in order "to enhance the vitality of the minorities," "to support and assist their development" and "to foster the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society"? In my view, if these ambitious aims are not reflected in specific and actual objectives regarding community vitality or in clear government responsibilities and commitments, the Official Languages Act may well be important in appearance, given its symbolic character for the country, but have no substantial impact on the actual equality of the two major linguistic communities concerned.
Revitalizing a language is an ambitious and complex undertaking. No language can be revitalized without a genuine language plan. This plan is based on an extensive and ongoing research program that guides the precise nature of priority objectives, the implementation of actions designed to achieve them and evaluations verifying their effectiveness.
Paradoxically, since Official Languages Act was amended in 2005, as a result of which part VII is now justiciable, the federal government's engagement in its five-your plans appears to have regressed, if the five-year period from 2003 to 2008 can be taken as a reference point. The first action plan for official languages, in 2003, contained several elements of a true language plan. It was based on research and set genuine priority objectives tailored to each of the official language minorities. The plans and roadmaps that followed appear to have been more the result of political compromises than genuine language plans.