Mr. Speaker, before the House recessed almost two weeks ago my colleague from Nanaimo-Cowichan spoke about the Official Languages Act and reasons for cutting costs of implementing its policy.
I will be speaking on how the Official Languages Act ought to be changed so that it is fair and just for all Canadians.
The year 1994 is the 25th anniversary of the Official Languages Act. This law, enacted by the Trudeau government in 1969 and later revised by the Mulroney administration in 1988, was intended to bring unity to the country, to end the unjust treatment of French speaking Canadians and to help defuse Quebec separatism.
We learn from authors as respectable as Quebec's distinguished Christian Dufour that: "Some forget that it was not
bilingualism that made this country, that it cannot ensure its survival and that it could even lead to its destruction".
Those of us who have lived and worked most of our lives far away from the centre of power in Ottawa may have agreed with the original intention of official bilingualism. It was described eloquently in the 1968 throne speech of the first Trudeau government as exemplifying the essential connection between justice and national unity.
We also wonder whether the Official Languages Act has actually brought justice to the area of official languages. If the law is as badly flawed as we believe it to be, and therefore unjust, where does that leave Canada's unity?
It is my contention that language policy cannot and will not achieve the justice and fairness that is its stated goal until it is fundamentally rewritten.
I would like to draw the attention of colleagues to just one aspect of official bilingualism in order to show how badly flawed the present policy is and also to show how a careful and thoughtful revision of the policy could do much to reunite the country by removing an institutional irritant which sets anglophones against francophones and provincial majorities against their minority populations.
As it is presently written, the Official Languages Act requires the federal government to provide services in English in those parts of Quebec and in French in those parts of the other nine provinces wherever there is sufficient demand.
However, the act fails to define the concept of sufficient demand. Instead of providing a clear and easily understood definition, the act states that sufficient demand will mean whatever the federal cabinet decides it ought to mean.
The law recommends that the size of official language minorities be taken into account but so may, and this is from section 32 of the act, any other factors which the governor in council considers appropriate.
What this provision of the law means is that when the Official Languages Act was passed this House never debated-it never had the chance-the level or the extent of minority language service that seemed most appropriate. The provision of minority language services is the most politically sensitive aspect of the act and yet it was determined in virtual secrecy by order in council.
When highly contentious issues are developed in secret rather than in open debate in the people's house, the House of Commons, the resulting information vacuum opens the way to rumour and innuendo. Conspiracy theories come to be taken seriously.
This in turn has the potential to breed suspicion, resentment, prejudice and ultimately hatred along linguistic lines. For this reason, section 32 of the Official Languages Act needs to be rewritten to remove the arbitrary authority of the governor in council.
In its place there should be a clear, easily understood definition of the criteria that would cause a region of the country to be declared a bilingual district. This definition could be debated openly so that the resulting formula would be a just and moderate compromise between the rightful aspirations of Canada's linguistic minorities and the rightful concerns of our majority populations.
What I am proposing is hardly a new idea. It was first recommended nearly 30 years ago by the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Before this the concept of openly defined bilingual districts, also known as territorial bilingualism, had existed in the laws of Finland for several decades.
In that country, the system has produced a sense of national unity between the Finnish speaking majority and the Swedish speaking minority that is enviable by Canadian standards.
Obviously it is not possible at this time to state categorically what definition my hon. colleagues might give to sufficient demand if they had the chance to review the concept in open debate.
However, I do feel confident that they would not choose to make it as loose as the definition that the federal cabinet chose to impose by order in council on January 1, 1992. This definition is so lopsided that it mandates services in English in Barkmere, Quebec, which has an anglophone population of 20, and in French on Baffin Island where 10 government departments and agencies, including the RCMP, the CBC and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, must provide bilingual services for the benefit of 220 francophones.
My guess is that my colleagues would stop the charade in which Toronto was designated bilingual for the purposes of federal services despite the fact that French is only the 11th most widely spoken language after such languages as Chinese, Italian and Spanish.
Nor do I think they would continue to let English services be imposed in east Montreal where they are an affront to the homogeneous francophone population that nonetheless feels that its linguistic heritage is gravely in peril.
I believe that my colleagues would adopt a definition of sufficient demand very similar to the one advocated by the Canadian Federation of Municipalities which maintains that services should be offered in an individual town, city or rural district only when the linguistic minority meets two statistical measures.
The minority must be above a certain percentage of the local population and it must also be above a certain total number. The
federation uses 5,000 as the minimum and absolute number and 10 per cent as the lowest acceptable percentage.
With these two criteria set, sufficient demand would include the vast majority of French speakers living outside Quebec and most English speakers inside Quebec but it would not be nearly as much of an intrusion as the present secretive definition.
In short, both minority rights and majority rights would be acknowledged. Canadians would be one step closer to true linguistic justice and, by extension, one step closer to a genuine, lasting national unity.
In closing, I draw the attention of my colleagues to another important anniversary. The year 1994 is not only the 25th anniversary of the Official Languages Act, it is also the 50th anniversary of D-Day. Half a century has passed since our fathers shed their blood on the sands of Normandy so that we could live in a country characterized by free and open government.
Let us take this opportunity to honour their memory by amending the act to remove its secretive, arbitrary aspects. Then perhaps we may consider ourselves worthy of the legacy of freedom that they bequeathed to us.