I recently completed a trip across Canada. I visited all of the provincial capitals, with the exception of Charlottetown. I met with francophone minorities outside Quebec. I heard some amazing stories.
A resident of British Columbia was told that there were no bilingual stenographers in all of Canada, whereas there are at least 17 bilingual court stenographers in Montreal alone. A person was asked if he would agree to a preliminary hearing in English and was promised that the transcripts would be translated into French afterward. That person was later told that the $20,000 cost of translating the transcripts was too high. When the time came for that person to go to trial, he was told that since his preliminary hearing had been in English, then surely he was also capable of understanding trial proceedings conducted in English.
In my office, I got a lot of information and press clippings intended to show me how well French is doing outside Quebec. I picked up only four before leaving my office this morning.
In Ontario, for the school census, they are unfortunately unable to correct the form, which says that the photocopiers
cannot print on both sides. That is the reason which the ministry gave to Ontario's francophones.
In 1994, a key year for Franco-Ontarians, the Auditor General of that province criticized the Ministry of Education for not providing francophones with good services and he says that the services given to francophones are inferior. Our friend from Carleton-Gloucester is quoted here: "Deploring the lack of bilingual judges, six-year wait for civil cases in Ontario, backlog of 1400 trials".
The gem is Mr. Vastel's article, where it mentions that someone is looking for "sewers, preferably bilingual". Let me explain. In Kingston, the city where they want to relocate the military college because it is bilingual, the Employment Centre has an advertisement for a "sewer"; let me spell it out in case I do not pronounce it correctly, so that there is no ambiguity. It should be translated in French as "couseur" or "couseuse", but the advertisement says "égout"-quite a different sewer!
Another situation. I just heard someone from Saskatoon ask the Minister of Heritage a question. There is an advertisement in the Saskatoon Employment Centre for a "cook for menu in family style restaurant", which was translated "faire cuire de menus dans famille coiffée de restaurant". Those are a few gems.
To get back to something more serious, although we need to laugh a little, we will talk about bonuses. I admit that bilingualism is costly. We talked about bilingualism bonuses, for example. Do you know that such bonuses have existed since 1888? In 1888, bilingualism bonuses were established. They were $50 for any francophone civil servant who could take English dictation or for any anglophone civil servant who could take French dictation. So Canada has always wanted to recognize bilingualism with a bonus. In reality, in constant dollars, $800 is not much compared to the $50 offered in 1888 just for writing a dictation. Now they are given a bonus to be operational, so that they can respond and give service. I do not think that $800 is a lot.
If you want to make cuts in bilingualism, I do not think that is the place to do it. Training is where the cuts should be made. If you need to be bilingual for a position, you should be bilingual before you are hired and not have someone take courses and more courses and still more courses, which is very expensive. Why take a public servant from his office and send him for three months of immersion somewhere, the Château Frontenac, perhaps, for the Christmas holidays, or maybe Toronto, if he is French-speaking.
I find it inconceivable that, 25 years after the passage of the Official Languages Act, we continue to send unilingual public servants on language training at public expense. If bilingualism is a condition of employment, then they should be bilingual at the time they are hired. I am not talking about refresher or upgrading courses, which are relatively inexpensive. But to pay for the basic language training of unilingual civil servants is too expensive. We could easily save close to $96 million a year, if you count the training costs plus the program administration costs. That is no paltry amount.
I would like to call imagination into play. In a draft article which was sent to me, Professor Bouvier calls it the ignorance bonus versus the bilingualism bonus. The latter, the bonus paid to those bilingual civil servants who fulfil their duties satisfactorily, should remain. As for the other one, the ignorance bonus, we could do away with it.
According to an article published in The Ottawa Citizen , the report just produced by Mr. Goldbloom must be seen as conveying a double message, both a judgment and a warning. Why a warning? Year after year, we are reminded in that report about all that is going well and all that is going wrong in Canada. Let us face it, it is not a bed of roses for francophones outside Quebec.
When you think about ways of preserving your language, it is important to know that you can get served in your own language. I can remember back in my youth, when we went out shopping. We could safely go to Dupuis Frères knowing that we would be served in French. But beyond Saint-Laurent Street, you were sure to have to ask to be served in French because it was not automatic; they would answer you in English. We had to besiege Sainte-Catherine Street to get the restaurants to translate their menus. Is it through these little day-to-day battles that Quebec was able to assert its French and French-speaking colour more and more.
I listened carefully to the hon. member for Nanaimo who spoke first, I think, on behalf of the Reform Party, as he enumerated all the milestones, but I could not help but notice that he had major memory blanks. He systematically failed to mention any legislation passed in Quebec that favoured anglophones. He only talked about those that anglophones had trouble with, like Bill 101 and Bill 178 on signs for example. When I travelled in Canada, I saw unilingual signs everywhere except in airports.
I drove to Calgary to visit the Dinosaur Museum-the real ones- and along the way I encountered no road sign that bore anything beside directions in English, not even international symbols. The same thing last week in Newfoundland, I saw nothing but English all over the place. So, when they come and tell us that there were trials and cases were taken all the way to the United Nations because poor little English Canadians were treated badly in Quebec, give me a break. People should come and see for themselves that it is possible to live both in French and in English in Quebec. In fact, it is the only place where it is
possible. It is not possible to live in both official languages anywhere in Canada except in Quebec.
I am talking about entire provinces. Of course, in Northern Ontario there are towns that are 100 per cent French-speaking. That is true, there are some in Northern Ontario.
There are towns in New Brunswick where people can live in French even when surrounded by English. But there are others in the Prairies, in Western Canada, in the Maritimes, and if their numbers do not warrant it, they may obtain nothing. We read in the newspapers about what happened in Kingston; they may be up to 4,999, but there is still one missing; I may move there to bring that number to 5,000 so they can receive services in French.
What seems extremely important to me is to stop dreaming and realize that Canada is an English-speaking country. When one lives abroad-I lived in Portugal for ten months and whenever I said e esto Canadense, everyone would speak to me in English. Nobody thought that I could be francophone. And as I spoke French, they said, "Ah, there is some French there."
In every embassy except in Paris, we are addressed in English. Let us stop putting our heads in the sand. Canada is an English-speaking country. Why did the Trudeau government pass a law in 1969? To stop the rise of nationalism in Quebec. That is why Mr. Trudeau drafted his law in 1969. That was the only reason.
Section 23 of the 1982 Constitution Act protects the rights of French-speaking communities outside Quebec, with respect to their schools in particular, but even Supreme Court decisions were not enough to put this in practice. Mrs. Landry, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, had to give $112 million to the provinces, and I agree with our friends from the Reform Party that it costs the federal government a lot of money because the provinces do not assume their responsibilities. The provinces do not respect the Constitution and the federal government's only recourse is to give them $112 million so that they can respect their minority populations.
I think it is extremely important to realize something else. Among the many symbols we are very proud of in this country is the national anthem we still have in common, namely O Canada, which was first performed on June 24, 1980, and officially proclaimed as our national anthem on July 1, 1980. The music was composed by Calixa Lavallée and the lyrics were written by Mr. Routhier. I remember very well the debate that took place in this House, and it would be quite informative for the members who did not have the opportunity to follow that debate. I remember how difficult it was to draft the English version and even today I meet anglophones who are surprised to see that we changed the lyrics of their national anthem. It is time to set the record straight. Canada comes from Quebec. That is where Canada got its start, just like the national anthem. It should be pointed out that when each province joined the Canadian community, the majority was French-speaking. If francophones' rights had been respected from the start, we might not be where we are today.
Before I sit down, I want to remind members of one last thing, namely that belonging to a country has its price. Here, Canada decided to be bilingual. Those who find it too expensive can move to the United States. It is cheaper to live in the United States. But there is a price to pay for living in a bilingual country. It seems extremely important to me, and Quebecers are also aware that, costly as it is to be Canadian, it may be a little more expensive to be a Quebecer, but at least we will have all the tools we need to grow the way we want.