Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise this afternoon and support the motion put forward by my hon. colleague from Nanaimo-Cowichan.
Twenty-five years ago the first Official Languages Act was passed, as has been noted. Since that time we have never fully reviewed its operation to see if this multibillion dollar ship is taking us where we want to go.
In 1988 the act was revised incorporating three main objectives: first, to ensure the equal status of the two official languages; second, to support the development of official language minority communities; and third, to set out the powers, duties and functions of federal institutions in this area.
To ensure compliance with the spirit and intent of the act, a commissioner of official languages has been appointed. His job is to protect language rights of individuals and groups, evaluate linguistic performance of federal institutions and monitor the advancement of French and English. In other words, the commissioner's mandate is to promote the act, not to evaluate its effectiveness.
Unfortunately, the auditor general has not undertaken a comprehensive review of the act during its entire 25 year evolution. This is a serious flaw.
What we do have is a series of reports, studies and audits of particular aspects of the act. Nobody has looked at the whole thing. Even if problems are identified, no one has the mandate to change aspects of it that are not working.
For example, in past annual reports the commissioner has repeatedly criticized the failure of the government to communicate the basic purpose of the act to the Canadian people. In the words of the commissioner, this has resulted in negative hearsay and durable falsehoods. Despite being over two decades old, Canadians still do not even understand why the act exists. Something is definitely wrong, but the commissioner is not empowered to fix it.
The commissioner's 1993 annual report notes that the Canadian solution to the co-existence of two dominant languages is focused on individual rights rather than the establishment of a territorial linguistic regime. This means the intention of the act is to ensure Canadians can receive services from federal institutions in the official language of their choice regardless of where they happen to live.
During 1993 the office of the commissioner completed its own study of individual choice versus territoriality in the implementation of language rights. Again I quote: "The study concluded that Canada has struck its own balance between individual rights and territoriality, and has done so as a function of its own history and specific human needs".
Despite the fact that the act is not supposed to be territorial in nature, government services in both languages are not universally available, only where there is significant demand and where it is reasonable, logical and fair to do so. This makes some sense but it does not meet the demands of individual complainants who believe their rights to full services under the act have been violated.
Each province implements the act differently. This means the results are also measurably different in each province. Is this a failure of the act or was this the original intention? If we do not review the act nationwide, how do we know whether the overall objectives are feasible or even desirable?
The 1993 report began with a quote from Montesquieu: "Nothing is just merely because it forms part of the law; rather, it should be law because it is just". The Official Languages Act is the law but if we do not examine it impartially and thoroughly how can we know that it is just?
One example of a perceived failure illustrates this point. Many minority official languages communities are upset because they do not receive services of comparable quality to those afforded to the majority. Perhaps this is neither realistic nor affordable. Perhaps we should be looking at providing services of adequate quality rather than comparable quality. No
one is looking at alternative solutions to these problems. The commissioner's role is to pursue the goal of comparable services, not to question whether that goal is attainable.
The Spicer commission studied Canadians' perceptions of the Official Languages Act. One participant: "Being able to speak both English and French should be a worthwhile personal goal for all citizens of Canada. It is also an achievable goal, if only the politicians had the courage to admit that the language policies they have been advocating for the past two decades failed miserably and left the country deeply divided. It is time to scrap the enforced bilingualism policy and heal the wounds".
As my hon. colleague mentioned earlier, another participant in the citizens' forum on Canada's future stated: "Pierre Trudeau's vision of a multicultural and bilingual society for Canada was a noble one, but it is apparent now that it will simply not work".
We are certainly a more bilingual country than we were in 1969, but we are far from achieving the goals of the act and it has been in operation for more than a generation. Surely if the act was workable we would have met most, if not all, of the goals by now.
The list of failures is long. We have failed to achieve equity in the language of work in federal institutions. We have failed to communicate the basic purpose of the act to Canadians. As a result, the act does not enjoy universal support. As I already stated, it has failed to provide comparable quality services to minority official languages communities. It has failed to establish universal access to services in the language of choice resulting in territoriality playing a significant role.
After 25 years why has the official languages policy failed to meet virtually all of its objectives? Without an independent review of the fundamental principles, structure and implementation regimes we will never know. We will merely continue to add to the list of failures because questioning the goals or the means of achieving them is beyond the mandate of the commissioner.
Let us compare the Official Languages Act to a sailing ship under Christopher Columbus. The office of the commissioner has certain tasks to perform, such as investigating complaints, auditing specific federal departments of compliance and ensuring implementation of minority language education programs. These are like the specific tasks of sailors to mend the sails, scrub the decks or feed the crew.
Every once in a while the auditor general comes along and performs an audit on a discreet part of the ship such as his 1991 audit of the translation bureau. This is like lowering a sailor over the side of the ship to chip off a few barnacles rather than checking the integrity of the hull. We fix one or two problems with the sails, replace some lines and bail out the bilge, but no one has looked at the whole ship. We are so concerned with the day to day operations and studying the individual components that no one has looked to see where the ship is going.
Columbus knew his mission was to get to the far east and he fixed the little leaks along the way, but after two months under sail he ended up in America instead. If we do not completely review the act, how can we be sure we will achieve the stated objectives? More important, how do we know our national objectives have not changed?
Right now we do not even know if we are still going in the right direction because we have not done one comprehensive audit in 25 years. Remember, his sails were repaired regularly but Christopher Columbus was not even in the right ocean, let alone on course.
I urge all members to support this motion to conduct a thorough review of the act. We may not all agree on where we think the official languages ship should be headed, but an independent auditor could make sure we are at least sailing in the direction supported by the majority of the crew, in this case the Canadian taxpayers who continue to foot the bill.