Canada’s bilingualism policy produces some strange spectacles: French schools in the Arctic, French CBC programming for Albertans, prime ministers speaking French in Australia, a $126-million French-language university in Toronto with just 25 students. In an essay for Maclean’s, commentator @JJ_McCullough argues that these are signs of a political doctrine that has become more revered than rationally defended. “State-mandated bilingualism conflicts with Canada’s self-image as a fair and merit-based democracy,” he writes. “And the worst may be yet to come.” McCullough writes that the usual case for bilingualism rests on shakier ground than Canadians like to admit. It’s often justified as a historic obligation to one of the country’s “two founding peoples.” But he points out that Canada was never meaningfully a country of only two peoples. In any case, he argues that official bilingualism was more of an accommodation to keep Quebec nationalism in check. “Official bilingualism nevertheless remains venerated by all manner of Canadian elites as a taboo in the truest sense,” he writes. McCullough’s point is that the language policy merely privileges a narrow pool of bilingual people from the Laurentian region to the upper ranks of politics, government and public institutions. The result, he argues, is a gatekeeping system that shuts many Canadians out of top careers. “This bilingual glass ceiling on political talent has warped Canadian democracy,” he writes. “Review the heads of basically any senior federal institution, be it the courts, Crown Corporations, the military or some major regulatory board and you’ll find a Canadian elite that remains much whiter and much more Laurentian than the country it rules.” In a country that presents itself as multicultural, meritocratic and inclusive, he argues, official bilingualism is becoming harder to defend as anything other than exclusion with financial and cultural costs. macleans.ca/politics/offic…
