Filibuster CartoonsTitle: Bilingualism bullies (click to view)
Date: July 16, 2011
One of the great unresolved debates of modern Canadian history centers around what precisely it means to be an "officially bilingual country." To one group, "minimalists," let's say, official bilingualism is simply about providing practical services in practical contexts. If you are a government employee who deals with the public in a part of Canada where there is a substantial French-speaking population, then it only makes sense for you to be bilingual, in order to best service the community. On the other hand you have a different group, the "maximalists," who say no, context should not matter.
Everyone in Canada who interacts with public should be functionally bilingual, and fully prepared to speak either fluent French or English at any time, any place — even in communities where the French population teeters on the non-existent.
Michel Thibodeau is clearly a member of the latter camp. In 2009, while flying on an Air Canada flight between the two English-speaking cities of Toronto and Atlanta, he ordered a Spite in French only to receive — wait for it —
a 7-Up instead. The mix-up was obvious entrapment. A computer technician for the House of Commons, Monsieur Thibodeau speaks wonderful English, but still enjoys tweaking those who aren't as effortlessly bilingual as him. He sued Air Canada for the mental anguish he experienced as a result of being served by a unilnigual Anglo stewardess, and was awarded $12,000 in damages this week by the Federal Court of Canada, who agreed that the poor man's rights had indeed been violated. His payout was far cry from the half a mil he had originally requested, but still an ample improvement over the measly 5,000 bucks he received in 2000, when he sued Air Canada
over the exact same thing.
For reasons I don't entirely understand, Air Canada is required to be an officially bilingual company by federal law, despite the fact that it has been independent of government management since 1989. This means that the corporation should not, legally speaking,
ever get caught in one of the "gotcha" moments Thibodeau instigated, though this has clearly been hard to implement in practice. Air Canada flies Canadians from all over the country all over the world, including many English-to-English routes of the sort Thibodeau was abused on. Since there are so few Canadians who speak French outside of the province of Quebec, a company like Air Canada only really has two possible ways to adhere to federal law when staffing its non-Quebec branches: a) it can either engage in a huge affirmative-action hiring bias towards the country's French Canadian minority, at the expense of everyone equally (or more) qualified, or b) simply ignore the policy and hope no one notices.
The fact that someone has, in fact, noticed (for the second time), and been celebrated by the courts for his efforts, means that the maximalist doctrine of bilingualism is likely to gain more traction across Canada in the aftermath. This is very good news for someone like Thibodeau, who already inhabits Canada's most politically privileged class, dominating, as they do, all senior levels of political, bureaucratic, and legal authority in this country. Bad news for everyone unfortunate enough to be born and raised in a community where French skills were simply not relevant or useful, however. National companies and federal agencies fearful of having to make Air Canada-style payouts (and endure the ensuing bad press) will doubtlessly ratchet up their bilingualism standards in the wake of the Thibodeau case, taking a cool pass on may prospective employees whose French previously seemed "good enough."
As the pundit in
this Sun TV clip notes, there is a world of difference between being a bilingual country and a country with merely two official languages. When Canada's Official Languages Act was passed and implemented in the 1960s, many leading members of Canada's political elite stated firmly that their policy was not really about bilingualism at all, since they acknowledged Canada was not, and probably never would be, a country where French and English are spoken in equal tandem across the land. Today, however, much of that thinking seems to have been quietly discarded, as more and more professional Canadians are encouraged to become bilingual in order to improve their career paths, and employers are encouraged to discriminate against those who don't.
Canada, long one of the most self-confident and influential English-speaking countries on earth, is being very publicly humiliated and bullied into transforming itself into something it has never historically wanted nor needed to be. But if that means fewer mixed-up soda orders for crusading shakedown artists, I'm sure it will all be worth it.
CKA Super Elite 
I kid, I kid. 
