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, placed above a sign marking that the street is in Little Italy . An example of bilingualism at the municipal government level.]] Official Bilingualism in Canada refers to laws and policies that makes both English and French the official languages of Canada. Official languages are addressed in the '' Constitution Act, 1867 '' (section 133), the '' Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms '' (sections 16 to 23), in the '' Official Languages Act '', and Official Language Regulations 1. These laws establish the equality of status of English and French in federal institutions and guarantee the rights of English or French linguistic minorities in Canada. At the provincial level, only New Brunswick is officially bilingual (under Section 16 of the Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms ), though all provinces offer some services and education up to high school in both official languages. All three territories are officially bilingual. Several aboriginal languages are also official in Northwest Territories , and Inuktitut is an official language in Nunavut . PERSONAL BILINGUALISM IN CANADA See Also: Languages in Canada According to the 2001 census, only 17.65% of Canadians can speak both English and French, and over 80% of the population is unilingual in one or the other of the two official languages. Language knowledge is largely determined by geography. In Quebec, 95% of the population knows how to speak French, and in the rest of the country, almost 99% of the population is capable of speaking English. This means that less than 2% of the population is unable to use at least one of the two official languages.2 In geographic terms, personal bilingualism is largely limited to Quebec itself, and to a strip of territory sometimes referred to as the “ Bilingual Belt ”, that stretches east from Quebec into northern New Brunswick and west into parts of Ottawa and northeastern Ontario. About 40% of Quebec residents and but only 10% of non-Quebeckers claim to be bilingual. Thus, a majority of bilingual Canadians are themselves Quebeckers, and a high percentage of the bilingual population in the rest of Canada resides in close proximity to the Quebec border. FEDERAL LEGISLATION ON OFFICIAL LANGUAGES Constitution of Canada See Also: Constitution of Canada English and French have had limited constitutional protection since 1867. Section 133 of the '' Constitution Act, 1867 '' guarantees that both languages may be used in the Parliament of Canada, in its journals and records, and in court proceedings in any court established by the Parliament of Canada. This section also establishes an identical set of linguistic rights for French and English in Quebec--but not in any other province. The '' Constitution Act, 1982 '' entrenched much stronger and more detailed guarantees for the equal status of the two official languages in sections 16-23 of the '' Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms ''. Sections 16-19 guarantee the equal status of both languages in Parliament, in all federal government institutions, and in federal courts. These sections also mandate that all statutes, records and journals of Parliament be published in both languages, with the English and French versions both holding equal status before the courts. Section 20 guarantees the right of the Canadian public to communicate in English and French with any central government office or with regional offices where there is "a significant demand for communication with and services from that office." Significant demand is not defined in the Charter of Rights. One of the purposes of the Official Languages Act of 1988 was to remedy this omission. The Charter of Rights includes similar constitutional obligations making New Brunswick the only officially bilingual province in Canada3. Section 23 guarantees publicly-funded primary and secondary school instruction in their own language to children whose parents meet the following criteria:
Educational rights are not absolute. For one thing, the rights attach to the parent, not the child. As well, non-citizens residing in Canada do not have access to this right. If the parents' English-language or French-language education took place outside Canada, this does not enable the child to be educated in that language. Finally, the right to receive public funding can only be exercised in localities where "the number of children of citizens who have such a right is sufficient to warrant the provision to them out of public funds ...." 4. Because the key phrase, "where numbers ... warrant" is not defined in the Charter of Rights, and because it has not been possible to create a defintion within a single federal statute, as the Official Languages Act has done for federal services, disputes over the extent of the right to a publicly-funded minority-language education have been the source of much litigation. Official Languages Act See Also: Official Languages Act (Canada) .]] Canada adopted its first ''Official Languages Act'' in 1969, in response to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. The current ''Official Languages Act'' was adopted by the Parliament Of Canada in 1988 to improve the 1969 law's efforts to address two basic policy objectives: (1) to specify the powers, duties and functions of federal institutions relevant to official languages; (2) to support the development of linguistic minority communities. As well, following the adoption in 1982 of the Charter of Rights, it was necessary to create a legislative framework within which the Government of Canada could respect its new constitutional obligations regarding the official languages. 5 |
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