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A majority of Canadians outside Quebec no longer view bilingualism as an ideal worth defending. According to a poll conducted earlier this year, a mere 35 per cent held a positive view of official bilingualism. A similar percentage thought that bilingualism was at the heart of the Canadian identity. More worrying, only 19 per cent thought it very important (and 24 per cent somewhat important) that Canada remained an officially bilingual country.

This negative perception should come as no surprise. Canada’s version of bilingualism is increasingly divorced from reality. The cause of promoting Canadian bilingualism would be better served if it were couched in Swiss-like terms, ensuring safe spaces for the nation’s two languages. The good news is that Canada is de facto moving in that direction, although it is not politically acceptable to say this so openly.

Official bilingualism cannot arrest the decline of French outside Quebec, nor should we expect it to.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s vision of bilingualism, embodied in the Official Languages Act of 1969, was a response to the needs of the time. The message, specifically to Quebecois threatening to secede, was clear: all of Canada is yours; your right to use and to educate your children in French is henceforth protected across the land. The act marked a bold break with the past, hopefully repairing the sad legacy of a century of anti-French laws outside Quebec.

And it worked. The 1980 referendum on Quebec’s independence was soundly defeated. Canada was henceforth to be (and to be seen as) a bilingual nation, with bilingualism a fundamental Canadian value, and francophones and anglophones being guaranteed equal rights A mari usque ad mare.

However, we now know that this noble vision of bilingualism failed to stop the decline of French, notably outside Quebec; but then, this was not the act’s initial intent.

The figures are well-known. According to the 2021 census, French is the mother tongue of only 3.2 per cent of Canadians outside Quebec. For the language spoken at home, the percentage drops to 1.9, which tells us that some 40 per cent of francophones in the rest of Canada........

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