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Jeff Leiper — 'to the female mayor'? | Opinion

Brigitte Pellerin: The Ottawa city councillor only has three words in French on his election signs, and he got them wrong — twice.

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Did you catch the Césars in Paris the other day where Jim Carrey accepted an award in French? It took him months of dedicated work to be able to speak for eight minutes, because he wanted to get it right. If only mayoral candidates in Ottawa were half as devoted to their francophone constituents.

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Over the weekend, I saw a video by current Kitchissippi Coun. and mayoral candidate Jeff Leiper waxing eloquently about a time when transit in this town worked. Remember the old 95? If you do, you’ll enjoy his reminiscences. And I was, up until I saw the bilingual-ish electoral sign at the end. Underneath his name, it said “For Mayor | Pour le maire.”

I stared with my angry eyes and took a screenshot, which I then posted with a stern message expressing my disappointment and frustration. As a francophone, I feel insulted that a candidate who’s trolling for my vote would not bother to get the three words in French on his sign right. We don’t say “pour le maire.” We say “à la mairie.”

Later I saw another video from him about hockey … I think? I didn’t watch because I scrolled right through to the end and sure enough, the electoral sign had been updated … to a different mistake. This time it said, “For Mayor | À la maire.”

To the female mayor? This, dear reader, is where I lost it.

Sure, he gets points for being responsive. But maybe get it right, too? I’m not asking for eight minutes of grand elocution in front of a Paris audience. I’m asking for three words to be vetted by a qualified francophone communicator with a minimum of experience in electoral politics in Canada. There are a few of us around.

And it matters. Without wishing to speak for anyone else, I doubt fluency in French is the number one issue in mayoral politics. But that doesn’t mean we don’t care, especially when we’re being insulted like that.

I looked, and last election Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s signs had the same egregious mistake as Leiper’s. Catherine McKenney had the correct three French words on their signs. To his credit, Sutcliffe now makes the effort of posting mistake-free bilingual stories pretty much everywhere.

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Leiper doesn’t have a campaign website yet. The other two potential candidates, Alex Lawson and Neil Saravanamuttoo, have English-only websites. Lawson says, “When I am a candidate for mayor I will have French on my website,” and did not answer my question asking if he’s bilingual. Saravanamuttoo says he’s bilingual, albeit “a little rusty,” and plans to have proper French content in his communications if he officially declares his candidacy.

Leiper insists he “always felt comfortable in French at the doors,” and agrees “accurate and thoughtful French is important.” He’s not saying sorry, but he pledges to do better. “The campaign team is still gelling and it’s important to me that once the campaign gets underway officially we have materials available in multiple languages, intelligently written and with the appropriate resources brought to bear to ensure that.”

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Why wait? If you’re going to go to the trouble of releasing campaign videos with electoral signs, why not have the three words of French be accurate instead of wrong in two different ways? Why make me feel like I am, maybe, a nice to have, whenever, sometime later, once we’ve gelled?

French isn’t just another cultural quirk. It’s one of two official languages in this country. Of which Ottawa is the capital city. How dare anyone think it’s fine to release something egregious without checking first?

I am OK with a politician (or an actor) who’s not bilingual and hurts my ears when speaking my language, as long as they’re trying and keep endeavouring to get better. But getting three words wrong two different ways and not even apologize? Ça ne passe pas.

Brigitte Pellerin (they/them) is an Ottawa writer.

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