Official Bilingualism Failed Canada—Here Is What the U.S. Should Learn From It

Walking through Ottawa’s downtown on a weekday morning has an almost nostalgic quality. The federal buildings hum with bureaucratic French and English, the street signs greet you in two languages, but the cafés along Sparks Street primarily speak one language. in English. By quiet admission, the capital of a nation that is officially bilingual is not actually bilingual. Anyone watching from Washington should be able to deduce something significant from that detail alone.

This year marked the 57th anniversary of Canada’s Official Languages Act. According to those who have studied it the longest, the outcome is unsettling.

More than 20 years ago, Charles Castonguay, a demographer at the University of Ottawa who has spent decades studying census data, referred to the policy as a “complete failure”.He wasn’t acting dramatic. The current and historical numbers indicate that he was being accurate. In fact, since 2001, bilingualism rates outside of Quebec have decreased from 10.3% to 9.5%. Where it is present, the growth is almost entirely contained within Quebec.

The 1969 law’s designers may have sincerely thought that two languages could coexist as equals throughout a federation the size of a continent. Indeed, Pierre Trudeau did. However, the reality of demographics continued to shift.

Outside of Quebec, the proportion of people who speak French as their mother tongue has decreased, and immigrant groups that may have previously learned both languages are subtly choosing English. Over a 20-year period, the percentage of Canadians who are bilingual decreased from 5.7% to 4.7%. tiny quantity. Big signal.

The image is reversed inside Quebec. There, the percentage of French speakers who are bilingual increased from 36.6% to 42.2%, and over half of allophones—those who speak a third mother tongue—are able to converse in both. Thus, the policy is somewhat effective in the one province that took French seriously without much encouragement from the federal government. A francophone entering a passport office in Calgary or Halifax frequently finds herself switching to English in order to complete tasks, despite the federal apparatus spending billions outside of Quebec.

For Americans who sometimes propose making English the official language or, conversely, formalizing Spanish recognition in border states, there is a lesson in this. Official designation appears to be the simple part, based on Canadian experience. It’s during implementation that things quietly fall apart. Signage is subject to legislation. The language that people speak at lunch cannot be regulated.

For years, Jean-Paul Perrault, the leader of the advocacy organization Impératif Française, has been direct about it. Even in the Outaouais region, where the federal government is the biggest employer, francophones acknowledge that English predominates in meeting rooms. That kind of deterioration occurs gradually, almost imperceptibly, until someone discovers that the working language has completely changed.

Observing this, the American instinct might be to claim that official bilingualism is a Canadian issue with Canadian roots, Quebec, the Quiet Revolution, and the unresolved concerns of 1995. Perhaps. However, the more profound lesson is more universal. Even with the best of intentions, language policy is influenced by convenience, economics, and demographics. Pierre Trudeau was unable to change it. Justin was also unable to.

It’s difficult to avoid thinking that the United States, with its messier, more organic linguistic reality, might be better off ignoring the issue given the slow progress of Canada’s bilingual project. Statistical trends indicate that the market eventually resolves these issues. A policy that makes no promises can occasionally accomplish more than one that makes a lot of promises.