Giving New Momentum to Canada’s Linguistic Duality!

For example, in 1981, the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and of the House of Commons on Official Languages pointed out that “twelve years after Parliament’s adoption of the Official Languages Act, few, if any, federal institutions 8 are yet capable of meeting the Act’s requirements in a fully satisfactory manner.” In 1987, the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and of the House of Common [...] Parliament stated in the 1988 OLA that the objective was to “ensure respect for English and French as the official languages of Canada,” “support the development of English and French linguistic minority communities,” and “set out the powers, duties and functions of federal institutions with 10 respect to the official languages.” The 1988 OLA also expressed the federal government’s commitment to “ [...] During the study of the bill that would become the 1988 OLA, the Honourable Ray Hnatyshyn, Minister of Justice, mentioned that a reform of the language policy had been necessary, and that the new OLA was designed “to take into account the fundamental elements of [Canada’s] language policy as it has evolved over the past 120 years, and to 12 allow us to meet the changing needs of Canadian society.” [...] The numerous observations as to the inadequate implementation of the OLA led to the 1996 special report on the Federal Government’s Implementation of Part VII of the Official Languages Act, in which the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada commented that: Part VII of the Official Languages Act 1988 has until now had a relatively weak impact as measured in terms of the objectives set out by [...] The following are but a few examples identified over the past two years: (1) the poor performance of federal institutions in terms of “active offer” in communications with and services to the public in 25 both official languages; (2) the high percentage of public servants who cannot always use 26 the official language of their choice in the workplace; (3) the disorganized governance of the officia