Official languages or national languages? : Langues officielles ou langues nationales? : Le choix du Canada

CANADA’S DECISION 1 INTRODUCTION On 16 October 2013, in the Speech from the Throne beginning the 2nd Session of the 41st Parliament, the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, described Canada as a “federation in which [our] two national languages position us uniquely in the world.”1 The Prime Minister of Canada also used the term “national languages” in his message in the Ro [...] The explanation is based mainly on the concepts put forward by the University of Ottawa’s Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute (OLBI) and the Commission of Inquiry on the Position of the French Language and on Language Rights in Quebec (Gendron Commission). [...] There would, however, be no concomitant obligation on the part of the state, (and conceivably perhaps, no legal power – in the absence, in any case, of an express legal stipulation to that effect), to aid such National Languages, either directly in the form of financial subventions, or indirectly in the form of the interposition of the state administrative apparatus.17 3 CANADA’S DECISION The OLBI [...] Section 133 reads as follows: Either the English or the French Language may be used by any Person in the Debates of the Houses of the Parliament of Canada and of the Houses of the Legislature of Quebec; and both those Languages shall be used in the respective Records and Journals of those Houses; and either of those Languages may be used by any Person or in any Pleading or Process in or issuing fr [...] Section 133 of the BNA Act provides that both English and French may be used in the debates of the Parliament of Canada, and of the Legislature of Quebec.