Wasting Federal Funds

The amount of taxpayer funds going out annually in support of official bilingualism in Canada is staggering. Particularly so when the country has so many other critical areas of funding concern. Issues such as underfunded educational institutes, our health care system under duress, the truly dreadful health and living conditions of our Aboriginals, national child poverty, the requirement to have more affordable housing for the working poor, along with social services for the homeless and the destitute.

Canada is faced with a crumbling municipal infrastructure problem; our bridges and highways, public buildings all require remediation, remodelling, replacement. Our Armed Forces' level still does not reflect the robust state a country the size of Canada requires for the purpose of internal emergency service as well as in reflection of our NATO commitments.

Our provinces require a more usefully equitable transfer payment system to meet their obligations in some of those critical areas noted above. As well as to permit them to support their municipalities' needs.

Yet here we are, continuing to invest huge sums of taxpayer-derived funds (are there any other?) toward placating French-speaking enclaves however slender their representative numbers, however adrift they may be geographically in a sea of English-speaking majority situations.

Recently revealed statistics indicate that far-flung and discrete groups of Francophones, anxious to retain their mother-tongue and well-funded to do so, are still losing ground and a slow assimilation is taking place as greater numbers are beginning to speak English at home.

Yet these census data are transcribed by supporters of ongoing federal government expenditures as a signal that not enough funding is taking place. Insisting that this reveals a real and pressing need for remote French-speaking communities, gradually succumbing to assimilation - which would be the best possible thing that could happen to Canada in any event, ensuring less antagonism vis-a-vis language - to be more handsomely funded.

It's funding into the stratosphere of billions, not hundreds of millions, these self-entitled groups proclaim is required and which represents their basic right as one of the two "founding member-languages" of this country. The numbers of Canadians identifying French as a home language is steadily declining. "There are places where it's almost catastrophic" wails one representative of a stridently-demanding French-language group.

Yet this is a longstanding trend, we've been at pains to overlook, as greater numbers of Canadians report their language of daily living has slid from French toward English. It's a fact of life, a convenience to succumb to using the language of the majority. It helps people to become more comfortable and accepting of one another. Speaking a common language leads to better understanding, gives less reason for friction. All to the good.

Indeed, the province of Quebec has steadily been leaking mother-tongue French speakers as they migrate toward the rest of Canada. They too, find the insistence of French, particularly shutting their school-age children out of learning in English and placing them at an obvious disadvantage in other provinces with a minority language, too stifling. By all means, maintain connection to the root language, but don't expect absurdly inappropriate funding to do so.

Here's some perspective on the inconsequentiality of spoken French in a small Newfoundland community, where the principal of the French language elementary school explains that most of its students don't speak French at home. "For most of our youth French is just a language of school. It's not a living language." Still, he goes on, it puts children in touch with their heritage. While also learning songs and stories, and accordion.