Language Training and Fiscal Downturns

Canada, albeit in better fiscal shape than most of the G20 countries, has a huge deficit to contend with; $56-billion last year. That's the deficit, not the debt. Which, during a more economically stable era was wrestled down to manageable levels. That was before the international-interlinked world of finance fell into the disrepute of a global meltdown. Unlike some countries in the European Union that are facing the possibility of economic collapse and being propped up by the EU, and the United States which hasn't seen its economy pull out of its deep doldrums, Canada has seen some light.

Not enough, though, and that is expressed by the fact that the Bank of Canada has decided not to raise the prime interest rate, and that although trade and manufacturing have begun to pick up, our unemployment figures have not yet recovered, and likely won't to do until there is significant recovery in employment in the United States, our largest trading partner, by far. Government has clamped down on spending, we've been advised, and they are indeed, in some areas. Government departments have been informed they are expected to live within a restrained budget.

Treasury Board, doing the communicating on this critical issue, has issued guidelines for their departmental peers. And within Treasury Board itself, it has been revealed, runaway costs for language training have spiralled and continue to do so. Because French-language training for government workers is a sacred cow that cannot be taken to the sacrificial alter of cut-back. Every year greater numbers of government positions are being declared bilingual and greater numbers of government employees are sent off for language training.

Many of these French-language graduates will rarely use their taxpayer-bought-and-paid-for language training, for there is no actual need for it to be used in the positions which they hold. The larger advantage of federal government employees in the adventure of seeing official bilingualism swallow unofficial unilingual-English-service has resulted in native French-speakers getting the lion's share of positions that require professional expertise, aside from language. Resulting in better-qualified English-only candidates for positions being turned away.

As long as Canada remains subservient to Pierre Trudeau's French-nation-mollifying move to enshrine official bilingualism as unshakable government policy, the advantage will always go to the language, not the professional qualifications in job applications. Add to that disadvantage another one, costly to taxpayers and with absolutely questionable application as regards usage and need. At the Treasury Board Secretariat in the past 5 years, language-training expenses have soared from $428,499 to $2.1-billion in the 2009-10 fiscal year.

The Official Languages Act holds that federal offices, where population-size warrants it, must offer the public services in both official languages. Within some areas of the country, and most specifically the national capital region - Ottawa and environs - employees are entitled to a bilingual workplace. Not the public only, although they too are similarly entitled to services in the language of their choice - but federal workers as well, must be able to work in the language of their preference.

Enshrining language rights as an entitlement was supposed to satiate the appetite of French-Canadians for greater independence and recognition of their national uniqueness. That it has not done so in any measurable way, amply evidenced by Quebec's continual confederation restiveness should long ago have pronounced failure to the ploy, but it has not. It is a red-hot, contentious poker that no one wants to poke about in the embers of French-Canadian discontent.

And Canada is left with the fairly useless French-language debate, a costly enterprise that has not settled the perennial problem of Quebec's gentle blackmail, but which bedevils the lives of those who find job-seeking in the National Capital frustratingly contextualized in language, not suitable education and experience and professional qualifications. The proportion of language-requiring positions in the public service continues to grow. Largely benefiting native French-speakers to the detriment of English-speakers.

It has hugely benefited the growing contingent of language training schools upon which the federal government relies, along with the services of translation and editing companies sitting pretty with the assurance that their businesses will never suffer from a downturn in the economy.