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I see linguistic duality as a value, not a burden, and I have found that many public servants agree with me. It is an integral part of the federal public service and enables every employee to contribute to the fullest of his or her ability. Through the Official Languages Act and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it is also expressed as a series of rights for all citizens. And rights are meaningless if the government may choose to ignore them. So yes, my staff occasionally monitors key elements of bilingual service; citizens can file complaints with my office; and, in the extremely rare cases where the government proves intractable, it can be taken to court.

Kelly Egan and I agree on one thing: the way the Official Languages Act is implemented does not always work well. Not everyone arrives in the public service already bilingual, and language training by federal institutions is often too little and offered too late in a public servant’s career. In some departments, people are sent for intensive language training for months just before they are transferred to a bilingual position, rather than having them build language skills over a few years as they work. There need to be more opportunities to strengthen language skills at university, and language training must be integral to a public servant’s career plans, not something done at the last minute.

And yet, despite these deficiencies, literally tens of thousands of bilingual positions within the public service are occupied by anglophones. Nationally, francophones and anglophones occupy positions in a proportion that roughly mirrors their demographic weight, including at the executive levels.