BRIEF BY PROFESSOR FRANÇOIS LAROCQUE RESEARCH CHAIR IN LANGUAGE RIGHTS UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA PRESENTED TO THE SENATE STANDING COMMITTEE ON OFFICIAL LANGUAGES AS PART OF ITS STUDY OF THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGES REFORM PROPOSAL UNVEILED ON FEBRUARY 19, 2021, BY THE MINISTER OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND OFFICIAL LANGUAGES, ENGLISH AND FRENCH: TOWARDS A SUBSTANTIVE EQUALITY OF OFFICIAL LANGUAGES IN CANADA MAY 31, 2021 Professor François Larocque Faculty of Law, Common Law Section University of Ottawa 57 Louis Pasteur Ottawa, ON K1J 6N5 Telephone: 613-562-5800, ext. 3283 Email:
[email protected] 1. Thank you very much to the honourable members of the Senate Standing Committee on Official Languages (the “Committee”) for inviting me to testify and submit a brief as part of the study of the official languages reform proposal entitled French and English: Towards a Substantive Equality of Official Languages in Canada (“the reform proposal”). A) The reform proposal includes ambitious and essential measures 2. First, I would like to congratulate the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages for her leadership and vision. It is, in my opinion, the most ambitious official languages reform proposal since the enactment of the Constitution Act, 1982 (“CA1982”)1 and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (“Charter”),2 which enshrined the main provisions of the Official Languages Act (“OLA”)3 of 1969 in the Canadian Constitution. The last reform of the OLA was in 1988 and it is past time to modernize it to adapt it to Canada’s linguistic realities and challenges in the 21st century. 3. The Charter and the OLA proclaim that “English and French are the official languages of Canada and have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the Parliament and government of Canada.”4 In reality, however, as reported by Statistics Canada,5 English is dominant everywhere, while French is declining, including in Quebec.