CJP 53 1 Bookreviews 216..217

216 Book Reviews/Recensions par exemple au mensonge en politique, aux fausses nouvelles, à la fabrication de l’opinion pub- lique). Une actualisation qui n’est pas faite par l’auteure elle-même, mais dont le travail généalogique permettra d’inspirer en retraçant les moments dans l’œuvre arendtienne. Canada’s Official Languages: Policy versus Work Practice in the Federal Public Service Helaina Gaspard, Ottawa, University of Ottawa Press, 2019, pp. 162. Martin Normand, University of Ottawa ([email protected]) In the preface to Canada’s Official Languages: Policy versus Work Practice in the Federal Public Service, Graham Fraser, former Commissioner of Official Languages, aptly observes that “Canada’s language policies have a history of paradoxes and contradictions” (ix). Helaina Gaspard gives credence to this observation in the particular remit of language of work in the federal public service. Language reform has been a focus within the federal public service mainly since the 1960s, with the goal of better representing linguistic duality in federal insti- tutions and of providing government services in French and English. Hence, for practical and symbolic reasons, successive governments took steps to ensure better representation and use of French in government business. Yet there remains an important gap between policy and practice, with the result that, in 2019, 50 years after the first Official Languages Act, a siz- able number of public servants still could not work in the official language of their choice. Gaspard suggests that this gap persists because the “implementation process never fully consid- ered the structural foundations … of the public service as an institution that traditionally oper- ated predominantly in English” (5). She convincingly illustrates how the design and the implementation of layered changes to language of work policy were never as successful as they were imagined to be. This book is situated at the confluence of public administration and language policy and manages to offer an important and original contribution to both fields. On the one hand, the study of public administration in Canada has devoted little attention to the implementation and evaluation of language policy in the federal public service. Gaspard’s work offers a significant descriptive contribution on that front, building upon the scholarship on representative bureaucracy and proposing a periodization of the various efforts to establish French as a legit- imate and regular language of work in the federal public service. On the other hand, the study of language policy in Canada has devoted little attention to the standing of official languages within the public service. Gaspard develops a compelling analytical narrative around institu- tionalism, path dependency and layering to explain the shortcomings of the successive language reforms and the role of various actors within the state apparatus. The institutional analysis raises the idea that successive incremental language reforms within the federal public service never amounted to the structural reform necessary to achieve the desired outcomes regarding language of work. This analysis relies upon rich and diverse archival material. Despite Fraser’s assertion that the decision to entrench the right of public servants to work in the language of their choice in 1988 was radical (x), Gaspard hints that its implementation was not radical enough. The interests of various actors—including unions, which have received little attention in relationship to language reforms until now—have always trumped the stated policy goals or the desired outcomes. She suggests that there has always Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.14, on 01 Oct 2021 at 03:55:44, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423919001082 Canadian Journal of Political Science 217 been “an alienation between those conceptualizing policy and those applying it” (54). This alienation has resulted in one of the main paradoxes of this analysis: “The language competen- cies and practices of managers were deemed to be the principal setback in progress for language of work, yet, paradoxically, were also to be the source of its improvement” (85). She concludes with a series of changes, drawing on lessons gleaned from the past 50 years, that could contribute to resolving this paradox. But she has little hope they will be implemented in a context where official languages are absent from the political discourse. While this book is compelling and convincing, three further elements could have enhanced the argument. First, while Gaspard studies numerous actors within the state apparatus, one important actor is missing: the public servants themselves. She explains how reforms have been manager-centric and concentrates a good part of her focus on the higher echelons within the public service. Sociolinguists who have studied language behaviour in minority settings in Canada have demonstrated that even in a context where rights are enshrined, minority-language speakers might be conditioned to use the majority language. There must be interesting findings to be unearthed by studying the language behaviours of public servants that might sug- gest other changes that could contribute to a successful language reform. Second, while she argues that language of work has been the least successful component of the official languages program (84), she proposes a romanticized view of language of service. Historically, managers have used loopholes in language policy to justify the lack of services in the minority language— including the concept of significant demand, which she briefly alludes to. To this day, problems persist, as the Commissioner of Official Languages annual report confirms. Language of service could have been better integrated into the analysis—not to make it the focus of the book but to paint a better picture of some obstacles within the public service, in order to ensure that language of service also reaches the desired outcomes. Finally, Gaspard tells us in the introduction that in addition to her archival work, she conducted fifteen interviews—yet these interviews are absent from the narrative. The analysis would have been richer and deeper had excerpts from the interviews been incorporated. This book should be included in reading lists and research on public administration in Canada. It convincingly illustrates the amount of time and effort devoted to language reform within the public service in Canada, which has not received the necessary attention from the field. It also has the potential to foster comparative studies with other countries that aim to have a linguistically representative bureaucracy. Gaspard offers a unique perspective that must not go unnoticed. Applied Political Theory and Canadian Politics David McGrane and Neil Hibbert, eds., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019, pp. 520. Steven Orr, Carleton University ([email protected]) Applied Political Theory and Canadian Politics is a strong contribution to Canadian political theory, and its contributors thoughtfully approach a number of recent political events and issues (including multiple explorations of the 2015 federal election). As a result, it serves as an excellent reminder that political theory can thrive when considering the contemporary context. Had this been the intention, it would be an easy book to recommend, but instead the Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.14, on 01 Oct 2021 at 03:55:44, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423919001082.

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