JUSTICE AND OFFICIAL LANGUAGES IN CANADA by Rémi Léger A thesis submitted to the Department of Political Studies in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada February, 2012 Copyright Rémi Léger, 2012 Abstract This is a study of the politics of language in Canada from the perspective of francophone minority communities – the close to one million French-speakers living in provinces and territories outside Québec. The analysis proceeds in two main parts. The first part examines and engages with the literature in political theory on the respect and recognition of ethnocultural minorities in liberal democracies. It reconstructs Will Kymlicka’s approach to normative theorizing on ethnocultural justice and defends it against recent important works emphasizing the deliberative resolution of issues of ethnocultural diversity. It shows how the Kymlickan approach to multiculturalism and minority rights requires uncovering and articulating the normative logic that underpins both group claims and state measures. The second part of the thesis carries out the Kymlickan approach with respect to the status and treatment of francophone minorities outside Québec. It begins by showing how Kymlicka and his main critics have failed to fully apply, as it were, the Kymlickan approach to the status and treatment of Canada’s Francophone minority communities. It then analyzes these communities’ political claims for justice and equality as well as the rights and accommodations put in place by the state in an effort to come to terms with their claims. It finds that the failure of the federal language regime to respond adequately to their claims for a combination of participation and autonomy lies with its given administrative application of legislative commitments not within commitments themselves. In summary, weaving the political theory of multiculturalism together with l’étude des minorités francophones hors Québec, this thesis incorporates Canada’s Francophone minority communities into a scholarship that has ignored or rendered them invisible and it also shows how the federal government could go about ensuring their just recognition and equal treatment. i Acknowledgments A number of teachers, friends, and family members were relied upon, at times heavily, during the research and writing of this thesis. It is my sincere pleasure to acknowledge them. I owe a special debt to Professor Margaret Moore. Both the substantive content and general thrust of what follows benefitted immensely from her sharp analytical eye and her thoughtful comments on a number of drafts. I am also deeply indebted to Professor Will Kymlicka, who offered generous advice and, more importantly, profoundly shaped my understanding of liberal democracies and of their obligations towards ethnocultural minorities. I have also incurred a heavy debt towards Professeur Alain-G. Gagnon whose scholarship has very much inspired this thesis and whose constructive criticisms will help to take this work forward. Professors Keith Banting and Colin Farrelly also raised several stimulating questions during the oral defense and for that I thank them. Arguments developed in this dissertation also benefited from discussions with and comments from a long list of people, including François Boucher, Jean-François Caron, Stéphanie Chouinard, Aaron Ettinger, Jim Farney, Raffaele Iacovino, Stephen Larin, Emmett Macfarlane, Martin Normand, Denis Perreaux, Dan Pfeffer, Charan Rainford, Beesan Sarrouh, Alex Schwartz, and Erin Tolley. Almost seven years have passed since I left l’Acadie. I thank David Bourque, Luc Cormier, Bernard Pinet, and Justin Robichaud for never letting time nor distance affect our friendship. In this regard I also thank my aunt Odette Doiron for indefectible support. A special shout out is owed to Jordan DeCoste, Edward Koning, Matthew Mitchell, and, of course, my two accomplices Megan Gaucher and Lucia Salazar. I thank the five of them for ii moral support and intellectual generosity, but more importantly I thank them for being all around great friends and for letting me be part of their lives. Of the countless thank yous owed to my parents, I thank them in particular for inspiring resolve and humility, which, on most days, proved to be much more important than anything else. Je souhaite par ailleurs dédier cette thèse à ma mère qui, par son courage et sa détermination au cours de la dernière année, a su m’inspirer à me dépasser au quotidien ainsi que me rappeler que la famille et les amis c’est bien plus important que le boulot. Above all I have Adrienne Roberts to thank, for her great mind and easy smile, but especially for sharing with me the daily joys and occasional trials of life. Finally, I want to acknowledge SSHRC for generous financial support and Professeure Linda Cardinal for granting me a postdoctoral fellowship at her Alliance de recherche sur les savoirs de la gouvernance communautaire at l’Université d’Ottawa. iii Table of Contents Abstract i Acknowledgments ii Table of Contents iv Chapter 1 Introduction 1 PART I POLITICAL THEORY AND ETHNOCULTURAL JUSTICE Chapter 2 Liberalism and Deliberation 17 Chapter 3 Will Kymlicka and the Politics of Multiculturalism and Minority Rights 52 PART II THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN CANADA OUTSIDE QUÉBEC Chapter 4 Canada’s Francophone Minority Communities 87 Chapter 5 Participation and Autonomy 121 Chapter 6 The Possible Federal Language Regime 159 Chapter 7 Conclusion 195 Bibliography 200 iv Chapter 1 Introduction “Put simply, the main goal of any language policy should be to promote linguistic justice” (Green and Réaume 1991, 10). Since the 1960s, federal and provincial governments, at times compelled by courts, have profoundly reformed their approaches to the French language and those that speak it. Of particular political and intellectual interest have been tensions and contradictions between federal language policy and Québec language policy. The federal government embraced official bilingualism, which entailed rendering all federal departments and agencies functionally bilingual, and enshrined minority language educational rights where numbers warrant. Conversely, the Québec government made French the official language of its own institutions and of society and compelled all children, except those whose parents received their instruction in Canada in English, to attend French-language schools. Major works on the politics of language in Canada, such as Kenneth McRoberts’ Misconceiving Canada (1997), Graham Fraser’s Sorry, I Don’t Speak French (2006) or Marcel Martel and Martin Pâquet’s Langue et politique au Canada et au Québec (2010), have for the most part focused on the differing content and justification of each of these language regimes. But even if federal laws and policies in the area of official languages were above all designed in response to Québec’s Quiet Revolution and challenges that ensued from it1, the 1 Linda Cardinal and Luc Juillet note, “It is undeniable that since the 1960s and 1970s federal government commitments with respect to Francophone minorities outside Québec have been subsumed under more pressing concerns for Québec and national unity. We must then understand that political and ideological reasons have swayed federal government actions in the area of official languages” (2005, 158-159; personal translation). 1 federal language regime also includes constitutional rights and legislative commitments that are specific to the close to one million French-speakers living in provinces and territories outside Québec. Put differently, often rendered invisible in the usual concern for the relationship between the federal language regime and that of Québec are legislative and constitutional measures that are clearly focused on the status and treatment of Canada’s Francophone minority communities. This thesis aims to reconstruct this federal approach vis-à-vis Canada’s Francophone minority communities and evaluate how well it responds for their demands for justice and equality. In particular, it proposes to expose the content of both government measures and group claims as well as to articulate the normative logic that underpins them. It brings together and builds upon two distinct bodies of scholarship. It first relies upon what we can call the political theory of multiculturalism. This literature is concerned with how liberal democracies should respond to claims of ethnocultural minorities for just recognition and equal treatment. When studying Canada, the political theory of multiculturalism virtually always distinguishes rights and accommodations for the Québécois, for Aboriginal peoples, and for ethnic and religious minorities. Francophone minorities outside Québec remain theoretical anomalies. The thesis also draws from l’étude des minorités francophones hors Québec. This multidisciplinary literature considers the historical evolution of the French-language population outside Québec and examines the important transformations these communities have undergone following the final demise of the French Canadian nation and the advent of French-language rights and public services. Focusing on relations between francophone communities and governments as well as on the internal evolution of these communities, l’étude des minorités francophones hors Québec has however failed to reflect on fundamental aims embedded in 2 community actions and governmental measures. Let me elaborate on each of these bodies of scholarship in turn. 1. The Political