Trudeau and the Politics of Language

268 Review • Donald Wright Reviews Trudeau and the Politics of Language Donald Wright The Practice of Language Rights in Canada. C. Michael MacMillan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Community Besieged: The Anglophone Minority and the Politics ofQuebec. Garth Stevenson. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999. Beyond Two Solitudes. Donald Smith. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1998. Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the 70s Generation. Directed by Catherine Annau. NFB, 1999. Although Pierre Trudeau's language policies are not the explicit subject of any of the studies listed above, they provide a convenient lens through which to focus this essay. Through his commitment to bilingualism and minority language rights, Trudeau reconfigured language politics in Canada. His legacy is enormous. To borrow Stephen Clarkson's and Christina McCall's memorable image, he haunts us still. In these four quite different studies Trudeau can be found - sometimes to a greater degree, sometimes to a lesser degree - lurking between the lines. Trudeau makes a few fleeting appearances in C. Michael MacMillan's book on the practice of language rights in Canada. But as the principal architect of the 1969 Official Languages Act and the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, his presence can be felt throughout. It is not that MacMillan disagrees with Trudeau's language policies, it is that he would like to see language rights at once anchored in a set of values and expanded in practice. According to MacMillan, Trudeau justified official bilingualism in political and strategic terms: it was necessary to national unity. This is not entirely fair. To be sure, cost-benefit analyses were always present. Any government that does not calculate the political costs and benefits of its policies will not be a government for very long. But the presence of political considerations in the debate over language policy did not exclude the presence of basic values and principles. Trudeau understood the Official Languages Act and those sections dealing with language rights Volume 35 • No. 3 • (Automne 2000 Fall) Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d'etudes canadiennes in the Charter to be important to national unity. But he also understood that the protection of language rights was necessary to the equality of opportunity. As a French Canadian, he knew the sting of unilingualism in Canada in the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s. When he entered federal politics he vowed to reverse Ottawa's near total indifference to the French language. "The language of French Canadians was not being accorded equal treatment, a situation that could not be tolerated for long in the Just Society of which I dreamed," Trudeau recalled in his memoirs.' To this end, his government passed the Official Languages Act. Thirteen years later, Trudeau entrenched language rights in the Charter because he wanted to put them beyond the reach of any future - and potentially reactionary - government. For Trudeau, language rights were fundamental, not simply political. This notwithstanding, MacMillan's basic point is sound: the rationale for language rights has been largely couched in pragmatic terms. "What has been consciously Jacking in Canadian debates to date is any systematic attempt to articulate a set of political values to sustain an understanding of linguistic justice in Canada" (3). The Practice o(Language Rights in Canada is an attempt to fill this void. MacMillan begins his project by asking if language is a human right. He believes it is, though with some important qualifications. For example, the stereotypical American tourist cannot expect to order a hamburger in English in Guatemala, but he can expect not to be tortured. Likewise, the Ukrainian immigrant to Canada cannot ask the government to guarantee her language rights. After all, she chose to emigrate to a non-Ukrainian-speaking country. MacMillan also asks if a language right is an individual right or a group right. The short answer is that it is both. It is a hybrid right. Individuals have the right to speak whatever language they want in the private sphere; however, to use that language in the public sphere depends not only on the existence of a group but on the status of that group, as well. Although there are more than 300,000 Ontarians whose first language...