FOREWORD BY GRAHAM FRASER
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LEADERSHIP AND OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
"LINGUISTIC DUALITY IS NOT ONLY A REQUIREMENT—IT’S A VALUE AND AN ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTIC OF PUBLIC SECTOR LEADERSHIP."
GRAHAM FRASER, COMMISSIONER OF OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
Canada’s commitment to both official languages is rooted in our history, and on the 400th anniversary of the founding of Québec and the 20th anniversary of the first amendments to the Official Languages Act, it is useful to remember this.
Indeed, it is intriguing to see that the Fathers of Confederation saw the question of language in terms of a founding principle of respect.
On the last night of the Confederation Debates, on March 10, 1865, John A. Macdonald responded to a question about the status of French in the new political arrangement that was being developed. He said that “the use of the French language should form one of the principles on which the Confederation should be established.” George-Étienne Cartier immediately rose to add that it was also necessary to protect the English minorities in Lower Canada with respect to the use of their language.1
That commitment to the principle of respect for both languages, anchored in the founding debate over Confederation, has sometimes wavered over the last 143 years, but it has been steadily reinforced over the last four decades with the Official Languages Act, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a series of Supreme Court decisions interpreting the language rights in the Charter, the latest amendment to the Official Languages Act in 2005, and, most recently, the Federal government’s commitment to renew the Action Plan 2003–2008. It is against this principle of respect that any government’s actions should be evaluated.
Every journey proceeds in stages. A year ago, in my first Annual Report, I stressed the theme of building bridges—and spent much of my time in my first year working on establishing the links and connections that are essential for a commissioner of official languages. I visited nine provinces and two territories; I met and spoke to community organizations, university presidents, school boards, provincial organizations, immersion teachers, provincial premiers and ministers, high school students, and, of course, federal parliamentarians, ministers and public servants. I gave some 75 speeches, and 154 media interviews—and made nine appearances before parliamentary committees.
Over the past year, I began to reflect more and more on the question of leadership. I am not the first commissioner to raise the issue; several, if not all of my predecessors have stressed that without a strong message from the top that linguistic duality is a core value, a climate of respect for the Official Languages Act will never be established in the federal public service, or in Canadian civil society.
I continued to be concerned that mastery of both official languages in the public service is seen as a series of burdens and regulations rather than as a value, as obligations and obstacles rather than as opportunities, with little relationship to the critical elements of communication, respect, understanding and leadership.
As I reflected further on the question of leadership and official languages, I concluded that there is a tendency in any complex organization to translate values into burdens. When you lose sight of the goal and concentrate solely on the process, transparency becomes the burden of access to information; responsible financial management becomes the burden of auditing, internal auditing and performance measurement. In the same way, the value of linguistic duality becomes the burden of staffing, training and testing. But linguistic duality is not only a requirement; it’s a value—an essential characteristic of public sector leadership.
There are seven million Francophones in Canada. How could anyone play a national leadership role while unable to communicate with those people, or understand the world they live in? These are not new observations. Five years ago, the Action-Research Roundtable on Official Languages in the Workplace observed that “Bilingualism in the federal government is not only a legal obligation but is, above all, a question of knowing how to communicate with Canadians.”2 However, I thought it would be useful to deepen the reflection on language mastery as a key component of leadership.
There are all too many negative examples of lack of respect for linguistic duality. The challenge is to define the positive. How can bilingualism and respect for linguistic duality become key characteristics of leadership within the public service? What would be the impact if they were actually considered as values and not as mere obligations? What effect would this have on the recruitment, promotion and, perhaps most important, the behaviour of employees? These are not questions with simple answers, but I intend, over the course of my mandate, to deepen the examination of best practices in terms of respect for both official languages in the workplace so that there can be a better answer to the question that one senior official raised with me: “What does good look like?”
Since accepting the position as Commissioner of Official Languages in October 2006, I have had ample opportunity to observe the relationships that exist between leadership and language. The famous “C” level for oral interaction requires the person being evaluated to be able to explain a complex issue in their second language, to be persuasive, to intervene in a conflict at work, supervise an employee, give advice, or, as someone from the Public Service Commission told me, be able to testify in court or give a course.
These are not language criteria, they are leadership criteria. It is unthinkable that anyone be named to a leadership position who is unable to explain, persuade, intervene, supervise or advise in both of Canada’s official languages; just as Ginger Rogers had to do everything that Fred Astaire did but backwards and in high heels, leaders in the public service have to do all that in English and in French.
In June 2007, I heard Jeffrey Gandz of the Ivey Executive Program and Ivey Leadership Program talk about leadership and the importance of the ability to influence and persuade—which involves envisioning, engaging, enabling, energizing, encouraging, empowering and exhibiting values.
“If leaders don’t exhibit values, the values don’t exist,” he said. I asked him how important it was for leaders to be able to communicate to the organization as a whole, as opposed to just the direct reports. That, he said, was the distinction between a leader and a manager. You manage within a system; you lead across systems.3 All this to say that to be a leader in the public service, one must know how to influence, persuade, engage, energize and empower—not to mention supervise and advise—all employees, in English and in French. As James Kouzes and Barry Posner put it, “leadership is a relationship.”4 And leaders in the public service need to be able to establish that relationship in either official language.
Indeed, most theories of leadership revolve around the idea that to lead is to communicate. Again, it is difficult to conceive how one could exercise those leadership skills or competencies without being able to understand and communicate with all those being led, and the other constituencies that any leader must deal with. And in the public sector—and more broadly, in public life—in Canada, this means being able to communicate in both official languages: with 7 million Francophones (four million of whom speak no English) as well as the 23 million Anglophones (20 million of whom speak no French).
In their recent book Made in Canada Leadership, a study of leadership in Canada, Amal Henein and Françoise Morissette identify what they call the five cornerstones of the Canadian leadership brand: harmony, integrity, quality, resourcefulness and inclusiveness.5 Serving Canadians and managing public servants in the language of their choice is fully consistent with those values.
I noted with interest that in June, the management firm Accenture6 once again praised Canada’s public service in terms of service delivery and efficiency. The study stresses that Canada has a “strong and compelling vision of value-led, citizen-centric service.”7 No doubt that praise is fully justified. Canada’s public servants are among the most professional and qualified groups of people in the world. Now, Accenture did not mention bilingual services this year, but I would argue—and data in the annual report demonstrate it—that it is an important component when evaluating the quality of service delivery. And the value of linguistic duality is yet to be fully integrated into the public service. It remains a largely untapped potential. It is also a critical aspect of public service renewal. It is important that leadership in the area of official languages be reinforced in this period, when the public service is hiring to replace a generation that is retiring.
Put differently, every time a francophone citizen has trouble getting service, or deals with a public servant who is obviously uncomfortable in his or her second language, the perception grows that French is an afterthought at the senior levels in the federal government.
An unfortunate example comes to mind. Last April, it became clear that the identification panels at the information centre at Vimy Ridge were written in very poor French. It emerged that the panels had been prepared by a group of British volunteers who were deeply involved in the question of the tunnels at Vimy. They generously translated the panels themselves. No one thought to check the quality of their translation, and what was intended as a generous and well-meaning gesture became, through official carelessness, an embarrassing incident. When the errors were brought to public attention, the Department of Veterans Affairs moved quickly to remove and revise the panels, but the damage was done.
There have been other unfortunate incidents where French was not just disrespected; it was treated with contempt. Such incidents reflect attitudes that I would have thought had disappeared long ago.
I do not want to leave the impression that leadership is non-existent in the area of official languages. I can think of a number of examples, inside and outside government, where leadership is being exercised. I have already mentioned the example set by the Prime Minister who, in a passage spoken in French before the Australian Parliament, stressed that Canada was born in French. Similarly, a number of corporate leaders in English Canada have been appearing in French-language television commercials. And the Ontario government has named the province’s first Commissioner for French Language Services.
Some federal institutions are making a vigorous effort to respect both official languages in the workplace, offer services in both languages, and take positive measures to help official language minority communities thrive and flourish. There are a number of examples cited in this report, but let me mention one. On a beautiful winter day, I arrived at Gatineau Park—a park north of Ottawa owned and operated by the National Capital Commission—to go cross-country skiing. I was greeted warmly by a smiling attendant, who said “Bonjour! Hi!” When I responded, he explained that there was a race scheduled that day, and told me what I should do if I faced a flood of cross-country racers. He was just as ready to give the same explanation in the other official language, equally cheerfully. That, I thought, is “active offer,” and a credit to the employee and National Capital Commission. I was not surprised when I learned that our evaluations had found that the National Capital Commission had an exemplary performance in terms of official languages. The Commission had made it a value, and instilled it as a key element of its service to the public. It showed—and everyone who came into contact with that attendant moved on with a smile.
One of the more striking examples outside the federal government is Edmonton Public Schools, whose approach to language teaching is one of the most comprehensive in the country. It has produced terrific results and has attracted attention from other boards across the country. After witnessing a decline in immersion enrolment, the School Board did an analysis of what was necessary to provide quality second language education. They ended up with 14 criteria, including support from the board and the principal, competent and enthusiastic teachers who received professional development support, and financial investment in the program. They then took measures to ensure those criteria were met. The effect on teachers, the quality of the teaching—and the retention of students—was almost immediate. It is a model for the country.
Most of these measures are common sense; the extraordinary thing is that they were applied. And one of the other remarkable things is that the people responsible for the transformation do not talk about K-6, K-8 or K-12—the spectrum of years of education within their jurisdiction—but K-16, or until the end of post-secondary education. The proof of their success in graduating students who are not only competent but confident in their second language is that 67 per cent of the student body at Campus Saint-Jean, the French-speaking campus of the University of Alberta, are immersion graduates.
Another example of leadership is the role that the Société Franco-Manitobaine has played in encouraging, welcoming and supporting French-speaking immigrants to the province. This has involved working with the provincial and federal governments, participating in foreign missions, and hiring someone—originally an immigrant herself—to work fulltime on the issues involved in welcoming French-speaking immigrants and refugees.
Unfortunately, not all of Canada’s civil society institutions are success stories, or demonstrate leadership in communicating across the language divide.
In a recent issue of the Canadian Journal of Political Science, François Rocher of the University of Ottawa, presents an analysis of the degree to which English-speaking scholars in Canada take into account the work of French-speaking scholars.8 His premise, or as he puts it, his expectation, “which seems legitimate”9 is the following: “To fully understand the social and political Canadian reality implies a deep awareness of its complexity. It also implies that the researcher will take into consideration the works related to the object of research without systematically ignoring a significant proportion of scholarly work, particularly emanating from a different linguistic universe.”
He then relates this assumption about research to the country as a whole: “If Canada, as a political community (and a national community, as is used widely in the vocabulary of English Canada) is composed of two global societies, scholarly production related to it must reflect this reality if it wishes to be inclusive and comprehensive.”
Rocher concludes his normative expectation by writing “knowledge of the French language, at least the capacity to read it, constitutes a prerequisite for a complete and serious analysis of Canada.” This statement, Rocher acknowledges, “will be very controversial for some, self-evident for others.” As far as I am concerned, it is selfevident. Without recapitulating all of Rocher’s careful research, analyzing the degree to which English-Canadian scholars cite French-language sources, he concludes that there is a very small number of references to works produced in the French-speaking universe by English-speaking scholars writing about Canada: five per cent.
This phenomenon is particularly unfortunate. Universities in general and academic research play a critical role in educating a younger generation and informing society as a whole. If scholars assume that nothing of value about Canada is written in the other official language, they are widening rather than bridging the divides that exist in this country. Debates over issues of identity, citizenship, diversity and language are occurring in English and in French in Canada, and to listen to only one linguistic version of the debate is to hear only part of it. This has been particularly true over the last year since, for the first time in a long time, there is a debate in Quebec over how the society should re-engage with the rest of Canada.10
Similarly, the 2006 census results have stimulated a renewed discussion about the strength and fragility of French in Canada, with intense discussions about the language chosen by immigrants to Quebec, the proportion of mother-tongue Francophones in Quebec, and the use of French and English as languages in the workplace. Some of the data seems self-evident: if Canada is going to welcome over 200,000 immigrants from other countries, and 40,000 are going to settle in Quebec, it is not surprising that those who speak English and French as a mother tongue will diminish as a proportion of the total population. Other data, such as the drop, albeit slight, in the number of Francophones living outside Quebec, and the drop in bilingualism among young English-speaking Canadians, are more problematic. It is not surprising that this existential debate has resumed.
All of this debate and discussion present a particular challenge for the federal government, as the key bridge between Quebec and the rest of the country and between the majority and minority communities, and for Canadian civil society. Much of federal policy for three decades following the election of the Parti Québécois in 1976 was defensive, seeking strategies to keep Canada united. If there is now a debate in Quebec on how to re-engage in the country, the situation becomes very different.
How do national institutions connect with Quebeckers, the majority of whom do not speak English? As the Canadian Forces recruit soldiers, how do they communicate with, train and lead Francophones? As the Federal Public Service reaches out to replace the generation of babyboomers who are now on the cusp of retirement, how does it deal with the fact that many of the new recruits to the public service do not have the French they need to rise in the executive ranks, but also, an increasing number need training in English?
This means that leaders will have to renew their sense of responsibility. What the Official Languages Act requires, and what public servants should expect from their leaders and for themselves, is respect, and the right to work in the official language of their choice. This means, at the very least, being understood.
A deputy minister who is unable to respond in French to a question in French from an employee at a town hall meeting of staff is unable to provide leadership. A manager or an executive who does not give as much critical attention and feedback to a document in French as to another document in English is not providing leadership. If senior public servants do not set the tone and show leadership in this matter, who will? What would a deputy or a senior executive in the public service who is fully respectful of linguistic duality look like? How would he or she behave in order to create a sense of language equality?
There are the obvious things, of course: having a relationship with Francophone colleagues in French; ensuring that all communications to staff are in both languages; making it clear that memos and documents that are prepared in French get just as careful attention as those prepared in English; and also the question of speaking to public servants in Quebec, or New Brunswick—being able to address them, in the language of their choice.
Playing a leadership role in a public sector organization that respects both official languages means much more than simply being able to read a speech in French, or conduct a meeting in which both languages are used, or ensuring that messages to staff go out in both languages. It means creating a working environment where people know that the person they report to—or the senior executives in the organization—will understand the 35-page legal document or policy study in French, and don’t have to wait for the translation. It means running a meeting where people are comfortable joking in either language. More than that, it means knowing the cultural environment in which French-speaking executives and employees live: the newspapers they read, the television programs they watch, the movies they see, the theatres they support. It means getting their jokes. It means understanding the cultural references of French-speaking colleagues who watch Le téléjournal rather than—or in addition to—The National, and on Mondays discuss what was said on Tout le monde en parle the night before.
The last year has been an interesting, but sometimes frustrating one in the area of official languages. In October, the final report on the investigation into 118 complaints on the government’s budget cuts in September 2006 was completed, and we found no evidence that the government had met its obligations under the amended Part VII of the Official Languages Act. Subsequently, in February, my office intervened in the case brought by the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne against the Federal Government over the abolition of the Court Challenges Program. That decision will be the first judicial clarification of the scope of the amended Act.
As well, the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages, as we note later in the report, asked my Office to take a close look at the impact that transferring the responsibility for co-ordinating official languages from the Privy Council Office to Canadian Heritage has had on the governance of official languages issues.
In last year’s annual report, I noted the government’s verbal commitment to official languages, but expressed concern that actions had not lived up to this commitment. My first recommendation was that the government create an initiative to succeed the Action Plan.
In the Speech from the Throne, the government made a commitment to renew the Action Plan for Official Languages, which expired on March 31, and commissioned former New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord to conduct consultations on the issue across the country, and to take into account the recommendations of the House and Senate Committees, and the Commissioner. That commitment was reiterated in the Budget, but without any confirmed funding. Mr. Lord’s report, made public on March 20 by the Minister, contains many interesting recommendations although there are some gaps.
While these were positive signs of a determination by the government to meet its commitment to take a leadership role, it will be important to see and to evaluate what the government actually does. As of March 31, when the Action Plan expired, the year that this Report covers has been like a play inspired by Samuel Beckett: Waiting for the New Action Plan.
The year 2008-2009 promises to be just as interesting. 2008 will mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of Québec City—when, as the prime minister put it, Canada was born in French. This will be an important opportunity to remind Canadians of the historical roots and origins of the country, and to make this key event in the history of the French fact in Canada a celebration for all Canadians, and not merely Francophones or Quebeckers.
Then 2009 will be the 40th anniversary of passage of the Official Languages Act. This will provide an important opportunity to evaluate how far the country has come in four decades, and the challenges that remain. But that evaluation must be made in light of John A. Macdonald’s and George-Étienne Cartier’s seminal remarks, a few hours before the members of the Provincial Parliament of Canada voted to endorse the resolutions that were the basis for Confederation: that the use of the French language should form one of the principles on which the Confederation should be established, and that it was necessary to protect the English minorities in Lower Canada with respect to the use of their language.
Although Canada has changed a great deal since that time, those principles remain as valid in the 21st Century as they did in the 19th. Translating those principles into reality remains a challenge for national leadership.
Notes
1 Parliamentary Debates on the Subject of the Confederation of the British North American Provinces, 3rd session, 8th Provincial Parliament of Canada, Quebec, Hunter, Rose & Co, 1865, pp. 944–945. Macdonald is quoted by Richard Gwyn in John A.: The Man Who Made Us, The Life and Times of John A. Macdonald, Volume One: 1815–1867 (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2007), p. 323.
2 Patrick Boisvert and Matthieu Leblanc, French to Follow? Revitalizing the Official Languages in the Workplace, CCMD Action-Research Roundtable on Official Languages in the Workplace (Canadian Centre for Management Development, 2003), p. 4.
3 Jeffrey Gandz, “Leadership Talent: Identification and Development,” Public Policy Forum, June 19, 2007.
4 James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge (San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), p. 24.
5 Amal Henein and Françoise Morissette, Made in Canada Leadership: Wisdom from the Nation’s Best and Brightest on Leadership Practice and Development (Mississauga: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), p. 233.
6 Accenture, Leadership in Customer Service: Delivering on the Promise, 2007.
8 François Rocher, “The End of the ‘Two Solitudes’? The Presence (or Absence) of the Work of French Speaking-Scholars in Canadian Politics,” Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique 40,4 (December 2007), pp. 833–857.
10 André Pratte, ed., Reconquérir le Canada : Un nouveau projet pour la nation québécoise (Montréal: Les Éditions Voix parallèles, 2007).
