More bilingualism for Canada
A recent Government sponsored report has concluded that Federal spending on the promotion of both French and English in Canada should be increased to $1 billion over the next 5 years – an increase of some 25% on current levels. The report has a certain immediacy, as the current national bilingual program which was inaugurated in 2003 is due to come to the end of its term at the end of this month. Over the five years since 2003 the Government has spent a total of some $810 million on resources to aid bilingualism.
In an interesting survey that was commissioned to gauge the validity of the 2003 program, it was found that some 80% of Canadians support bilingualism as a part on the Canadian national identity, however, the same survey showed that around 76% of Canadians stated that there was a certain ‘apathy’ about actually taking action to learn a their second language.
Quebec is, as everybody knows a stronghold of French speaking inside Canada and Bloc Québécois MP Richard Nadeau was dismissive of the recent report on bilingualism, stating that it was not actually bilingualism that was at peril, but the French language outside of Quebec. He further called for more French speaking immigrants to be encouraged to settle outside of Quebec in order to spread the French speaking Diaspora, for the Federal Government to hire more Anglophone Quebeckers and finally for more money to be provided for companies to produce more French language computer programs and computer games.