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One Canada, deux langues

Broadcast Date: Oct. 17, 1968

As a high school student in 1930s Montreal, Pierre Trudeau joined a successful campaign to add French to postage stamps, money and government cheques. It wasn't until July 1969 that Canada — despite outcries from the west — finally recognized both French and English as official languages in the federal government. In this CBC Television clip, government leaders agree that the Official Languages Act is the right thing for Canada.

One Canada, deux langues

• The Official Languages Act meant citizens could choose to be served in either French or English by federal government institutions. Services would be available in both official languages in Ottawa, and in areas with large concentrations of official-language minority populations. An ombudsman's office, the Commissioner of Official Languages, was also set up to monitor enforcement.

• Prime Minister Lester Pearson created the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in 1963. It urged the creation of a new "equal partnership."

The Official Languages Act was updated in 1988. Its principles were enshrined in the 1982 Constitution through the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As of 2006, Quebec is the only province which has not yet signed the Constitution.

• In Memoirs (1993), Trudeau wrote that English-speaking journalists and provincial politicians wrongly feared that, in Trudeau's words, Ottawa had a wanted to "force French down the throat of every farmer in Western Canada." He continues, "Even respectable daily newspapers in western Canada predicted that, given time, all senior positions in major corporations as well as government would be filled only by those able to communicate in both official languages."

• Trudeau said he hoped bilingualism would level the playing field for French Canadians. "All I'm trying to do by being in Ottawa is to make sure that the dice are not loaded against Quebecers who want to work in the whole of Canada… [by] establishing fair rules of the game."
• Trudeau added that after the Official Languages Act, "I haven't shown much patience to our successive Quebec governments and Quebec opinion leaders who even now complain about the fact that French Canadians haven't as great a chance in their language as English Canadians."

• New Brunswick has been the only officially bilingual province in Canada since 1969. It has its own parallel English and French school systems, laws requiring equal treatment of both language groups, and a provincial Official Languages Act.
• In Nunavut, Canada's newest territory created in 1999, Inuktitut is the third official language, and its government's working language.

• The Economist wrote in 2005 that Jean-François Lisée, an academic at the University of Montreal and a former Parti Québécois adviser, denied that bilingualism "has solved the Quebec problem." In spite of three decades of this policy, he said, "each generation of French-speakers in Canada outside Quebec and Acadia will be half the size of the previous one."

One Canada, deux langues

Medium: Television

Program: CBC News 

Broadcast Date: Oct. 17, 1968

Guest(s): Réal Couette, David Lewis, Robert Stanfield, Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Duration: 1:51

Last updated:
Oct. 15, 2008