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Anglo civil servant demoted

Broadcast Date: Feb. 28, 1971

Puffing nervously on his cigarette, an anonymous government employee tells the CBC he was demoted for not being able to speak French. He says he used to head up a department of 13. Now he performs the duties of a junior clerk.
Four years after the Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, many civil servants are required to speak both languages. The requirement was imposed by Prime Minister Trudeau's stricter language law — the Official Languages Act.

After the act passed in 1969, the demoted civil servant took French immersion classes. But he says it's nearly impossible to maintain the language. Now he feels "useless and unwanted." He tells reporter Larry Zolf he's even thought of committing suicide.

Anglo civil servant demoted

• Under the Official Languages Act of 1969, bureaucrats were required to learn French in order to keep their jobs. However, the 1982 annual bilingualism report found that many top civil servants still couldn't speak French fluently.
• In 2000, anglophone pharmaceutical employees in Quebec won a court battle giving them the right to use English computer software. In court, the provincial government had argued French software was necessary for preserving French in Quebec workplaces.

• Also in 2000, the late B&B Commission chair André Laurendeau's memoirs were published. In them, he confessed to doubting whether bilingualism would help build Canadian unity.
• At the height of the inquiry in 1964, he wrote: "At present I confess that when left to myself I experience separatist urges several times a week and even several times a day. These seem to be elemental emotional reactions to which I do not attribute more importance than is necessary."

Anglo civil servant demoted

Medium: Television

Program: Weekend

Broadcast Date: Feb. 28, 1971

Host: Lloyd Robertson
Interviewer: Larry Zolf

Duration: 6:19

Last updated:
March 18, 2008