LANG Committee Report

The Liberal Party of Canada’s Dissenting Report, Denouncing as an Intellectual Fraud the Majority Report, “Linguistic Duality During the 150th Anniversary Celebrations of Canadian Confederation in 2017”

Stéphane Dion

Liberal Critic for Official Languages

March 2013

The majority report is an intellectual fraud, an affront to parliamentary democracy and a slap in the face for all the organizations, individuals and public servants who, in good faith, took part in this sham of a consultation and shameless waste of taxpayer dollars.

The truth of the matter is that the four recommendations ending the report have nothing to do with what was heard during the consultations or the report itself.

Three of these recommendations are laughable and nothing but smoke and mirrors:

1.  That Canadian Heritage ensure that linguistic duality is incorporated into planning for the 150th anniversary celebrations of Canadian Confederation in 2017.    

It is precisely Canadian Heritage’s mandate to oversee linguistic duality. Does the Minister really need a consultation to be reminded of that?

2.  That Canadian Heritage undertake consultations with official language minority communities to ensure proper input for linguistic duality during the 150th anniversary celebrations of Canadian Confederation in 2017.

So, the Committee held a consultation to tell Canadian Heritage to … hold a consultation!

4.  That the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages update the House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages once a formal plan is in place for the 150th anniversary celebrations of Canadian Confederation in 2017.    

Now this is a good one: if Canadian Heritage puts an official plan in place, the Committee, like everyone else, will be necessarily notified since the plan will be, well, official!

However, the following recommendation, recommendation 3, is no laughing matter; it is, in fact, downright dangerous. It invites departments to go ahead and dip into the Roadmap’s budget to fund linguistic duality for the 150th anniversary:

3.  That Canadian Heritage encourage all departments and groups involved in the next version of the Roadmap for Linguistic Duality to refocus their projects and planning toward preparations for celebrating the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation in 2017.

This recommendation flies in the face of what the Committee members, including the Conservatives, heard throughout the consultations, not only the ones on the 150th anniversary, but also on renewing the Roadmap. The Committee’s report on the Roadmap clearly set out the Roadmap objectives, stressing that it is not to be used to fund other objectives. Many organizations and communities have expressed their fear of seeing the Roadmap simply become an envelope into which the government dips when it needs money to fund programs it would have had to set up anyways. Recommendation 3 confirms that this fear is well-founded. It would be absolutely false to claim that this recommendation stems from the consultation: it goes against it.

So there we have it: three recommendations that are bad jokes, and another that is completely contrary to what the Committee heard. No fewer than 28 organizations took part in the consultations; they travelled to Ottawa, submitted briefs and answered the Committee members’ questions. The Committee dedicated 11 sessions, two hours each, over six months, from October 2012 to March 2013, to this topic, all of it a complete waste of time. The joke was on everybody, including taxpayers.

The Clerk of the Committee, Suzie Cadieux, and her conscientious team had taken these consultations and prepared an excellent document, which the Committee was supposed to work on. This document included a dozen of recommendations that admirably reflected what was heard during the consultations. These recommendations focussed on issues such as preparing and holding the 150th anniversary celebrations in both languages, meaningfully including official language communities in preparing and holding events, making linguistic duality an integral part of celebration themes, enhancing exchange programs between anglophones and francophones, and providing the necessary support, well in advance, to artists, cultural organizations, and venues and celebration sites to allow them to prepare for the 150th anniversary celebrations in both languages.

These recommendations, as well as the reasoning behind them, should have been the foundation from which the Committee could craft a useful and significant report.

What we have instead is four fake recommendations, four concoctions, tacked onto the report like some canker, tumour or foreign body. Because of this bizarre, unnatural stich-up job, we have ended up with a report with two completely disconnected parts: the conscientious document that reported on the consultations, and the four flawed recommendations that came out of nowhere — or more likely the Prime Minister’s Office.

The irony of this sad story is that it was actually the Conservative members of the Committee who since spring 2012 had been insisting that the Committee undertake these consultations on the 150th anniversary celebrations of Confederation. The opposition members objected to this because the Official Languages Committee had a lot of other more pressing issues to investigate, the Canadian Heritage Committee had already held consultations on this topic, and the government had not yet said what it wanted to do to celebrate the 150th anniversary. To no avail: the Conservative members were adamant that the Committee waste hours and hours on the 150th anniversary at the expense of other relevant issues.

All this to end up with four weak, ridiculous recommendations that are useless, if not detrimental – a pathetic joke and spectacular blunder. The Committee was prevented from producing meaningful recommendations. Once again, the government has demonstrated that it could not care less about the Official Languages Committee or all those who contribute their time, energy and expertise. And once again, it makes a mockery of parliamentary democracy.

But the ones truly being played for fools are the poor Conservative members of the Committee. Their government leader treats them like pawns and machines. How can they let themselves be treated with such contempt?