“Nope”, Canadian PM candidate Chandra Arya curtly replied when asked about his French-language ability in an interview with CBC’s Power & Politics host, David Cochrane. Arya’s belligerent denunciation of the French language as a prerequisite for a Canadian representative has reignited the debate over whether the leader of a bilingual nation should be proficient in both languages. Is this a necessary skill or another game of identity politics?
Arya defended his position, stating that “Quebecers or English Canadians” only care about the message that is being delivered to them, not the language in which it is carried. His party doesn’t agree.
Chandra Arya, originally from India, has been a member of Canada’s Liberal party since 2015, and is the first person to announce his candidacy in the race to replace former PM Justin Trudeau. His party has historically shifted between Francophone and Anglophone leaders, solidifying their mission to represent all the people of Canada.
Current members of the party have reiterated the importance of electing a leader who is able to represent the entirety of Canada. In an X post, Lieutenant Jean-Yves Duclos wrote that the next leader of Canada “will absolutely have to be bilingual”. Former housing minister Sean Fraser, who is taking courses to improve his French, carries the same opinion, stating, “In my opinion, it's essential for the leader of the Liberal party to speak both official languages…If a leader doesn't have the ability to understand the reality for linguistic minorities and the populations of Quebec as well, it's not possible to be a good prime minister or a good leader of the Liberal party”.
Take Stephen Harper, a former politician in the Conservative party who learned the importance of bilingualism. Quoted in a 2001 op-ed piece, Harper stubbornly refused to allow his early bilingual education to Frenchify his tongue, stating that bilingualism is “the god that failed”. Five years later, when he became Prime Minister, Stephen Harper was beginning all of his speeches in fluent French, not daring to understate the importance of bilingualism in a bilingual country. In 2004, he promised to make the protection of the French language a “national priority”. Although we do not know the exact stimulus of his conversion, we do know that Stephen Harper must have learned at some point that the only path to success in Canadian politics is to respect the lingual diversity of the country you want to lead.
Bilingualism is the ability to speak proficiently in two languages. However, politically speaking, a country is only deemed “bilingual” when it officially acknowledges and uses both languages in public institutions. This is known as institutional bilingualism, defined by the Canadian Encyclopedia as “ the capacity of state institutions to operate in two languages”.
Lingual duality has been a sensitive topic in Canada as the adoption of another official language does more than just add another word to stop signs. It is a question of equality and representation. It affects all stages of employment. In the hiring process, are candidates of one language background more or less likely to get hired? Are meetings, documents, and other aspects of a work environment in one language or both? If job opportunities are limited to one language, is their available training for candidates and employees? On a broader level, is monolingualism limiting a portion of the country’s accessibility to the political sphere? The inclusion of all citizens, whether they themselves are monolingual or bilingual is essential to providing equal opportunities and accessibility to all corners of their homeland.
The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963-9) recommended English and French speakers alike be ensured public services in their mother tongue, and be entitled to use that language at all times. The Commission’s testament was manifested in the Official Languages Act of 1969 (modified in 1988) which declared the “equality of status” of English and French in the public and political spheres. This federal movement accelerated the debate surrounding institutional bilingualism in Canada, and has since been adapted to provide further inclusion to Canada’s lingual minority.
When do we draw the line between when identity matters or when it is just another round of “identity politics” that shuffles people out of the equation based on their identity (or lack thereof)? Identity politics calls for the election of leaders based on their physical or cultural identity, not their earned merit and political suavity. As magical as it may be to see yourself represented in your country’s leadership, it is not always possible. Just a black man or just a woman will never satisfy the insatiable hunger of the voters who play the identity game. That black man must also be gay and muslim, and she must be a woman of color who is in a wheelchair and has four arms. There is no way to boil down every aspect of every voter’s identity into one candidate. A white man can’t learn to be black any more than he can learn to be a woman. However, if there is a way to learn the language of a proportion of the bilingual (!) nation you are leading, to speak to them directly and represent their interests, shouldn’t that be a prerequisite? Or is Arya vindicated in his belief that it doesn’t matter how the policies are packaged as long as they are what the people want?
I can’t answer these questions definitively. On one hand, I don’t care what the representative of my values looks like on the outside as long as their inside reflects just that–my ideals, my passions, and the beliefs I hold. He or she, black or white, tall or short, should at least have a stake in my interests. So I do agree with Arya to some extent. I don’t care about the wrapping paper–just about the contents on the inside. However, if a politician can’t fluently express his policies to each citizen of his nation, there is a problem. As a French speaker myself, who has done endless translations between the two languages, I can testify that a lot gets lost in translation. The Prime Minister needn’t speak every language represented in his country but he must speak the two official ones–the languages upheld and protected by the law.
