Fraser Institute Study Advocates Privatization of Minority Language Rights
The Fraser Institute’s first report of the new year is a strident attack on provincial bilingualism policies which attempts to count the costs of providing services to minority populations and, predictably, argues that the best solution is to “privatize” these services, meaning that either the government or, preferably, private citizens will be required to hire a private-sector translator whenever a service is provided in the “wrong” official language. Provincial spending on bilingualism, they say, “costs Canadian taxpayers… $900 million annually.”
Since it’s the Fraser Institute, you won’t be at all surprised to learn that a few corners are cut here. First of all, a large majority of this funding goes to minority-language schools which are guaranteed under the Constitution. We can’t open a debate about reforming Francophone schools without reopening the Constitution. This doesn’t appear to faze the Fraser Institute, of course. Bilingualism costs outside of the education system are actually “only” $223 million, and despite what the brief claims, it’s unclear how much cheaper they could get through privatization.
The great genius of the Fraser Institute plan, as they see it, is that Francophones and Quebec Anglophones will be required to pay for translation services in the future, if they “choose” to do business with the government in the “wrong” language. Then they add up what they claim this will cost, based on some dubious mathematical wizardry, and claim it comes out less than the headline $900 million cost. What savings!
Well, sort of. In British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland, there are no significant non-educational Francophone programs, and therefore no real savings. In Manitoba, French is protected and so no savings are possible there, either. (In such cases the Institutes refers vaguely to “symbolic benefits.”) In Quebec, private provision of English services actually costs more than the public sector. So in at least eight provinces, French public services is either a non-issue or a cost savings.
That leaves us with Ontario and New Brunswick. In New Brunswick, the Fraser Institute claims there would be cost savings, but specifies in the fine print that this is only true if all people with some bilingual capacity give up on French completely, that a large number of French university students drop out of school, and that the remainder move to Quebec and go to school there (which they will somehow do for less than $6000 each). So New Brunswick doesn’t really count either.
Which leaves Ontario. Ontario’s Francophones get $122 million in non-educational benefits from the government, says the Fraser Institute, which they could purchase for themselves at $107 million. That’s it. This is the only province where there are significant cost savings associated with eliminating French services and the savings in question are piddling, to say the least. The savings go up if there’s a mass shutting down of French-speaking classes in universities, the same sort of educational holocaust the Fraser Institute wants to unleash in New Brunswick.
And it gets worse. Ontario’s “public” costs include $32 million in funding to Television Francophone en Ontario. It also includes $36 million in what the Fraser Institute calls “unobservable costs” — the costs of routine translations, duplications, etc., in two official languages. This number is arrived at by conjuring up out of thin air a sort of tax on government spending of 0.05%. So, whether or not Ontario will benefit from eliminating official bilingualism depends entirely upon whether the Fraser Institute is correct in how it is estimating “unobservable costs.”
To sum up, this proposal is of no significant financial benefit to six provinces, would raise costs in a seventh, is Constitutionally barred in two more (in one of which the private sector probably offers no savings, anyways), and might save a small amount of non-educational money in the tenth. Are we ready to go to war against Constitutionally protected minorities, now?
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James Wolfe
This is THE biggest scam, the biggest fraud and lie ever forced upon the Canadian public. People have no idea what this man Trudeau did to this country.
“Quebec can make French the only official language in spite of theConstitution”. Pierre Trudeau, .
“There is no way two ethnic groups in one country can be made equalbefore the law….and to say it is possible is to sow the seeds ofdestruction”.Pierre Trudeau,
.” ….Given these facts, should French-speaking people concentrate their efforts on Quebec. or take the whole of Canada as their base? In my opinion, they should do both; and for the purpose they could find no better instrument than federalism”, Pierre Trudeau, Page 31 “Federalism” .
“I cannot swear it but I think we were thinking to ourselves,… we are a small group, Trudeau, Pelletier, Marchand, Lalonde, Chrétien, myself and a few people in the civil service, say 50 all told…we were bringing off a revolution. We held the key posts. We were making the civil service bilingual (French), kicking and screaming all the time”. Jean-Luc Pepin, Minister of Industry, 1970.
50 years of spin, lies…thats what we have got. They are changing the names of towns, streets, counties, bodies of water, riding names…and I’m not taking about kebec any longer. It’s now going on all over the country; it’s a mess in Ottawa where they name things after anti-English language bigots and racists all the time. They are slowly wiping out our English, Scottish, Irish, United empire loyalists history. Just like they’ve been doing in Quebec for the last 5 decades (bills 22, 178, 101…)…This is one of the main reasons we are not teaching any history from 1760 to 1982 in our schools any longer. These racist people control government, the curriculum, our money…we get a daily dose of spin, lies and propaganda.
Wake up… They run everything in Ottawa, they funnel the money where they want, spin, lies, propaganda, revisionist BS … Proof – In that there is constant pressure to rewrite our history – to pacify the cranky Province of Quebec and the “french “outside Quebec – the reason we lost the Red Ensign in the first place – we must do what we can to protect and preserve our history. A history that is under constant attack. Very few Canadians are aware that we now have portraits in our parliament of French Kings – who had nothing to do with the building of Canada- the statue of General James Wolfe no longer overlooks the Plains of Abraham, the only statue in Quebec City is of the losing General, Montcalm. There are statues of three French generals but no statues of the victorious generals at the Valiant’s memorial in Ottawa. That’s right, no General Wolfe, no General Amherst, No Gen Murray… This historical revisionism is going on right under the noses of the Governments we elect – and they remain silent!
“First Quebec, then we take over the rest of the country, one step at a time…through bilingualism…” PT, “How to take over a country through bilingualism…” SD. How ? First comes the right to communicate with gov’t in a minority language (ie French),then comes bilingualism, then comes the right to work in the language of choice(ie French), then comes a bilingual boss,(ie French) then comes a exclusively French department and on it goes until its all French. Its happening all over the country, Ontario, New Brunswick…That’s what’s really going on.
Go learn our proud, real BNA and UEL history. These were the builders of our country since 1763. Not this phony, revisionist lie, this bilingual, multicultural, 2 founding nations, linguistic duality lie, propaganda, spin that we’ve been living with since Trudeau, and kebec forced this upon the nation. We’ve been part of the British Empire since 1763 and officially an English speaking country for over 200 years…just a fact.
NO English speaking politician is telling you the truth, is exposing what is really going on.Not one politician has the decency, the honesty to expose the truth, to speak the truth,how pathetic. Poor Canada, what a mess. Please spread the word.The truth about Trudeau would be nice for a change. The man was a racist, an anti-English language, anti BNS bigot. Go read his writings; he despised our real BNA, UEL history.
Until the charter and all the bs (bilingual, multicultural, phony rights…crap) connected to it gets repealed we will continue to self destruct as we have for the last 5 decades.
Sixth Estate
Well, I’m impressed by your ability to put a large number of words together. But I suggest you think a little bit more deeply about our history and about our national identity, if we have one anymore. Even if there was a grand conspiracy to turn Ontario and New Brunswick entirely French (which might be at best half-true in the second case), it wouldn’t work, and it wouldn’t be true “all over the country.”
Bilingualism has nothing to do with multiculturalism. Right or not, multiculturalism is about new immigrant groups who do not have a Constitutional place in Canada. French-English rapprochement involves two groups who DO have such a place.
Canada has a large French minority population and historically they have been granted a variety of rights. That’s history, not just post-Trudeau. Live with it. There are a variety of strictly and completely unilingual democracies available in the world, if you would feel more comfortable there.