Interesting quotes
“French immersion helped me improve my French and gave me a good sense of Canada’s diversity by [giving me the opportunity to meet] other young people from coast to coast. Being bilingual has really opened up a lot of doors for me.”
Katie Zeman, Library of Parliament
“The duties that I carried out at the beginning of my career, such as those that I later took on at various federal institutions, […] convinced me that Canada must be able to depend on a public service that can understand and serve its two official language communities. For this reason, managers must do everything in their power to create, within their department or agency, a workplace where learning and using English and French is valued.”
Janet Bax, Veterans Affairs Canada
“Our office tries to make Head Office aware that, even though the Official Languages Act does not require drafts to be produced in both languages, the majority of our employees use mostly French at work. As we are more comfortable in French, our comments are more detailed and our contribution more decisive when they communicate with us in French. Finally, the whole Department benefits when English and French are used on an equal footing by Head Office.”
Lissette Bonilla, Citizenship and Immigration Canada
“By systematically using their preferred official language when addressing their superiors, employees themselves become the true leaders, the real agents of change. One of our receptionists is Francophone. When she addresses the public, this young woman obviously uses either English or French as required. But when she speaks with me, her supervisor, or with one of her colleagues, she never hesitates to use her own language. This is the type of behaviour that every federal public servant should proudly emulate and that every manager should encourage.”
Janet Bax, Veterans Affairs Canada
“I spent a year in Ottawa. It was only during this brief period of my career […] that I experienced difficulty making full use of my first official language. Even though it was a designated bilingual region and 98% of the people around the table understood French, most of our meetings were held in English because one or two participants knew only English. I would have understood this situation in a unilingual English region, but in the National Capital Region, I found it unacceptable.”
Lissette Bonilla, Citizenship and Immigration Canada
“In many cases, public servants cannot properly advise their minister when they do not have a good knowledge of both English and French. For instance, how do you talk about climate change, its eventual effects on our society, and the perspectives that citizens and businesses have on this issue if you aren’t able to watch TV or listen to the radio in both languages, or to read English and French newspapers and scientific publications from Canada and abroad?”
Janet Bax, Veterans Affairs Canada
