Wait, is that the smug asshole from Shark Tank?
The same. For a while he was also the smug asshole on Dragons’ Den, the Canadian equivalent of Shark Tank.
That first statement is really odd. I see bilingualism as a fundamental principle underpinning Canadian multiculturalism. If it’s under attack by “the right”, it’s mainly the sort of conservative minority who are also ideologically Trump supporters, which is mainly parts of the west, mostly within Alberta. If we really were to see that kind of bigoted ideology become mainstream, you can say goodbye to Quebec, and with it, the end of Canada as we know it. They’ve already taken two shots at secession. Canada would survive but in a radically altered form, and Quebec would become a tribal backwater that would be a liability to Canada and the US equally.
I believe it is true that in Toronto, Italian and Chinese are more commonly spoken at home than French. But the main obstacles to speaking French are (i) lack of desire and (ii) dropping it after Grade 9.
I see Canada remaining bilingual for the foreseeable future. Look what happened to Ford when he withdrew funding for a new French university in Ontario. In New Brunswick, it is necessary to keep the peace. I personally think bilingualism and multiculti are somewhat compatible.
French Immersion is in high demand in Toronto. My wife is a product of the FI system and both my kids are in it. I’m one of kids who dropped it in grade 10 and am poorer for it.
Canada probably can’t/won’t support a right-wing populist like Trump. But we could elect a left-wing populist like a Hugo Chavez or Daniel Ortega.
The question is whether our institutions are strong enough to protect us against a left-wing populist who promises wealth and happiness so long as we give up a few freedoms.
IANA Canadian, but that seems totally illogical as applied to any country at any time. I’d be curious to have you flesh out your logic here.
I live in one of the most multi-cultural areas of the USA: Miami. I can bumble about incompetently in Spanish but would like to be much better at it and to add Brazilian Portuguese to my mix. Both of which I can’t go a day out in public without hearing. Being limited to English-only amounts to actively turning my back on a sizeable fraction of our local culture. That seems the very antithesis of accepting / embracing multiculturalism.
Ah, so the far-right is no risk to Canada whatsoever, but the far-left is definitely an existential threat! You wouldn’t by any chance happen to be from Alberta, would you? 
(I believe that many Albertans consider our present prime minister to be a radical leftist, so ideologically extreme that he actually believes in climate change!)
Doug Ford might just be a genius. He’s actually managed to create the Université de l’Ontario français, which had been promised for decades but wasn’t any closer to becoming reality… by cancelling it, which forced the federal government to pay for it. And now the Liberals can’t even tell Ontario francophones that they need to vote for them if they want the UOF to ever happen.
Doesn’t stop anti-bilingualism parties from sprouting up and gaining influence, like the People’s Alliance currently or the Confederation of Regions (which premier Higgs used to belong to) back in the 1990s.
I could write a novel about why I think Canadian bilingualism is incompatible with multiculturalism, as well as not even genuine bilingualism, and I will if you care to read it, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow when I’m in front of a computer with more than just my mobile internet connection.
I never said the far right was not a risk. I said Canada would not elect a populist right-winger like Trump, but we are more likely to elect a populist left winger. Because Canada is a center-left country.
I can give you a lawyer’s answer, and then a political observer’s answer.
The lawyer’s answer is that English-French bilingualism has been built into our constitutional structure since July 1, 1867 (and actually before that), dealing with the federal government and Quebec. It was strengthened by the passage of the Charter, which provides specific and broader bilingualism rights at the federal level, and for New Brunswick. There are also constitutional rights for bilingualism in Manitoba. There’s also the guarantee of minority language education (English in Quebec, French in the other provinces and the territories. Note that the provision gives somewhat broader rights to francophones in the nine anglo provinces than it does to anglos in Quebec.)
Finally, the principle of bilingualism is further entrenched by the amending formula, which provides that unanimous consent of the federal government and all ten provinces is needed to amend provisions of the Constitution relating to “the use of the English or the French language”. So, all those provisions and rights are pretty firmly baked into our Constitution.
There is also a provision relating to multiculturalism, but it’s much weaker. It doesn’t give any specific rights, unlike the ones for French and English. It just provides that the Charter will be interpreted “in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.” That provision could be amended by the ordinary amending formula; it’s not protected by a unanimity requirement.
So, lawyer’s answer: French-English bilingualism is firmly entrenched in our Constitution and I don’t see it being taken out. Constitutional protection for bilingualism is much more robust than multilingualism.
Political observer’s answer: as Cartier said in the Confederation Debates, the ultimate guarantee for the French language and culture in the new country was going to be the large delegation of Quebec MPs in the Commons. Quebec has about 25% of the seats. That’s a pretty strong political guarantee that a federal leader who doesn’t speak French, and is opposed to bilingualism, isn’t going to be very successful in Quebec, and therefore not have much chance as a national leader.
O’Toole found that out: he said that he could be elected leader of the Conservatives, even though he didn’t speak French. Then he was told that there were only going to be two televised leadership debates, one in English, one in French, with no translation services. And, the Conservative leadership rules gave Quebec the same vote counting system based on constituency, not members, as in the rest of the country. So, if he couldn’t speak to Quebecers in their own language in one of the debates, he didn’t have a snowball’s chance of winning the Quebec ridings, unlike Bernier and Scheer, the two leading contenders, who were both bilingual. He dropped out, citing bilingualism as the reason. (Of course he had other issues, being a political neophyte, but that was the one that wasn’t most telling.)
Mulroney made the point in one speech that the reason the Conservatives had never done well since Riel is that the party was not sympathetic to francophone interests, and therefore started every election in the hole, compared to the Liberals. It’s hard to put together a majority government if you start with the position that you’ve effectively written off 25% of the seats in the Commons. The Liberals have been much more sympathetic to francophone and Quebec interests since Laurier, and it shows, in their competitiveness in Quebec, even in the age of the Bloc. Chretien’s boast in 1993 was that the Liberals were the only party that elected at least one member in every province, and one of the two territories.
Harper knew this. He worked hard at his bilingualism, and often began his speeches in French, even in areas that were majority anglo. No surprise that among Conservative PMs, he had the second longest term in office after Macdonald. He knew that the PM had to be able to speak both English and French.
Multilingualism doesn’t have that same effect of a block of seats, nor does it have the same linguistic component, where there are two languages that have pre-eminence. It could be Chinese in some parts of the country, Hindi in others, Ukrainian in still others. So in my opinion, it doesn’t have the same political impact as bilingualism.
I’m not Hypnogogic Jerk, obviously, and I’d be interested to hear his response to your comment, but I have some thoughts on it.
The difference between bilingualism and multiculturalism in our system is that the English and the French languages have equal status at the federal level, greater than other languages. They’re both official, while other languages lack any official status.
Being able to speak languages other than English and French is a sign of multiculturalism, but the key point is that unlike in the States, where English is the main language, and other languages are cultural things, in Canada English and French both have constitutional and legal status, over and above other languages. The ability to speak other languages may be nice to have, or it may be part of one’s ethnic heritage, but it doesn’t have the same government / legal / constitutional support.
But if French instead were treated as just like those other languages, then you’re establishing a different hierarchy, one where English is at the top and French is just another multicultural heritage language. But that’s not how our system works.
I can give a lawyer’s example. Suppose you’re someone who speaks Spanish. You’re in Canada and you get charged with a criminal offence, and don’t speak English or French. You can have an interpreter for the criminal trial, to ensure you understand the proceedings. But if you’re fluently bilingual, Spanish-English, no interpreter for you! It’s a functional test: do you need an interpreter to understand the proceedings?
It’s different for French and English. If you’re charged with an offence, you have the right to have the trial in your native tongue, French or English, even if you’re fluently bilingual and can understand the proceedings perfectly in the other language. If I get charged with an offence in Quebec, I have a right to a trial in English, and the court and Crown prosecutor (oops, procureur publique ) have to speak English, even if I could do a good job of following along in French. And if Hypnogogic Jerk got charged with an offence on a trip out west, he’d have a right to a trial in French, again, even if he could follow the proceedings in English. The system would have to provide a French-speaking judge, court clerk and Crown prosecutor.
It’s that special status for English and French that sets them apart from the idea of multiculturalism
(Note that I’m talking here about legal rights. That’s different from the social situation, where in some parts of the country French is very much a minority language, and other languages like Chinese or Hindi may have more speakers. There are also differences between language rights at the federal level and the provincial level, where the situation is more diverse.)
(Note as well that I’m not addressing Indigenous languages. They don’t have constitutional status, like French and English, but they’re moving in that direction, unlike other languages.)
Boris is trump-lite, so yeah, trump could.
It happened in the UK, also Israel. Both are western democracies.
Like I said earlier, depends what aspect of Trump people are comparing to.
Being able to run for office and be elected PM in less than 24 months? That’s really hard in the parliamentary system, and that’s not what happened with Boris and Bibi. Boris first entered Parliament in 2001; was Mayor of London and was in the Cabinet under May. Bibi’s been in the Knesset since 1988 and held numerous Cabinet posts before becoming PM. In parliamentary systems, you need experience if you want to get to the top.
The more serious Trump-like behaviour, of throwing matches on political gasoline and burning down established principles of government (like, oh, government should obey the law, Boris?), yes, they’ve both done that. Clearly it can happen in a parliamentary democracy.
Can you imagine how many Americans would freak out if the state of Florida sent out inspectors to hand out fines to businesses that were unable to serve customers in Spanish?
And of course it can’t, because the Spanish language is not enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
I think a Trump-style PM could happen in Canada both from the right or left. The good news is that there are none on the horizon at the moment. None of the major party leaders seems to be heading for Trump-style politics.
Actually AFAIK there’s nothing legal at the state or Federal level that could prevent FL from passing just such a law and doing just such a thing within FL. As you say, the political backlash would be impressive, both in FL and the other 49.
As a practical matter, in a hefty fraction of restaurants in all 50 states as long as it was OK for a cook or dishwasher to come out of the kitchen to take the order, Spanish speakers are readily available. Or so it seems to this professional traveler. Clearly less true in the small towns in the out-counties versus the 100K+ towns and big cities. But plenty common nevertheless.
Orban is PM of Hungary so it can happen
You forgot Italy, and no, it’s not the same thing in any of those examples.