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RADIA: Official bilingualism costs taxpayers too much for too little

FACE TO FACE: Does bilingualism work in Canada? It seems former prime minister Pierre Trudeau had two objectives when it came to his policy of official bilingualism.

FACE TO FACE: Does bilingualism work in Canada?

It seems former prime minister Pierre Trudeau had two objectives when it came to his policy of official bilingualism.

First, he wanted to ensure the constitutional right that any francophone ought to be able to walk into any federal government office and be served in French. This is more than reasonable.

Second, he wanted to guarantee the protection and survival of the English-language minority in Quebec and the French-speaking minority outside its borders. This has been an abject failure.

In British Columbia, for example, Francophones have essentially been assimilated, with their share of the total population dwindling to about 1.3%. It's the same story in every province.

In fact, unilingual speakers unable to speak the majority language in their province (French in Quebec, English everywhere else) account for less than 1% of Canada's total population.

But we continue to spend millions and millions of dollars providing "language services" throughout the country - not just at the federal level but at the provincial level too.

French language services (and English language services in Quebec) such as education, translation, bilingual signage and government forms cost the provinces $900 million a year, according to a recent report written by the Fraser Institute. The B.C. government, according to the study, spends $23 million a year.

And that's only the direct cost to taxpayers. There's also the useless duel-labelling requirements that increase the prices of Canadian consumer goods across the board.

We've got to face the fact that the French language is becoming less and less relevant across the country. In most of our major cities, French is being outpaced by other languages, namely Chinese, Korean and Punjabi.

About 38% of those in Vancouver report Chinese as their mother tongue. And in Toronto, 8.8% of residents say Italian is their language of choice compared to only 1.7% who say French is their primary language.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a great event - the Festival du Bois in Coquitlam. I'm all for embracing our French heritage by supporting such events but I don't think it's necessary to spend millions of dollars every year on the failed federal policy known as bilingualism.

Andy Radia is a Coquitlam resident and political columnist who writes for Yahoo! Canada News and Vancouver View Magazine. He has been politically active in the Tri-Cities, having been involved with election campaigns at all three levels of government, including running for Coquitlam city council in 2005.