Bilingualism In Canada

A conflict that has plagued the country of Canada since its inception, is a linguistic issue: the English language versus the French language. In modern-day Canada, bilingualism is a familiar term to many, especially in our government, but a question that has been raised more and more often is whether or not bilingualism is still a necessity as statistics show that bilingualism is becoming less and less popular. Despite the reality of how effective, or ineffective, bilingualism is, studies have made it clear that what the public choice still desires is for bilingualism to maintain its role in our society. Since WWII, there has been an increasingly large number of immigrants arriving in Canada from all over the world. Consequently, the number of French-speaking citizens as well as English-speaking citizens have decreased, in terms of first-languages. The diversity that Canada strives for has also been weakening one of its fundamental elements, bilingualism. Many of the immigrants arriving in Canada have a foreign mother-tongue but can still communicate in English, this

In 2008, Le Parti Quebecois put up Bill 14: An Act to amend the Charter of the French language. In this bill included a proposed clause “forbidding francophone students from attending English CEGEPs, Quebec’s network of junior colleges” (Patriquin). It also included removing ‘bilingual statuses’ of many municipalities whose Anglophone population had dropped below 50% (Patriquin). These proposed changes were met by many angry Francophones, who argued that even though their pride in being the only French-speaking society in North America, in the international scheme of things the up and coming youth who could barely speak English would suffer by lack of opportunities to grow on an international