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Criticisms/Critiques

Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism

Book I, The OfJicial Languages, 1967, pp. lii, 212, $3.00;
and Book 11, Education, 1968, pp. xxii, 350, $4.00.
Ottawa: Queens Printer

BILINGUALISM AND THE MYTHS OF CULTURE

JOHN PORTER / Carleton University

We can expect sometime a sociological analysis of royal commissions in

Canada. We can anticipate a typology expressed in that graceless language
which our discipline, in the search for precision, has acquired. Commissions
can be instrumental-adaptive when they deal with taxation or government
organization. Or they might be expressive-symbolic when they promote arts
and letters and give rise to agencies like the Canada Council. Evaluative-
integrative would probably be an appropriate type label for the Royal
Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.

In the past we have incorrectly thought of royal commissions as under-

taking investigations of system problems (one hesitates to use the word 111

Rev. canad.SOC.& Anth./Canad. Rev. SOC.& Anth. 6(2)1969

national since the more graceful language is often open to dispute in
Canada) which would be hard-headed, precise, and as scientific as any
existing state of knowledge might allow. But why should a commission not
produce reports which have passion, romance, warmth, sentiment, and
which reject at times existing science when that science does not suit its
purpose?

Perhaps the integrative function calls for the latter style. From its incep-
tion, the Bi and Bi Commission has generated debate and dramatized the
state of inter-ethnic relations in Canada. Their early technique of touring
the country and conducting seminar- and town-hall-like meetings took the
Commission to the people, and allowed those who wished to speak the
gamut from wisdom to platitude to nonsense about Canada. From this ex-
perience and unusual methodology they produced their Preliminary Report
with its alarming observation, Canada, without being fully conscious of the
fact, is passing through the greatest crisis in its history. In the Preface of
Book I of its Report, published two and a half years later, they reaffirmed,
This is still the situation. That being the case, one can undkrstand the
urgency and feeling which come into the two books under review.

Book I, The Official Languages, is preceded by a General Introduction

printed on blue paper, which discusses the key words of the terms of reference
of the Commission. These blue pages contain, in the English language at
least, some of the most elegant sophistry about culture, language, society,
and other concepts of importance to sociologists and anthropologists, but
critical comments on these ideas will be left until later. The blue pages are
important because they generate a mythology of culture which goes far
beyond any scientific understanding or use of the word. This condition
detracts greatly from the convincing case the Commission makes for bilin-
gualism, because their arguments become obscured by ideological, contra-
dictory, and often nonsensical statements about culture, cultural identity,
cultural heritage, cultural equality, and soforth.

Bilingualism does not create such confusion. It is a concept which can be

operationalized. Language competency can be measured, languages can be
taught, the extent of language use in school, bureaucracy, and factory can
be investigated. Individuals can be placed by self-assignment into a linguistic
group and their social characteristics studied. Moreover, bilingualism can
be promoted. In fact, the Commission strikes out on a bold new plan which
could excite younger Canadians, if not the older ones tongue-tied as they
are with literary French, or less, and encrusted with prejudices.
The plan for bilingualism is announced after a chapter which deals with
the legal foundations of language rights as they might be found in statute,
constitution, usage and judicial pronouncement. They were unhappy with
what they found, and report on . . . the wholly inadequate way in which
present laws give effect to the concept of the country as an equal partnership
between two linguistic communities. The commission, in effect, is saying
that we should start all over again with a new declaration for a bilingual

112 society -a linguistic revolution -which could help to define Canada as a

society unique in North America and beyond. As they declare, We do not
propose merely to paper over an unsatisfactory situation : we shall present
a new concept of an officially bilingual country in which the two official
languages will have new rights and better guarantees. It therefore becomes
a question of genuine linguistic planning.

The remainder of Book I lays the foundations for this linguistic planning.
It reviews the territorial and personality principles of bilingualism as found
in the experience of other states which have more than one language group.
Briefly, the territorial principle holds that language rights will apply to
geographical unilingual regions -most of the Swiss Cantons for example -
whereas, the personality principle holds that language rights belong to
individuals who can use their own language in education and in dealing with
government regardless of location. The Commission argues that neither of
these principles suits the reality of Canada -that reality being the peculiar
dispersion of the two main language groups across the country. They state
a synthetic principle, . . the recognition of both official languages, in law

I.

and in practice, wherever the minority is numerous enough to be viable as

a group. (Italics in original.)

Linguistic planning pertains to both federal and provincial governmental

institutions. The former, shared by all Canadians, should be totally bi-
lingual. New Brunswick and Ontario should become officially bilingual by
making government services and activities available in both languages. The
other provinces should become officially bilingual when the French group
reaches ten per cent of their populations. At anytime, however, the appro-
priate services should be available to French-speaking minorities. Another
concept referred to as the cornerstone is the bilingual district which is an
area where the minority language group is large enough .., to warrant the
kind of linguistic reorientation we feel desirable. These districts are to be
identified initially through census units. Ten per cent of the population
belonging to the official language minority is offered as a general rule,
although the Commission makes it clear that linguistic clusters are not
contained within administrative units or census sub-divisions, and so care
will have to be taken not to isolate any sizeable cluster regardless of where
it might be found. Federal and provincial governments through negotiation
are to determine the bilingual districts. They also recommend a totally
bilingual federal capital district, a symbol of national identity which has
been singularly lacking in the past. The necessary legislation to implement
this planned bilingualism is indicated including a federal official languages
act and the creation of the office of Commissioner of Official Languages.
At the time of writing this review these Iast two items are before the Federal
Parliament and, despite some die-hard reaction, the idea of bilingual federal
institutions is being accepted.

Book I ends with the dissenting opinion of Commissioner Rudnyckyj. He

argues the case for the other bilingualisms resulting from the migration to
Canada of other, mainly European, language groups. These immigrant
languages he feels should have, where numbers warrant, the same status as 113
French and English which he refers to as the colonial languages. To avoid
a total babel-like situation, German, Italian, and Ukrainian should be the
representatives of the main immigrant linguistic families in Canada. One
obvious reaction to such a suggestion is that a multilingual Canada would
be subjected to even greater internal strains than a bilingual. Moreover, as
the majority of the Commission point out, most immigrant groups eventually
accept the obligation to learn one of the two official languages. Nor is it
clear that Canada has any moral obligation to preserve or promote European
languages and cultures. Canada is a new nation, and has had great difficulties
in defining itself as such. The Commissions Report points the way for
Canada as a new bilingual nation, and it would be unfortunate if it became
instead a museum of European cultures.

While Book I lays the foundation for planned bilingualism, Book 11,
Education, outlines the policies by which we can proceed towards the goal.
It begins with a review of the development of education in Quebec and of
French language education in the other provinces. Subsequent chapters
discuss the present situation in Quebec and other jurisdictions with particular
reference to the state of French language education in them. The major
theme in these chapters is the way in which the majority language groups
(French in Quebec and English in all other provinces) have permitted or
encouraged the minority language group to be educated in its own language
at all levels of the educational process. A sub-theme is the extent to which,
and the manner in which, the majority and minority groups learn each
others languages and hence develop some measure of bilingualism. The
Commissioners worked with a model which they call equal partnership in
education a condition which sees minority language schools an integral
part of all provincial systems. In brief, the aim must be to provide for
members of the minority an education appropriate to their linguistic and
cultural identity, but one which will not isolate them from the main stream
of educational developments in their own province.

In any historical account there is little in which English Canadians can

take pride. The evidence of bigotry, such as in Manitoba and in Ontario
with the nefarious Regulation 17 of 1912 making English the sole language
of instruction after the third year, and limiting the teaching of French to
one hour a day, is too monumental to be ignored. Tn fairness, it could be
asked if prejudice and ill-feeling until the 1920s was any higher or more
intense in Canada than in other parts of the world, or at the present time for
that matter, considering the current wave of irrational nationalism. The
threat, real or imagined, of a backlash in Quebec on the matter of language
in the schools comes at a time when the English in other provinces show
mea culpa a willingness to make changes. That being the case, we might
wonder whether historical reviews arouse passions rather than give guidance.
In fact, the Commission was preparing its Report at a time when educational
systems were being radically transformed not only in language policies, but
also in the wider context of modernization and democratization. One senses

114 the frustration of the Commissioners at events running ahead of them. As

they said of New Brunswick, ... changes are being introduced so rapidly
that no one can speak with assurance about the new systems being created.
Generally speaking, the Commissioners approve of the changes. They recog-
nize that, even in a unilingual society, education has become increasingly
diversified, prolonged, and costly. Therefore their model of equal partner-
ship and equal opportunity for both language groups in all provinces means
two educational systems in two languazes in all provinces, which could
become complex and burdensome in economic terms as well as in terms of
teaching resources. Hopefully, they say, We take it for granted, therefore,
that the co-operation of provincial authorities is assured.

To translate the model into effective educational policy they make forty-
six formal recommendations as guidelines mainly for provincial govern-
ments, but they also include an important role for the federal government.
The basic recommendation i5 that within bilingual districts public education
be provided in each of the official minority languages, at both the elementary
and secondary level. Departments of education are enjoined to state clearly
the educational rights available for French and English minorities outside of
bilingual districts. Separate branches are recommended within education
departments to administer the minority language system; but to prevent that
system from becoming separated and unequal, the provision of physical
services and financial administration should be unified and one school board
representative of both language groups should be responsible for all schools.
At the university level, it is recommended that whenever the potential
enrolment makes it feasible, there should be French language education for
the French speaking minority.

The federal role in this impressive blueprint for a bilingual educational

system is primarily financial. They recommend ... that the federal govern-
ment accept in principle the responsibility for the additional costs involved
in providing education in the official minority language. Grants to students,
universities, and teachers colleges are all part of the plan, the last being
particularly important since any French language educational system outside
Quebec depends upyn a supply of teachers with not only the teaching skills,
but also the language competence so woefully lacking in the past. The Com-
mission is anxious to avoid creating a sea of unilingualism with protected
islands of minority language groups, although this fearful outcome may well
result. Rather, they seek a genuinely bilingual Canada, and therefore have
a series of recommendations about the teaching of the second Canadian
language within both the majority and minority language schools. We
recommend that the study of the second official language should be obli-
gatory for all students in Canadian schools. Here, too, the federal govern-
ment is given a role in helping to meet the operating and capital costs
involved. Finally, there is the recommendation for a federal language
research council, concerned with research and development, related to
second language teaching.

The model and guidelines are vast in their scope for within the linguistic
context they seek a social revolution. The Commissioners have been 115
courageous, for not only do their aims contradict the historic prejudices of
Canadian society, but they go far beyond any existing proposals for the
teaching of French in provinces other than Quebec, and they put a brake
on any tendencies to reduce English language rights in Quebec as that
Province moves towards the implementation of the Parent Commission
recommendations. These historic rights which the English in Quebec have
enjoyed provide some of the moral claims to the extension of similar rights
to the French in other provinces.

The revolution of bilingualism will not appeal to all sectors of Canadian

society, but it probably could appeal, given the right presentation and
publicity, to the most dynamic sectors, the young, the urbanized, the better
educated, the more secularly oriented. T%eCommission has been wise to
play down the role of religion in the educational systems and in the animosi-
ties of the past. At one time the preservation of confessional schools outside
Quebec took precedence over the preservation of language based schools.
If now the choice has to be made between the two, the commission would
opt for the language principle. For language, the school is a question of
life or death; this is not so for religion. The relationship between religion
and culture becomes a curious one in this context. Religion is a threat to
culture rather than an important aspect of it. It is thus not difficult to
conclude, the Commission says, that in raising the school question primarily
on confessional grounds, many French-speaking groups have singularly
complicated and aggravated their cultural situation. To some observers at
least, the confessional character of French Canadian schools and the elitist
classical college system were essential parts of French Canadian culture.
The Commission itself recognizes this: It was generally agreed that the
classical colleges reflected the distinctive needs and fostered the distinctive
qualities of French Canadian society in North America. It is wise that with
their concern for modernization, and equal educational and occupational
opportunity for all Canadians, the Commission has emphasized the im-
portance of secular, rather than sacred, orientation in education. In doing
so, they are taking the same position, as far as Quebec education is con-
cerned, as that of the all-important Parent Commission.

Now we might consider the more polemical and contentious aspects of

these first two volumes. Two fundamental themes run through them. The
first is that, in Canada, there are two separate societies, two cultures, French
and English. The second is that it is the French culture and society which
is threatened, and which must be protected before it disappears. Thus the
Americanization of English Canadian society, culture and institutions is not
treated as a problem. With respect to the first theme, the Commission has
done a useful thing in setting aside the idea, so common in political rhetoric,
that Canadian dualism is some unique blending of French and English
society. In destroying that myth they set a course for intellectual and social
separatism and leave us with serious questions about the future of Canadian
unity. They would bring us together through bilingualism, but keep us apart
through culture.

The validity and usefulness of what the Commission says depends very
much on whether or not there can be any agreement on what is meant by
the terms culture and society. In the blue pages at the beginning of Book I,
and in many other frequent references, culture is used to explain differences
between the needs of the two groups, as well as their differences in various
types of behaviour. They speak of two distinct societies arising out of the
two cultures and suggest that territoriality, social organization and institu-
tions create a society. What then is Canada? It has territoriality, it has
defined boundaries, it has a set of institutions which both French and English
share. Somewhere along the line they concede that there is a Canadian
society; but in their desire to allow the two cultures to flourish as two
separate societies, it is not at all clear how they see Canada as a total society
with some sort of coherence of its own.

Most difficult of all is their concept of culture, in as much as any clear

concept emerges. Obviously their terms of reference required that they
define and operationalize for research purposes some of the key terms. They
make the quite correct observation that culture means many things, and a
footnote reference to Kroeber and Kluckhohn attests to something like three
hundred definitions. None of these appears to suit the Commission. They
reject the notion that culture embraces every aspect of a groups existence.
They then remark, However accurate and practical this usage may be in
other contexts, it is quite unsuitable for our purpose. After some consider-
able casuistry, they decide, Culture is to the group rather what personality
is to the individual; it is rare for a person to have two personalities or two
styles of living at the same time. One can find in the Kroeber and Kluck-
hohn (1963: 117) compendium a similar definition by Katz and Schanck,
Culture is to the society what personality is to the organism. This Kroeber
and Kluckhohn (1963:117) classify as a purely psychological definition, and
comment that such definitions stress only the psychological angle, but ...
they are couched in terms entirely outside the main stream of anthropological
and sociological thought. Sociologists and anthropologists might well think
that the Commission could have settled for something a little more con-
ventional. But no: instead we are left confused. Understood in this way,
culture is the sum of the characteristics particular to a group and common
to its individual members. Depending upon the degree of education, the
social class, or the region, there will be different ways of speaking the same
language. Culture is something that draws together individuals who are
otherwise clearly different ... This statement suggests that the same culture
can be differentiated, into sub-cultures perhaps, but at the same time culture
serves to bring together individuals who are clearly different. Unfortun-
ately the Commissioners rarely illustrate their theorizing with concrete
examples of what they are discussing. There is no examination of sub-
cultural differences, say class sub-cultures, in either English or French
Canada which might have been illuminating.

In another context, when culture is defined in a way suitable for our

purposes, it can readily become a residual variable used to explain differ-
ences which remain after a number of control variables have been intro-
duced. Gradually it emerges as a mythical entity, and becomes reified in a 117
dangerous way more characteristic of analyses at Comtes metaphysical
stage, rather than the positivistic. Once culture becomes metaphysical, it
becomes scientifically useless because it can be invoked ideologically as
something to be preserved and cherished.

In many respects, in their treatment of culture and particularly in their

treatment of French Canadian culture, the Commission comes close to
developing a kultur theory. In an interesting note appended to the Kroeber
and Kluckhohn volume on delirutions of culture, Alfred J. Meyer (Kroeber
and Kluckhohn, 1963:405) discusses the ideological meaning attached to
the concept in Germany and Russia as a reaction against the dynamics of
westernization and industrialization. Such kultur theories ... consist in
asserting the reality of something which is just about to be destroyed. It is
fortunate that the Commission for all practical purposes seems to ignore
many of its own ideas which do not seriously interfere with its task of
linguistic planning.

The Commission is torn between what could well be incompatible ends:

the preservation of a culture and the preparation through education of
French Canadians for what is frequently referred to as the post-industrial
world. They emphasize the importance of equality of educational oppor-
tunity, and they approve the educational reforms in Quebec which may,
after all, turn out to be the most reformed of all our provincial systems.
Thus history, tradition and culture come into conflict with the future. The
Commission never comes to grips with the matter of modernization, cultural
and social convergence and the survival of individual cultures as the world
moves towards its McLuhanite village.

When looking at the future, when planning any revolution, linguistic or

otherwise, the question might well be asked, What price culture? As
cultures converge through science and technology, cultural differentiation,
in the sense in which we have usually meant it, will end. In fact, we may
have reached the point where culture has become a myth, in the sense of a
belief in a non-existent world which might become a reality. The more
culture becomes a myth, the less can it become a working concept of social
science. Sociology has taken the word over from anthropology, which has
studied small, sometimes isolated, traditional-bound groups where the trans-
mission from one generation to the next of the established ways of doing
things and viewing the world is essential to social survival. Under these
circumstances, culture in the anthropological sense, as designs for living
passed down from generation to generation, is an important analytical
concept. In the contemporary society of change, culture can act as an im-
pediment to social development, because it emphasizes yesterdays, rather
than tomorrows, ways of life.

For the scholar or researcher who is interested in Canadian society there

is much that is frustrating, particularly about Book 11. The Commission has
the habit of citing its own commissions special studies, but in most cases
insufficient detail is given for the reader to make an appraisal of the evidence

118 himself. This Commission generated more social research in Canada, parti-
cularly in sociology and social psychology, than any single event in Canadian
history. Arrangements could well be made to publish, simultaneously with
each book, the research reports upon which they are based. The Reports
for the two volumes being reviewed are now available through the National
Archives. Scholars might wish to assess, not only the quality of the work,
but also the degree to which findings have been misinterpreted or alternative
solutions might have been advanced.