Nouvelles

Telegraph-Journal
p. A6, jeudi, 20 novembre 2008

Bilingualism or breakdown
Éditorial

It's difficult to read the report of New Brunswick's commissioner of official languages without a sense of despair.

Bilingualism is not an abstract principle. It's the core value New Brunswick's governance was founded on, and all that has saved this province from the corrosive battling over language that wracks Quebec. How is it that many New Brunswickers are still denied services in their own language, including such essential documents as medical records and court rulings?

If the government and public institutions can't keep their commitment to bilingual service, all that this province has been able to accomplish in 40 years is in danger of dissolving.

Before Equal Opportunity and official bilingualism, New Brunswick was practically a feudal society. The quality of health care, education and justice varied widely from community to community and county to county. The cultural divide between anglophones and francophones was enormous, and to the minds of many citizens, unbridgeable. Parochial politics made the divide seem larger than it was, by playing up a sense of grievance and treating linguistic communities like naive constituencies whose votes could be bought with political favours.

Leaders like Liberal Louis J. Robichaud and Conservative Richard Hatfield changed that. Through Equal Opportunity, the government made a commitment to maintain province-wide standards in health care and education. Through the Official Languages Act, New Brunswick established a policy of full linguistic equality and made a commitment to serve all its citizens fairly. With these acts of legislation, New Brunswick established itself as a progressive, modern state - one in which differences could be bridged through an underlying respect for diversity and the common desire to build a more prosperous society.

The tensions that made official bilingualism necessary are still with us; in part, because the policy has never been fully honoured. Bilingualism was only recently extended to such routine matters as traffic tickets and municipal regulations. This year's official languages report makes it clear that much more remains to be done - in justice, in health care and in the provincial civil service.

Health Minister Michael Murphy's creation of two health regions is an example of how not to proceed. Entrenching duality sows division, and it does not offer New Brunswickers what they have worked for: the guarantee of bilingual service in any part of the province.

New Brunswickers must rise to the challenge of true bilingualism, or risk losing the unity that has allowed this province to grow so rapidly and to compete with the best in the world.