It has been reported that you favour forcing retail tenants in federal buildings in Canada's Capital Region to post signs in French and English. Here are my comments on this issue, providing long-term solution instead of regional quick fixes.
The bottom line question is whether Canada is an officially bilingual country or not. Does Canada strive to make its citizens feel comfortable from coast to coast to coast in both official language? If it still does, every sign in the country should bear both languages. A new concept of "priority language" can be introduced, where each province could decide which language is presented first.
The present policy of providing bilingual services "where numbers warrant" may work just fine for Canada's Capital Region, but does nothing for the people who venture into different parts of their own country. Providing both official languages with special priority would be similar to bilingual labelling on cereal boxes, where no one can complain about the lack of language.
The question of cost can be magically solved by the innovative "sun-rise" clause in the sign legislation, where the companies, organisations and merchants will spend 0 (zero) dollars and cents until the time when they replace the signs. It could be 1 month when they adopt a new corporate logo, or could be 10 years before an obsolete sign has to be replaced. Time will solve the problem as long as there is a vision for the future.
To facilitate the sign translation, the Federal Government could set up a "Sign Translation Web Site" on the Internet. Such on-line translation software technology already exists, and a limited Internet translation service is in use on the Globalink web site. The cost would be much less than $1 million CAD for the entire operation, including the web site set up and maintenance with human help staff. This could be financed by rearranging the existing budget of the Commissioner of Official Languages. HyperInfo Canada Inc. <http://WWW.HyperInfo.CA/> may be interested in running such a service.
Language is an important attribute of a person, but not a means of classifying people. Society should stop categorising citizens as "English Canadians" and "French Canadians", or "anglophones" and "francophones". When a person can speak 2 official languages, he/she stops being "anglophone" or "francophone" by definition. Yet, the media continue to label the growing number of people (thanks to immersion programs) as meaningless "bilingual anglophone" and "bilingual francophone". The others are ghettorised into "allophones" or "multicultural people". In my opinion, this kind of classification is no better than the now-defunct Population Registration Act in South Africa during Apartheid. Whatever happened to the objective of achieving a just society based on individual merit not determined by birth?
