A couple of recommendations in the annual report from the Commissioner of Official Languages is sure to spark conversation, at the very least, even though they won’t be adopted by the provincial government.
Katherine d’Entremont says starting in 2020, senior bureaucrats who work for the provincial government be required to be bilingual. She’s also recommending those senior civil servants who are unilingual be required to attain an advanced level of proficiency in the other official language.
She argues this should be a requirement because the highest officials in the provincial government have an obligation to communicate with the two linguistic communities, they supervise Anglophone and Francophone employees and are primarily responsible for applying the Official Languages Act.
