This paper discusses language policy in Canada, focusing on regional variations in terms of the balance between mobility and inclusion. More specifically, the paper investigates how the federal sharing and/or division of competences affect both the economic integration of immigrants and individual bilingualism (English-French) across the country. The author uses Census data and text laws to compare and contrast the performances of the strongly interventionist approach to language found in the French-speaking province of Quebec with the hands off approach found in the English-speaking Rest of Canada (RoC). The findings suggest that both do well at integrating immigrants, though Quebec does a far better job preserving its linguistic minority and creating bilingual citizens. One can thus defend the hypothesis that federal policies fail to prevent the replication of double-standards of linguistic self-determination across regions, or in other words of linguistic domination. Accordingly, the paper concludes with a critical analysis of the cross-regional balance between mobility and inclusion that citizens can democratically enforce in Quebec and the RoC.
