Mobility and Inclusion in Canada: A Critical Assessment of Language Policies

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.