Active conscience or administrative vanguard?: The commissioner of official languages as an agent of change

Canadian Public Administration

Volumn 49, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 161-179

  MacMillan, C Michael ^a  

^a MOUNT SAINT VINCENT UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33746074423     PISSN: 00084840     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1754-7121.2006.tb01977.x     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. "Office of the Federal Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada: The Idea, Image and Reality," International Review of Administrative Sciences 46, no. 3 (1980), pp. 261-2.
2. Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Final Report (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1967), 1:137,
3. Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Final Report, 3: 287.
4. Final Report,Ibid., 1:141.
5. Paul G. Thomas, "The past, present and future of officers of Parliament," CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 46, no. 3 (Fall 2003), p. 297.
6. R. MacGregor Dawson, Principles of Official Independence (Toronto: S.B. Grundy, 1922), p. 6, quoted in Maria
7. L. Kurylo, "Canada's Commissioner of Official Languages: The Unexplored Concept of the Officer of Parliament" (MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 2000), p. 13.
8. L. Kurylo, Canada's Commissioner of Official Languages: the Unexplored Concept of the Officer of Parliament Ibid., p. 12.
9. "Office of the Federal Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada," p. 252.
10. Department of the Secretary of State, Human Rights Directorate, The Ombudsman and Similar Institutions (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1981), p. 7.
11. Stephen Owen, "The Ombudsman: Essential Elements and Common Challenges," in Linda Reif, Mary Marshall, and Charles Ferris, eds., The Ombudsman: Diversity and Development (Edmonton: International Ombudsman Institute, University of Alberta, 1993), p. 1.
12. St-Onge v. Commisariat aux langues officielles (Can.), [1994] 83 Federal Trial Reports 9 at 33.
13. St-Onge v. Commissioner of Official Languages, Federal Court of Appeal Decision, 675-01 (August 1992).
14. It should be acknowledged that, while 1,000 complaints is a large number in absoute terms, it is a very small number when considered as a percentage of the millions of instances of service to the public provided annually by federal institutions. I would like to thank one of my anonymous reviewers for raising a question on this point to me. 13 This figure is derived by summing the reported incidence from the various annual reports. However, there is some variation since identical cases are occasionally grouped together and treated as one case.
15. OCOL, Annual Report 2004-2005, ch. 5;
16. Annual Report 2004-2005,ibid., 1997, pp. 29-33.
17. Annual Report 2004-2005,Ibid., 1991, 111-12, and
18. Annual Report 2004-2005,1999-2000, p. 56.
19. Ibid., 1997, p. 29.
20. Government of Canada, The Next Act: New Momentum for Canada's Linguistic Duality, the Action Plan for Official Languages, March 2003 (Ottawa: Privy Council Office, [n.d.]). This document is available at (http://www.pco-bcp.gc. ca/olo/default.asp?Language'E&Page' action.)
21. The comparison of the commissioner's suggested priorities with the measures in the action plan appear in OCOL, Annual Report, 2002-2003, p. 26.
22. Mark Schacter, "When Accountability Fails: A Framework for Diagnosis and Action," Isuma 2 (Summer 2001), p. 135.
23. OCOL, First Annual Report, p. 65.
24. Mr. Marchand, member of Parliament for Quebec-East, Joint Committee on Official Languages, 9 May 1996.
25. Scott Reid, Lament for a Notion: The Life and Death of Canada's Bilingual Dream (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1993), pp. 139-40.
26. See Albert Breton, "Scott Reid's Cost-Benefit Anaylsis of Bilingual Packaging and Labelling" which was posted at http://www.scottreid.com/ bookreviews/bretonl.htm, accessed 12 April 2001.
27. OCOL, Annual Report, 2000-2001, p. 114.
28. Annual Report,Ibid., 1998-1999, pp. 72-4,
29. Annual Report,ibid., 2004-2005, ch. 3.3, accessed at http://www.ocol-clo. gc.ca/ archives/ar_ra/2004_05/2004_05_e.htm#chap3.3.
30. OCOL, news release, 11 February 1986.
31. OCOL, Annual Report, 1999-2000, p. 52.
32. Leslie Pal, "Official Language Minorities and the State: Dual Dynamics in a Single Policy Network," in William Coleman and Grace Skogstad, eds., Policy Communities and Public Policy in Canada (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1990), p. 178.
33. Department of the Secretary of State, Human Rights Directorate, The Ombudsman, p. 7.
34. OCOL, Annual Report, 1987, p. 9.
35. Quoted in William Johnson, A Canadian Myth: Quebec, Between Canada and the Illusion of Utopia (Outremont: Robert Davies Publishing, 1994), p. 215.
36. OCOL, Annual Report, 1981, p. 31.
37. OCOL, Annual Report, 2000-2001, pp. 96, 49.
38. Dave Rogers, "Language czar wades in on civic bilingualism," Ottawa Citizen, 3 March 2005, p. B1.
39. Garth Stevenson, Commuity Beseiged: The Anglophone Minority and the Politics of Quebec (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999), p. 264.
40. Ian Brodie, "Interest Group Litigation and the Embedded State: Canada's Court Challenges Program," Canadian Journal of Political Science 34, no. 2 (2001), pp. 365, 371-2.
41. Troy Q. Riddell, "Official minority-language education policy outside Quebec: The impact of Section 23 of the Charter and judicial decisions," CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 46, no. 1 (Spring 2003), pp. 27-49.
42. OCOL, Annual Report, 2000-2001, p. 66.
43. Leslie A. Pal, "Language, Policy and Rights in Canada: Pragmatism v. Politics," International Issues 38, no. 2 (1995), p. 40.
44. I have drawn the ice analogy from a comment by former Commissioner D'lberville Fortier, who said that "the base of support for specific manifestations of linguistic equality is about as reliable as ice in springtime." See "Bilingualism and Canadian Values," notes for the Falconbridge Lecture delivered at Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, 26 November 1985.