declared by the General Assembly of the United Nations to be International Human Rights Year. The Government of Canada is prepared to proceed at once.
Linguistic Rights
Our second proposal is that the governments represented at this Conference should accept the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. The urgency of this action should now be manifest to all Canadians. French-speaking Canadians do not feel that sense of partnership which is a condition of Confederation; this must be remedied if the basis of Canadian unity is to be strengthened. The success of our endeavours depends ultimately, of course, on our actions as individual human beings, but we must do all we can, as soon as we can, by legislation and through institutions created by government, to achieve this goal.
The Government of Canada for its part proposes to recommend to Parliament, at its next Session, an Official Languages Hill that will formally declare English and French to be “the official languages of the Parliament of Canada, of the federal courts, of the federal government, and of the federal administration”. We also propose to appoint under the authority of that Act “a Commissioner of Official Languages charged with ensuring respect for the status of French and English in Canada”. To this end a plan of action is now being prepared to bring into full realization the objectives which have been set by the Royal Commission for the Government of Canada, objectives which we welcome and accept.
The Royal Commission has directed the balance of its recommendations to the provincial governments, or to the federal and provincial governments together. The Provinces of Ontario and New Brunswick, in particular, have been called upon to take the same action as the Parliament of Canada; to declare in an Official Languages Act that they recognize English and French as official languages. These provinces and Quebec have been asked to appoint a Commissioner of Official Languages “charged with ensuring respect for the status of French and English” so far as their jurisdiction extends. As part of this programme for linguistic equality the provinces would recognize the right of parents to have their children educated in the official language of their choice. The provinces have been called upon to declare that both French and English may be used in the debates in their legislatures, while the Prairie Provinces, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island have been called upon, in addition, to recognize both languages in districts where ten per cent of the population speaks the other official language. These bilingual districts would be established
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ETHNIC front for the restructuring:
“French-speaking Canadians do not feel that sense of partnership which is a condition of Confederation; this must be remedied if the basis of Canadian unity is to be strengthened.” Pearson is saying this in 1968, after 4-5 years of Communist FLQ terrorist bombings and other violent actions. He’s pretending that these Communist activities are the expression of the feelings of French-Canadians, which he self-servingly interprets as meaning that they want “partnership” (i.e., dismantling for decentralization into city-states); and goodbye, Canada!