Bilingualism still debated in N.B.

Nearly 50 years after New Brunswick became Canada’s first officially bilingual province, the language debate continues to torment the province and generate heated arguments in English and French.

Next month, the New Brunswick Court of Appeal will be asked whether school buses need to be segregated by language – meaning, it must decide whether the province needs two entirely separate school bus regimes, overlapping geographically but not linguistically.

“We have kids that will play in the same playground but can’t be transported to school on the same bus. There’s something seriously wrong with that. From a social level we just don’t agree with it,” said Kris Austin, leader of the People’s Alliance of New Brunswick, an opposition party which is seeking to intervene in the case.

It’s just the latest flashpoint in which the Acadian population fights to define its rights as broadly as possible, while some anglophones wonder about the costs of bilingualism in a cashstrapped province.

The province has witnessed debates over bilingual signs, bilingual staffing for paramedics, language obligations for municipalities, and even a much-discussed complaint – from the official languages commissioner – about a unilingual commissionaire temporarily assigned to the reception desk of a government building.

“I get Twitter feedback more than once a day attacking me. It’s a lot of rhetoric, it’s very vulgar and that doesn’t bring anything to the debate,” said Donald Arseneault, minister responsible for official languages.

About 31 per cent of New Brunswickers described themselves in 2011 as francophone; about 40 per cent of government employees are required to be bilingual.

During recent pre-budget hearings, a government committee heard from a number of people who said if the government wants to save money, it should look at what’s spent on official bilingualism.

Arseneault, who would not put a dollar figure on its cost, is quick to defend official bilingualism.

“Can you imagine what it would cost if we didn’t have it, in the sense of lost opportunities for the province? That’s what we need to focus on,” the minister said.

“We hear a lot of people trying to fearmonger. Nobody’s going to lose their job,” he said.