Canada's newly elected prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Photo: Alex Guibord, Flickr If there were a prize given out for the most famous person named Justin from Canada, it would have to go to Justin Bieber. But this week, another Justin has emerged who might steal that title, if only for a few days: Justin Trudeau, who earlier this week won Canada's election for prime minister.
Trudeau's victory has been attributed to many factors, including a generally liberalizing political climate in Canada, increasing skepticism about Canada's foreign interventions, more willingness to raise taxes in order to pay for social services, as well continuing ties between Trudeau's incumbent opponent Stephen Harper and scandal-ridden Toronto mayor Rob Ford. There may have been a few more unorthodox factors working in his favor too: his hair, his position on marijuana, and increasing fear among Canadians that the conservative Harper government has made it impossible to keep wearing those nifty Canada lapel pins they use to differentiate themselves from Americans abroad. But there was one other thing that helped Trudeau to his victory: his French skills. Canada is in a unique among countries in the Western Hemisphere. It's the only one where a significant portion of its territory is populated by speakers of a language other than the country's primary language - putting it in the same camp as countries like Belgium and Spain. This is a legacy dating from the Seven Year's War, fought in the 1700s, when formerly French Quebec became a British colony. Though Quebec would remain part of Canada even as it gained its independence from Britain in the 1900s, Quebec retained its distinctive identity, and a fierce pride in speaking French. As a result, Canada's government has taken pains to accommodate French speakers in the country. It has adopted a policy of nationwide "official bilingualism". And unlike the US, where presidential candidates who dare to learn French are ridiculed, speaking French is a critical skill for anyone in Canada who wants to throw their hat into the political ring. In fact, as part of the electoral process, candidates for prime minister are expected to take part in a debate held entirely in French. And during this election cycle, the results of the French debate gave Canada's political junkies plenty to pick over. Many concluded that Thomas Mulcair, whose party enjoys stronger support in Quebec than either Trudeau or Harper, went from being a secondary player to the center of attention, fielding more questions and spending more time defending his legacy than the top two. Not surprisingly, Mulcair actually outperforms Trudeau in the French-speaking department. The Montreal Gazette ranked his French as a 10 out of 10, noting that Mulcair is "at ease, he doesn't search for words, it's natural," when he speaks French. The other 10 out of 10 was Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Quebecois, a party with significant backing in Quebec and virtually no support anywhere else. Duceppe's party is so passionate about French that their website doesn't even appear in English. On the other hand, Trudeau's 8 out of 10 rank does edge out Harper, ranked at 7. While the Gazette notes that Trudeau isn't as natural while speaking French - "he thinks in English," the paper notes - they criticize Harper for being "much slower in French than in English." The paper points out another problem with Harper's French: he has been known to mispronounce "election" as "erection". Ultimately, in an election where candidates have to appeal to voters in Quebec while at the same time winning support in provinces like Alberta, which could easily pass as an Republican red state in the US, maybe an 8 out of 10 is the best score you could ask for. It's just enough French to show the Quebecois you understand them - in this case, literally. But it's not so much so as to inadvertently signal to the rest of the country, which still speaks mostly English, that you might forget about them. It's a delicate balance, that many of the world's linguistically polarized countries face. In others, such as Spain, things aren't going so well, and the country is threatening to split apart along language lines. Fortunately for Canadians, their political leadership relatively adept at holding things together. |
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