It is quite gratifying when we see more and more outrage shown by the media over this most wasteful of government programs!! Here is Greg Weston with the latest report on the infuriating amount of money being thrown at this policy which does absolutely nothing for the country's unity, well-being or indeed sanity!! Tear your hair out and scream in frustration - or better still, help us stop this mind-boggling social engineering exercise!! How? Help us challenge the City of Ottawa's language policy - this is Step #1. If we succeed, it will be the beginning of a long journey back to some semblance of normalcy. If we don't, you can at least say you tried!! Kim
Sun, November 7, 2004
Train in vain
By Greg Weston -- Sun Ottawa Bureau
On a sunny Friday morning two summers ago, I bumped into a senior federal bureaucrat at a marina near our cottage where he was shopping for a new boat, a nice toy he could well afford on his government salary of $140,000 a year.
What struck me as odd was not a public servant's apparent absence from the job (hey, this is a government town), but that he spoke entirely in French both to me and to another man with him.
It was the first time I had heard him utter a word in French in our 25 years of acquaintance.
Turns out, he was off work for six months of full-time French-language training, and the guy boat-shopping with him that Friday -- you guessed it -- was his government-funded language teacher.
By the time he had passed his course, Canadian taxpayers had shelled out more than $120,000 in salary and training to produce a senior government executive who, by all accounts, is at least fluently bilingual in all things boating, golfing and cottage related. Nice work if you can avoid it.
As if that weren't enough to make you want to rip up your tax returns, there's more.
Throughout the government exec's nearly three decades of an obviously successful career, he says he was always able to get by with "passable French" that he rarely had occasion to use anyway.
Now that taxpayers have put him through French school, he is likely to use it even less.
A few weeks after he graduated, he retired from government on a full pension -- fluent in both official languages, bien sur.
But don't blame him. He's as angry about this any other taxpayer. His government superiors knew all along that a pile of public funds were being spent to create a bilingual retiree.
Here's the worst news: This is not an isolated case; far from it.
Canadian taxpayers are being bilked potentially millions of dollars a year in French lessons -- and to a lesser degree, English lessons -- for government executives nearing retirement.
The culprit is one of the smartest Liberal policy moves since the invention of official bilingualism.
As part of Jean Chretien's legacy gift to Canadians on his way out of town last year, tough new bilingual language requirements were imposed on over 61,000 federal jobs for reasons that have nothing to do with good government.
The down-your-throat approach to language learning has had the biggest impact on the roughly 4,600 federal government executives across the country, most of whom have been given specific deadlines to achieve fluency, starting this year.
The problem is that more than half of them will be collecting pensions within the decade.
Bilingual today, gone tomorrow.
Another senior exec my acquaintance describes as "one of the smartest people in government," recently quit his job after 34 years rather than submit to mandatory French training -- 18 months before his retirement.
Don't bother asking anyone in this Liberal government how big the problem might be, or whether anyone is considering fixing it, or if any of it makes the slightest sense.
No one seems to have even the faintest idea how much federal taxpayers are shelling out for language training, nor how many bureaucrats are off the job while they learn to parler.
We do know that the Liberal government's grand plan is to blow about $750 million over the next five years on all things great and bilingual.
Officials also tell us that last year, the feds spent around $36 million just on government-run language schools for about 4,500 public servants.
But that's just a fraction of what is really happening.
With the fluency deadlines looming, government-run training centres are overflowing. There are 1,100 names on the waiting list at one Ottawa facility alone.
Expensive schools
As a result, dozens of government departments are herding their executives and other employees into expensive private language schools across the country, running up an additional language bill certain to be in the millions.
And all for what?
Dyane Adam, Canada's official languages commissioner and resident bilingualism zealot, recently issued a report complaining that even when anglophone government executives become fluent in French, they still prefer to speak English.
Mon dieu.
Sun, November 7, 2004
Train in vain
By Greg Weston -- Sun Ottawa Bureau
On a sunny Friday morning two summers ago, I bumped into a senior federal bureaucrat at a marina near our cottage where he was shopping for a new boat, a nice toy he could well afford on his government salary of $140,000 a year.
What struck me as odd was not a public servant's apparent absence from the job (hey, this is a government town), but that he spoke entirely in French both to me and to another man with him.
It was the first time I had heard him utter a word in French in our 25 years of acquaintance.
Turns out, he was off work for six months of full-time French-language training, and the guy boat-shopping with him that Friday -- you guessed it -- was his government-funded language teacher.
By the time he had passed his course, Canadian taxpayers had shelled out more than $120,000 in salary and training to produce a senior government executive who, by all accounts, is at least fluently bilingual in all things boating, golfing and cottage related. Nice work if you can avoid it.
As if that weren't enough to make you want to rip up your tax returns, there's more.
Throughout the government exec's nearly three decades of an obviously successful career, he says he was always able to get by with "passable French" that he rarely had occasion to use anyway.
Now that taxpayers have put him through French school, he is likely to use it even less.
A few weeks after he graduated, he retired from government on a full pension -- fluent in both official languages, bien sur.
But don't blame him. He's as angry about this any other taxpayer. His government superiors knew all along that a pile of public funds were being spent to create a bilingual retiree.
Here's the worst news: This is not an isolated case; far from it.
Canadian taxpayers are being bilked potentially millions of dollars a year in French lessons -- and to a lesser degree, English lessons -- for government executives nearing retirement.
The culprit is one of the smartest Liberal policy moves since the invention of official bilingualism.
As part of Jean Chretien's legacy gift to Canadians on his way out of town last year, tough new bilingual language requirements were imposed on over 61,000 federal jobs for reasons that have nothing to do with good government.
The down-your-throat approach to language learning has had the biggest impact on the roughly 4,600 federal government executives across the country, most of whom have been given specific deadlines to achieve fluency, starting this year.
The problem is that more than half of them will be collecting pensions within the decade.
Bilingual today, gone tomorrow.
Another senior exec my acquaintance describes as "one of the smartest people in government," recently quit his job after 34 years rather than submit to mandatory French training -- 18 months before his retirement.
Don't bother asking anyone in this Liberal government how big the problem might be, or whether anyone is considering fixing it, or if any of it makes the slightest sense.
No one seems to have even the faintest idea how much federal taxpayers are shelling out for language training, nor how many bureaucrats are off the job while they learn to parler.
We do know that the Liberal government's grand plan is to blow about $750 million over the next five years on all things great and bilingual.
Officials also tell us that last year, the feds spent around $36 million just on government-run language schools for about 4,500 public servants.
But that's just a fraction of what is really happening.
With the fluency deadlines looming, government-run training centres are overflowing. There are 1,100 names on the waiting list at one Ottawa facility alone.
Expensive schools
As a result, dozens of government departments are herding their executives and other employees into expensive private language schools across the country, running up an additional language bill certain to be in the millions.
And all for what?
Dyane Adam, Canada's official languages commissioner and resident bilingualism zealot, recently issued a report complaining that even when anglophone government executives become fluent in French, they still prefer to speak English.
Mon dieu.
