Mirko Casagranda

Language in Canada has always been a political issue: in 1969, for instance, the equal status of the two languages of the European colonization had to be regulated through the promulgation of the Official Languages Act. More than fifty years have passed, and Canada has embraced its cultural diversity turning it into a marker of national identity. Over the last decades, however, the country’s much celebrated multiculturalism has been questioned, especially by the First Nations, for its lack of authentic inclusivity and inherent inequality. As cultural (super)diversity is also expressed through linguistic plurality, several Indigenous communities have claimed the official recognition of their languages as founding languages of Canada and the creation of policies to ensure their survival. Concomitantly with the United Nations proclamation of 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages, in June of the same year the Canadian Parliament passed the Indigenous Languages Act with the main purpose of supporting and promoting the use of Indigenous languages and the efforts of their speakers to preserve them. On 15 June 2021, on the other hand, the first reading of “An Act to amend the Official Languages Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts” took place in Ottawa. The Bill, as a matter of fact, intends to redefine the role and status of the two official languages following the socio-cultural changes of the past few years. Starting from a linguistic analysis of the above-mentioned Acts, the presentation aims at mapping the ongoing debate on language policy and the plurality of languages of Canada, and to assess whether it is truly inclusive and socially innovative or if it is merely reiterating power dynamics of the past.